Episode 186: Chameleons and Cheesecake
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Transcript
Time Crisis, back again.
On this week's show, we discuss the new book from Bob Dylan,
the cheesecake incident,
plus music from Boston, Madonna, and the Human League.
All that, plus the great conversations
you've come to know and love on this week's
- Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
♪ They passed me by ♪
♪ All of those great romances ♪
♪ They were a flood of lovingly ♪
♪ All my rightful chances ♪
♪ My picture clear ♪
♪ Everything seemed so easy ♪
♪ So I dealt to the blow ♪
♪ 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.
Well, it's been an eventful two weeks.
Jake, how you doing?
- I'm pretty much back to normal,
but it's been a real rollercoaster.
Had COVID.
First time I've tested positive.
- Finally got COVID.
How strange.
- Yeah, right?
I've been living like it's 2019 for a long time.
I don't know, yeah, I got COVID.
I think I maybe got it at the Cheesecake Factory
or during a screening of the film Tar,
which we talked about on the last show.
I went to, I ate nachos with my brother
at the Cheesecake Factory in Glendale,
and then we went and saw Tar.
So I guess when we recorded last,
I probably contracted it.
- You were incubating.
- About to show symptoms the next day.
And then we had a big Mountain Brews record release show
booked for Friday, November 4th.
And we practiced the weekend before,
and I had like a little scratch on my throat before practice.
And I was like, "Oh, I probably have a cold."
You know, especially with having a kid,
like I always have like some sort of like
low grade congestion, I feel like.
And so I was like, "Oh, you know,
"I didn't really think much of it."
And then like at the end of practice,
I was like, "Oh man, I'm sick."
And then like felt like crap at home that night,
tested the next morning, sure enough, COVID.
And there were seven people in Mountain Brews
and five of them ended up with COVID, thanks to me.
- Damn.
- I know, it was really a super spreader event.
And so yeah, it canceled the show.
You know, the show was good.
Yeah, we were like all still kind of sick
by the time the show rolled around
and there was just no way we were gonna do it.
- So much to unpack there.
Let's start at the top.
So Cheesecake Factory.
- Yeah.
- What's the decision-making process in hitting Cheesecake?
- Well, if we were partying like it was 2019,
we would have gone to the Arclight
in Pasadena or Hollywood.
But the Arclight is no longer.
- It's closed.
- It's a casualty of the COVID era.
So now if you wanna see like a cool,
arty, tasteful movie like "Tar,"
you're gonna end up at the Glendale Americana.
Which is still showing a lot of like-
- Which is a huge-
- Yeah, it's still showing the MCU and all that,
you know, "Top Gun."
- And for people who don't know,
the Glendale Americana is like a huge outdoor mall complex.
- Yeah, it was-
- With living arrangements.
- With living arrangements.
Oh yeah, Nick, I saw a movie with Nick there once.
It's very LA in the sense that most of the country
doesn't have these like year-round outdoor places.
You have your kind of like classic,
like East Coast, Midwestern, just like brutal mall,
just like concrete spaceship that you like pull up to.
Everything's happening inside.
But I don't know how many places have these.
It's, yeah, a mixed-use development
that's kind of modeled after a European city.
- Yeah, kind of Vegas-y or like Disneyland-y.
It's actually developed by Rick Caruso, who is-
- Potentially the mayor.
- Yeah, he's in a, I guess they're counting the votes.
- In a dead heat.
- Yeah, but yeah, it's kind of what you're saying.
There's fountains, there's sidewalks.
- Sidewalks, there's a fence happening.
- There's like a little mini train track
that the kids can ride on.
- Yeah, and then there's apartment buildings.
And when you come, you see all these like memes
and stuff these days where people talk about
how sad they are that America doesn't have
high-density walkable cities.
(laughing)
- I've never been to the Americana.
- There's memes where kind of,
I guess people who are into like urbanism,
they'll point out how people have such fond memories.
I remember a specific meme
where they were listing all these things
that a typical kind of like middle-class American
might say, these are such special moments in my life.
And they'll talk about, wow, I really liked college.
It was great, I was in a building with all my friends,
walk out the door, go to our communal dining hall,
walk elsewhere to do everything I had to do,
spend time together in the quad or whatever.
That's like a fond memory
that a lot of college-educated Americans have.
And the meme was like, yeah,
'cause you were in a dense walkable environment.
And then the other examples they give
that people have fond memories of in America,
like, you know what I love?
I love going to Disneyland with my family.
We go as often as we can.
There's people who go twice a year,
but there's plenty of people who like,
if they have a vacation time, they go there.
And then the meme is saying, yeah, again,
it's you're in a dense walkable environment.
You're at your hotel, pop downstairs,
walk across the street, no cars,
hit the restaurant, hit the cafe,
or maybe they went to Europe on vacation once.
Like, man, it was so charming
being in this little city in Italy.
And basically they're saying over and over again,
what you're looking for is a dense walkable environment.
And people famously say LA is like the antithesis of that,
but they gotta go to the Americana
because that's where,
if you lived in one of the apartments there,
you would come downstairs
and you would be on this funny little street
where you could go sit at a restaurant.
You'd walk right across the street, no cars.
It's maybe a little bit eerie.
It's definitely a Truman Show vibe,
but beggars can't be choosers.
Your soul chose to be incarnated in 21st century America,
not 19th century Italy, so that's on you.
If it's a little weird, it is what it is,
but you walk downstairs and here you are.
Your kids can ride a funny little train.
You can go sit by the fountain
and you can walk right over to see a movie, for instance.
- Or you could pop by the Cheesecake Factory
for a quick brew.
You know, that's your local watering hole.
- Right, exactly.
If you're too much of an aesthete,
it might not measure up.
You're not having a cool old Italian bar
where everybody's hanging out,
but it's, you know, Cheesecake Factory, extensive menu.
And you post up, have your beer, meet up with some friends.
♪ Taking your way in the world today ♪
♪ Takes everything you've got ♪
♪ Taking a break from all your worries ♪
♪ Sure would help a lot ♪
♪ Wouldn't you like to get away ♪
♪ All those nights when you've got no lights ♪
♪ The check is in the mail ♪
♪ And your little angel hung the cat up by its tail ♪
♪ And your third fiance didn't show ♪
♪ Sometimes you wanna go ♪
♪ Where everybody knows your name ♪
♪ And they're always glad you came ♪
♪ You wanna be where you can see ♪
♪ Troubles are all the same ♪
♪ You wanna be where everybody knows your name ♪
- I wonder if there are any people who like,
live in the apartments who have like,
a standing like 5.30 PM beer at Cheesecake.
- For sure.
I thought you were gonna say-
- That's gonna be us.
(laughing)
- I thought you were gonna say,
have like a standing tab, like,
"Hey, put it on my tab."
- Oh, is it like a really good relationship with the-
- Yeah, with the management of the Cheesecake Factory.
- Oh yeah, you know I'm good for it, of course.
- I'm wondering, I'm trying to find if there's anyone
who's, not that they've never left the Americana,
but has, you know, done some kind of experiment.
Like, I spent a full year living in the Americana
and I never left its walls.
- Oh, like Super Seismic for the Americana?
- Yeah, where it's like, they live there,
then they go eat there, have a beer
at the Cheesecake Factory.
I assume there's no-
- There's other restaurants, there's a non-Chain Italian.
- There's an Italian place I've eaten at.
- I've eaten there too.
It's pretty good.
- It's a non-Chain, or maybe it's covertly a Chain.
- Right.
- So yeah, that's the backstory.
I mean, it was basically like, let's go see "Tar."
It's playing in Glendale.
Let's like grab a brew and eat some nachos
at the Cheesecake Factory, which is just catty corner.
- There are no better options than cheesecake?
Or you guys kind of liked to hit cheesecake?
- This is the first time I've done this with my brother.
I've been to that cheesecake a couple of times
before a movie.
Just 'cause it's, I'm not gonna like park twice.
Like, it's either like the Cheesecake Factory
or that Italian place.
Maybe there's one other place, I forget.
But it's like, you know, classic,
like semi-ironic Cheesecake Factory outing.
- Right.
- And plus I was working on a painting
of a Cheesecake Factory at the time.
- Oh, perfect.
- So I liked the spiritual symmetry of that.
Just for the purposes of my own personal mythology
and narrative, it's fitting that I would get COVID
at the Cheesecake Factory.
- And especially as you're working on the painting.
- It was Cheesecake's revenge.
- Cheesecake's revenge on Jake's immune system.
And now you always remember it
because I hope obviously that COVID
becomes less of a talking point in the years to come
because it will just be less of a thing.
But there'll be conversations for the rest of our lives
where people say, "Remember COVID?
"Did you get it?
"Where'd you get it?"
And Jake will, "Mine's not that interesting.
"Yeah, I just got it at home.
"My son got it for whatever."
You know, like, "Just got it."
Whereas Jake's is gonna be--
- The stuff of legend.
- I got it at Cheesecake Factory
while I was working on a Cheesecake Factory painting
before I went to see the film "Tar."
And they'll say, "Whoa, really?"
And say, "And by the way, did you know that Todd Field,
"the director of 'Tar,' may have invented Big League Chew?"
It's gonna be the perfect dinner party conversation
for Jake in his 70s living at the Americana.
- I dropped--
- I got it in this very Cheesecake Factory
where I have dinner every night.
- Someone, literally someone says, "Oh yeah, I once got,
"you ever get COVID?"
Two hours later, Jake's telling them about Todd Field.
- Yeah.
I did drop the Todd Field co-created Big League Chew
factoid in a text thread last night.
And it always elicits incredible surprise from people.
The whole text thread was just like, "Wait, what?"
- I put out a few Hollywood feelers, by the way.
- On Todd Field?
- I haven't figured anything out, I'll put it that way.
But I thought of a few people I knew
who might know people who knew him.
- Yeah.
- And I was just like hitting people up like,
"Can you ask this person, do you mind reaching out?"
(laughing)
Just a friend of a friend,
"Do you mind reaching out to Tarantino?"
Are they buddies, kind of similar?
But I found one guy who might know him and he said,
"I don't know the answer to that story,
"but if I reconnect with him at any point
"in the next few months, I'll feel it out."
But I did a little more research on that too.
And the one thing I can say without repeating
our whole live bombshell investigation we did last time
is that whatever his name was, Nelson, the pitcher,
- Yeah. - who started it,
all I can say for sure is having read a little more deeply
is that his story has changed a bit.
At various points, he's kind of said that Todd Field
was holding a bag of chopped up licorice
and that gave him the idea.
And in other interviews, he said,
"Oh yeah, Todd Field, he was our bat boy, sweet kid.
"I didn't have a kitchen, so actually I made the first batch
"at his mom's house, but I'd had the idea
"to do chopped up chewing gum since I was a kid."
So it's totally different stories.
- Psychotic.
- One day we'll get to the bottom of it,
but I'm increasingly feeling like Todd Field
is not a secret billionaire.
So go out and see the film "Tar" by the way,
because the guy does not have big league chew money.
Anybody who's staying home saying,
"I'll torrent the film 'Tar', I won't see it in theaters.
"Todd Field, he's got that big league chew money.
"He doesn't need my money at the box office."
I don't think it's true.
And I'm sorry if I gave that impression two weeks ago.
If you're interested in the film
and you wanna support Todd Field, get your butt in a seat.
Go buy a ticket.
Let's get that box office number up
because he is not a Bill Gates.
He's not the Bill Gates of bubble gum.
I'm sorry if we gave that impression.
I don't think this man is a secret billionaire.
So any kind of antipathy you have towards the mega rich,
do not project that onto Todd Field.
Go support the film "Tar".
Well said.
♪ Home from work ♪
♪ Our Juliet clears her morning meal ♪
♪ She dabs her skin ♪
♪ With pretty smells concealing to appear ♪
♪ I will make my bed ♪
♪ She said, "Return to go" ♪
♪ Can she be late for her cinema show ♪
♪ Cinema show ♪
So Jake, you may have gotten a cheesecake.
Why are you so confident that that's where you got it?
Well, I'm not.
I mean, like I said, it's fitting for my own personal story.
You know, I could have got it at "Tar".
I mean, more likely I got it at the movie, right?
'Cause I was sitting there for three hours.
But I came down with COVID like a day or two after that.
I could have gotten it the next night.
I went to, Hannah and I went on a double date
with CT and his wife to see the band "Planes"
at the Regent Theater downtown.
Great new album from "Planes".
Whoa, I've never, who are "Planes"?
It's a duo, it's two women.
One is Katie, you're putting me on the spot here.
I don't know their names,
but they both come from other bands.
Wachahachie, is that a band?
Oh, Wax, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, Wachahachie.
Wachahachie. Wachahachie.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Katie Crutchfield, is that her name?
Oh, yeah, no, Wachahachie's great.
She's paired up with someone
that Hannah actually knows a little bit, who's from Texas.
Anyway, they put out this record.
Okay, no, I have heard of that, yeah.
It's real like kind of like trio.
Remember that record with Dolly Parton and Emmylou
and Linda Ronstadt in the '80s called "Trio"?
Yeah.
It's like they wrote a bunch of really great songs
and they performed them
in this very straightforward, sonorous way.
And actually, they had this guy, Eric Slick,
playing drums for them,
who actually played drums in the last "Mountain Brews" EP,
which is hilarious.
Small world.
♪ I drift down farther away ♪
♪ I got a problem with it and I don't know how to say ♪
♪ It's a pink carnation ♪
♪ It's a hand hastily played ♪
♪ The potboiler wearing out ♪
♪ Gave 'em something to kick up dust about ♪
♪ If it was love you were after ♪
♪ With a long shadow walk down ♪
♪ If it's all you got, yeah, it's all you gave ♪
♪ I got a problem with it ♪
♪ If you can't do better than that, babe ♪
♪ I got a problem with it ♪
♪ Justified it in my own way ♪
♪ I lost myself in it ♪
♪ If it's all you got and it's enough, you see ♪
♪ I got a problem with it ♪
But so all these people, Dave, CT,
Emily, Hannah, Waxahachie,
none of these people got COVID.
- Correct, I was the only one.
- Okay, well, I mean, I'm sorry for you,
but that feels like kind of good news
that didn't spread like wildfire,
except at bruise practice, maybe 'cause you were singing.
Maybe because you guys were sharing one mic
singing four-part harmonies.
- No, but we were in a closed room for four hours singing.
Somehow I didn't give it to Hannah, which is amazing,
but yeah, you're probably right.
Probably the singing, and I was probably right at like,
I was probably peaking in my contagion right at that,
like that day, you know?
But we are playing Friday, November 18th
as part of a "Jokerman" podcast live event at Gold Diggers.
So- - Well, that'll be great.
- That's kind of turned into our record release.
- Oh, perfect.
- Yeah, we're gonna play at like seven,
and then "Jokerman" are gonna hit the stage.
I think I'm gonna be joining them for some of it
about a discussion, or there'll be a discussion
about Bob Dylan's new book, "The Philosophy of Modern Song."
- Right, maybe we should talk about the book a little bit.
- Yeah.
- I only read the first few songs, but-
- Yeah.
- Have you finished it, Jake?
- No, I'm like, I don't know,
maybe a third of the way through.
- Well, so for anybody who doesn't know,
Bob Dylan just released this book,
"The Philosophy of Modern Song."
Just to put it in context,
if you don't follow Dylan closely,
he does get up to some weird, random, extracurricular stuff,
but it's not like he's releasing books all the time.
Off the top of my head,
I'm aware of three books he's ever released.
In the '60s, he wrote this kind of like surreal,
difficult to read, poetic novel called "Tarantula,"
which seems a little bit like just at the peak,
famous '60s Dylan, he got a book contract,
and then he was like, "Ah, (beep) I gotta write something."
Kind of like a post-Kerouac weirdo thing.
But then outside of that, he wrote "Chronicles" volume one,
which was a very interesting impressionistic memoir volume.
And that was already like 20 years ago.
It kind of seemed like he was setting it up
that, "Oh man, every few years,
are we gonna get a new part of Bob Dylan's memoirs?"
'Cause that first part really jumped around.
It was a bit of early life,
then a bit of the making of "Oh Mercy" in the late '80s.
And then that's been it.
So it is pretty eventful for a Dylan fan
that he's written a new book.
And it just so happens that this one
is a bit of music journalism, criticism, I guess you'd say.
He chose how many songs?
- I think 66.
- 66 songs.
And he basically wrote a mini essay about each one
where he kind of explains
what he thinks is going on in the song.
He kind of has his own poetic,
impressionistic language about it.
Talks a bit about the songwriter,
but it's pretty like stream of consciousness.
It's not like it opens where it's like,
"Hey guys, Bob Dylan here.
I've dedicated my life to song craft.
And I wanna take you through a journey of modern music."
And by doing it, I chose 66 songs that I think
really tell a story about America,
about art, and about my inspiration.
It's not like that at all.
It's like you just kind of drop in and it's just like.
- Yeah, I mean, you could read it completely out of order.
You could just jump around in the book,
just read chapters, you know, willy nilly.
And actually, but as we're saying in the intro of the book,
he does make a dedication.
This is very TC.
He dedicates the book to all the crew at Duncan.
- Yes.
- Is that the Westlake Village Duncan?
I don't think there's a Duncan in Malibu.
He's thanking all these people,
seemingly people he works with.
Oh, who knows who these other people are?
Eddie Gorodetsky, Sal and Jeremy, the Hot Rod Kings.
(laughs)
And all the crew at Duncan Donuts,
P.K. Ferguson and Jonathan Karp.
Yeah, all the crew at Duncan Donuts.
I mean.
- Well, he's a road dog, you know.
- Yeah, he probably means all the hardworking people
at Duncan Donuts across this great nation.
- Yeah.
- He just jumps right in.
- Yeah.
- Chapter one, Detroit City, Bobby Bear.
In this song, you're the prodigal son.
You went to sleep last night in Detroit City.
- Yeah.
- You're in.
- You know, it's crazy.
Bobby Bear Jr. is the rhythm guitarist
in the current lineup of Guided By Voices.
- Really?
- Yeah.
Bobby Bear Jr. is probably like 55.
- That's deep.
I remember when-
- But there's a picture of Bobby Bear Sr.
with presumably his wife and his kids.
And that's like the kid in the photo
right in the first chapter of this book
is definitely, definitely looks like Bobby Bear Jr.
Like in the 60s or 70s.
- That'd be amazing if at the end of his little chapter
about the Bobby Bear song,
Dylan is so weird, you never know what he's up on
or if he like, ended up being like,
by the way, Bobby Bear's kid playing rhythm guitar
with an outfit out of Ohio, Guided By Voices.
- Another Bob.
- Also, he's checking out.
(laughing)
- Another Bob.
(laughing)
♪ I wanna go home ♪
♪ I wanna go home ♪
♪ Oh, I wanna go home ♪
♪ Last night I went to sleep in Detroit City ♪
♪ And I dreamed about those cotton fields and home ♪
♪ I dreamed about my mother ♪
♪ Dear old papa, sister and brother ♪
♪ I dreamed about that girl ♪
♪ Who's been waiting for so long ♪
♪ I wanna go home ♪
♪ I wanna go home ♪
♪ Oh, I wanna go home ♪
- You know, it's funny too,
I recently found a website where you could listen
to an archive of Bob Dylan's radio show.
- Oh, cool.
- Because just like us, Bob Dylan, he's not a podcaster,
but he's also passionate about radio, just like the TC crew.
And for at least a few years, he did a show,
I think it was for Sirius, called Theme Time Radio.
And I would hear about it, I never actually heard it,
and I had no idea what it was really like,
you know, for all I knew it was just Bob
just picked a bunch of songs
and kind of like created a playlist or something.
- Yeah.
- That would have made sense.
But then I actually listened to an episode.
- There's a lot of talking.
- There's a lot of talking,
and he really is enjoying being a DJ,
and not particularly playing the character of Bob Dylan,
but really just like being a DJ,
and this like kind of funny tone,
like the one I was listening to was, he was like,
"Well, everybody, perhaps you can't travel at the moment,
maybe you're working a job,
but I'm gonna take you all around the world
today on Theme Time Radio.
The first stop, Switzerland."
And then he like played some song,
and he was like, "Buckle your seat belts and get your ticket,
'cause now we're heading to the land of China."
This song written in 1932, it's just like that kind of vibe.
- China.
- The man is passionate about songs
and sharing it with the world.
So yeah, after hearing the radio show,
it makes total sense that he would wanna write
just a book of criticism,
but it's not like he's giving you like clues,
like Bob Dylan's guide to songwriting,
"Here's what I love and how it affected me."
He puts very little energy, at least what I've seen,
into trying to like link it back to his own life or work.
This is just him as a listener.
- He's having fun, he's telling stories.
I mean, there's great little anecdotes
about some of these characters
or people who are adjacent to them.
There was that great story,
I don't know if you got to the part
about the guy who invented the nudie suit.
It was like a refugee,
like a Jewish refugee from like Central Europe somewhere
who moved to New York and was designing clothes and stuff,
wardrobes for Broadway, and then he moved to Hollywood,
and he started making these like very garish,
sequined outfits that eventually people like Elvis
and stuff would wear, but a lot of those...
And then his name was, I don't have it in front of me,
but anyway, some sort of similar to Nudie,
and anyway, like his name was,
or like the name nudie suit is derivative of his name.
- Of his name, ah, I always wondered where nudie came from.
- What's that?
- Nudie Cohen, or Nudie Cohn.
- Okay.
And there's this whole thing about how Grant Parsons
had approached him and was like,
"Wouldn't it be crazy if you put like marijuana leaves
on a nudie suit?"
Bob Dylan has such a way with,
it's not like a dig at Grant Parsons,
but he was sort of like, he's like,
"Well, you know, Grant Parsons,
he thought he was from the generation
that invented drug use."
So he thought he would scandalize Nudie
with asking him to put weed leaves on the suit.
But Nudie, of course, is just a pragmatist.
He was just like, "Yeah, sure, what's the big deal?
I'll do that."
'Cause like, you know, then on the cover
of that Flying Burrito Brothers record,
Grant Parsons is wearing this amazing nudie suit
with the marijuana leaves all over it.
- Ah, right.
- But you know, that's just like two or three paragraphs
in this book, and then he's moving on.
I mean, there's tons of like really interesting,
fun asides.
I was reading, well, there's two songs in here
from Bobby Darin.
Do you have much of a relationship with Bobby Darin, Ezra?
- As a matter of fact, I do.
I don't know if I've talked about it on the show much,
but there's this period, I think I was on vacation.
I must've mentioned this once or twice.
I was on vacation a few years back
with a fun group of people,
including some friends of the show,
like Despot, Ariel Rekshide.
At some point, I think it was Ariel,
he just started talking about the song "Splish Splash,"
and he said, I don't know if he was doing this
as like a kind of like fun fact type thing,
but he was kind of like, "Hey, everybody, real quick,
off the top of your head,
what are the opening lines of 'Splish Splash'?"
- I kind of remember this.
- Everybody was like, "Do you kind of remember this?"
- Maybe I talked about it on the show.
Enough time has passed that we can bring it back.
But so everybody was thinking like,
"Well, yeah, 'Splish Splash,' I was taking a bath
since on a Saturday night."
And then you start really trying to get into that line.
You couldn't quite remember.
"Splish Splash, I was taking a bath
once upon a Saturday night.
Splish Splash, I was taking a bath,
must've been a Saturday."
You try to start thinking about
what would actually make sense in that line.
And then he said, "No, no, it's 'Splish Splash,'
I was taking a bath all about a Saturday night."
I actually, it's a sign for,
you fact check me as I say this,
'cause even now- - It's "long about,"
"long about a Saturday night."
- Oh, "long about a Saturday night."
"Splish Splash, I was taking a bath
long about a Saturday night."
So then it became this whole conversation about it,
because I guess that's just like a totally archaic phrase.
It must've been common in the '50s and early '60s,
but the "long about," I guess means just like,
that's when it happened.
- "Long about" definition,
approximately at the time or date of,
and the example here is,
"Long about my third cup of coffee,
I started to feel too jittery to sit at my desk."
(laughing)
- It was approximately Saturday night
when I was taking a bath.
- Did you hear back yet?
Well, I texted him long about 9 a.m.,
so maybe we'll get an answer by this afternoon.
- Yeah, you should start using that
and see if people are like, "What did you say?"
- Yeah, just pure linguistic gaslighting.
Somebody's like, "I've never heard that phrase.
That sounds really weird."
I'd be like, "What the (beep) are you talking about?
Throw on 'Splish Splash' by Bobby Darin right now.
Are you crazy?
Throw on the famous, iconic song,
'Splish Splash' by Bobby Darin.
It's the opening lines,
and you're telling me you don't know this phrase?
No, you're weird.
It's weird that you don't say "long about."
It's a very common phrase.
It's widely used.
But anyway, something about that,
"Long about" a Saturday night,
then we started talking about Bobby Darin a lot,
and then we watched the infamous film,
"Beyond the Sea," starring Kevin Spacey.
- What is that like, that movie?
- You would love it.
It's insane.
- I gotta watch it. - Famously,
there's parts of it that are normal enough.
It's kind of a good overview of Bobby Darin's life,
but just no matter what,
there's always gonna be this eerie quality to it
because famously, Kevin Spacey
insisted on playing Bobby Darin throughout his whole life.
And Kevin Spacey at the time,
you know, he just looked however old he was.
He really looked like a middle-aged guy.
He looked about 50.
So he's playing Bobby Darin as this young, teeny bopper.
It's just like, you just don't buy it.
It doesn't make any sense.
- He's playing 19-year-old Bobby Darin.
- Yeah.
- Bobby Darin died when he was 37, it should be noted.
- Whoa, yeah, yeah.
I think he was literally already older
than Bobby Darin had been when he died.
So it's very strange.
And there are these like really kind of like
cheesy musical moments where he's dancing and stuff.
But anyway, I still learned a lot
about Bobby Darin's life that way,
and it stayed with me.
So yeah, I do.
I've thought about Bobby Darin quite a bit.
And he did have a really interesting career
because my understanding is that
he was a tri-state area Italian guy.
I don't know exactly where he was from.
- Born in Harlem, but I'm not really sure where he grew up.
- Oh, born in Harlem.
Interesting.
- Yeah.
- And my understanding was that he was a guy
who just wanted to be the next Sinatra.
- Yeah.
- And he wanted to be like a classic
Italian-American crooner.
And he eventually got there,
but first, as you often see,
he had to find just some way to break in
to the music industry.
And so he made this kind of novelty hit, "Splish Splash,"
but that wasn't the real Bobby.
The real Bobby was more in his rendition of "Mac the Knife."
So I feel like she tracked me on this.
"Splish Splash" was before "Mac the Knife."
Maybe we should be listening to some of these.
- I made a mini Bobby Darin,
well, like a two or three song Bobby Darin playlist
I want us to go on.
- Can we kick it off with "Splish Splash" first?
- Yeah.
Well, I thought "Bobby Darin" was so interesting.
Like, I want to just read really quickly from the Bob book.
'Cause the thing that,
I have a memory of knowing "Mac the Knife" when I was a kid
and knowing "Splish Splash"
and not realizing it was the same guy.
But then he also had a hit later of the Tim Harden song,
"If I Was a Carpenter."
- He became kind of a hippie.
- He became,
and I want to really dive into that in a little bit,
but we'll work our way up to that.
But his sound is so all over the place.
And so Bob's writing about that and he goes,
"Bobby Darin could sound like anyone or sing any style.
"He was more flexible than anyone of his time.
"He could be Harry Belafonte.
"He could be Elvis.
"He could be Dion.
"He could be a Calypso singer.
"He could be a bluegrass singer or a folk singer.
"He was a rhythm and blues singer.
"The guy was everybody, if anybody.
"But here's the thing about chameleons.
"If you don't watch them changing colors,
"then they just look like an ordinary lizard.
"Their uniqueness lies in their transformative nature.
"So more fairly,
"Bobby Darin was more than a chameleon.
"For each of his guises he inhabited with verve and gusto
"and even in repose, he just about vibrated with talent."
So he sort of,
it's classic this book where he's sort of like
a little bit of a dig, but also very complimentary.
But I love that line about like,
the thing about chameleons is like,
if you don't see them changing,
they might kind of appear sort of ordinary or banal.
- That's awesome too, because it's just,
that's just great music writing.
- Yes.
- Like that's the same thing.
Like if you were just reading, you know,
some random like pitchfork review,
I don't know if they were like writing about
like a new Bruno Mars album.
- Yeah.
- And you saw that line,
I 100% would like double check who wrote it
and be like, okay, you're a great writer.
- Yeah, we're talking chameleons.
- Those are those moments that jump out
in the best music writing where you're kind of like,
yeah, that's like a cool way to put it.
- Yeah, the prose in this book is very electric.
- Yeah, Splish Splash was first
and then Mack the Knife came out a year later.
- Exactly the opposite of what I would have guessed
if I hadn't seen the film.
- Right.
- Kevin Spacey does kind of look like Bobby Darin.
- It's not that he doesn't look like him,
he just was the wrong age.
Although Bobby Darin, I guess, apparently,
I think they talk about in the movie,
he went bald at a very young age,
so he was always wearing a wig.
So maybe Kevin Spacey felt like I might be pushing 50,
but I think I can inhabit the mindset
of a balding 20 year old.
- This is like-- - Fair enough.
- Did you remember that movie, Dear Evan Hansen?
- Heard of it.
- That was widely criticized for the Ben Platt
seeming much older than the teenage character.
- Well, yeah, 'cause with certain actors,
it's not even just that they're older than the role,
'cause that's a tale as old as time.
And maybe that's the sad part is the guy's probably like,
"I'm 29, but the cast of 90210, they were old as hell too."
And it's like, well, it's not just that.
You just got an old face, man.
You got old face.
- Irishman's groundbreaking technology
wasn't available at the time.
(laughing)
- Seinfeld, up in Canada,
is Bobby Darin part of the culture?
Did you grow up knowing Splish Splash?
- I mean, yeah, I don't, you know, Splish Splash,
especially when you're a kid,
I think it's like a popular song for young people.
It's not like it was playing on the radio all the time
or anything like that.
- Why is that?
Why is this song that was a kind of cutting edge rock song
for cool teenagers in the 50s,
why is it so associated with early childhood now?
Why do you think that is?
- Oh man, Jake?
- You taking a bath.
I mean, that's what you do when you're a kid.
- Rubber duckies and bubble baths and whatnot.
♪ Splish Splash, I was taking a bath ♪
- It's accessible.
♪ It was all about a Saturday night ♪
- That's an accessible theme for children.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yes, I suppose that's right.
♪ There's a duck in the tub ♪
♪ Thinking everything was all right ♪
- Are there a lot of adults bathing with a rubber duck?
Maybe that's the key.
- Well, actually, yeah.
This also begs the question.
We'd have to find a, this is a sociological angle.
In the late 50s, were baths infantilized in the same way?
- I think it was more common.
- Right, it was more common that a grown man
might get home from a long day at the factory
and be like, "Leave me alone, I'm taking a bath."
- Where's my rubber duck?
- I gotta soak these bones.
- At some point, baths became for children
and grownups take showers,
unless it's some very special,
once a week lighting candles type thing.
Well, certainly it became more associated with women.
I don't know if there's a sexism element here,
but I think if an adult is taking a bath,
the first thing you picture would be a woman taking a bath
to unwind on a special occasion,
turning the lights low, relaxing,
having some sort of special product in the bath
that's oil, smells good, maybe lighting a candle.
Baths did not seem, they've been turned into like a,
mostly associated with children.
At the time of writing it,
did Bobby Darin think of it that way?
Was there something funny about picturing
like an Elvis type guy taking a bath?
Was that funny?
[bubbling]
♪ Splish splash, I was taking a bath ♪
♪ Long about a Saturday night ♪
♪ In a rubber tub, just relaxing in the tub ♪
He's relaxing in the tub, okay.
Just relaxing in the tub.
♪ Well, I stepped out the tub, put my feet on the floor ♪
♪ I wrapped a towel around me and I opened the door ♪
♪ And in a splish splash, I jumped back in the bath ♪
♪ Well, I was out and there was a party going on ♪
♪ There was a splish and a splash ♪
Whose party?
In the bath?
Well, outside his door.
There was a party going on.
He was like, "I don't want any part of that."
No, outside his apartment.
He jumped back in the bath.
Outside the door.
[upbeat music]
♪ Bing bang, I saw the whole gang ♪
♪ Dancing on my living room rug ♪
♪ Yeah, I flipped off the living room rug ♪
♪ All the teens had to dance with me ♪
The teens.
♪ There was a lollipop with a peggy suit ♪
♪ Good golly, Miss Molly was even there too ♪
♪ Well, a splish splash, I forgot about the bath ♪
♪ I went and put my dancing shoes on, yeah ♪
♪ I was a rolling and a strolling ♪
♪ Reeling with the feel ♪
♪ Moving and a grooving ♪
♪ Splishing and a splashing ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
This is very "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance vibes.
Yeah.
♪ I was a splishing and a splashing ♪
♪ I was a rolling and a strolling ♪
♪ Yeah, I was a moving and a grooving ♪
♪ We was reeling with the feeling ♪
♪ It was a rolling and a strolling ♪
♪ Moving with the grooving ♪
♪ Splishing and a splashing ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Splishing and a splashing ♪
♪ One time I was splishing and a splashing ♪
Yeah, I'm so curious.
What exactly, when this song came out,
was Elvis listening to this having a laugh?
Just kind of like...
Goofy Bobby.
Oh man, that's a funny record, man.
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine that, taking a bath, step outside?
Starting to drift into Obama voice.
Step outside of the bath.
Step outside of the bath.
Got a party going on?
Some Americans are working two, three jobs
just to put food on the table.
Come home, finally, time for a bath.
Step outside, there's a party going on.
So that's his first hit.
Yeah, and he's totally doing this kind of like
rubbery, funny voice.
(imitates rubbery voice)
Hello, baby.
Right.
But then, okay, so wait, so is that '58?
Is that what you said, Seinfeld?
Yeah, '58 was "Splish Splash"
and then '59 was "Mack the Knife."
Also in '58, he released, sorry, "Beyond the Sea."
Okay, chameleon.
So put that one on, Matt.
'Cause this is a real kind of Sinatra-y kind of,
it's like a kind of orchestral pop ballad.
And actually, "Beyond the Sea" is,
this is in the Bob Dylan book.
This is, what I was reading before
comes from the "Beyond the Sea" essay.
♪ Somewhere ♪
♪ Beyond the sea ♪
♪ Somewhere waiting for me ♪
Much more Sinatra-y.
I mean, it really does not sound like the same dude.
Yeah, he's doing a totally different voice.
Yo.
♪ That goes sailing ♪
♪ Somewhere ♪
♪ Beyond the sea ♪
"Beyond the Sea" is originally like a French song.
Did Bobby Darin hear the French song and be like,
oh, this could be a banger if we translate it?
Bob Dylan says this is a French song
originally written by Charles Trenet,
pretty much untranslatable.
It's about the sea and the allegory that it represents.
♪ Beyond the star ♪
♪ It's near beyond the moon ♪
The album came out in 1946.
It's basically about a guy being like,
I'm in love with you
and I'm not gonna go back out on the ocean anymore.
I'm not gonna risk my life out on the sea anymore.
The French version.
No, this version.
I don't know what, oh.
I'm not sure how accurately translated it was.
Both songs about water.
Yep, true.
That's a nice theme.
Yeah, maybe he just had like water,
like he was just like in his water phase.
Yeah, someone's like 1958, Darin's water phase.
Someone's like, God, the sound of "Beyond the Sea"
is so different than "Splish Splash."
He's really all over the place.
And then someone's like, what are you talking about?
They're both about water.
Right.
It's not that crazy.
Oh yeah, then this.
It's like these crazy big band arrangements.
He's got panache, he's got style.
Yeah.
♪ You will lead me there soon ♪
♪ We'll meet, I know we'll meet ♪
♪ Beyond the sea ♪
There's this whole thing in the,
'cause he also writes about Mac the Knife in this book.
And he's, this whole thing about how Sinatra
was boys with JFK.
And then how Bobby Darin like became a big supporter
of Robert Kennedy in 1968.
And it was actually there at the Ambassador that night
when he was killed.
Whoa.
Yeah.
But Bob sort of presented it as if like,
he couldn't be Frank Sinatra
and he couldn't be friends with John Kennedy.
So he settled for,
I was sort of like, Bob, chill out.
You're being kind of, you know, mean here.
But so, okay, Matt, can you put on,
if I was a carpenter.
So then, okay, 1966.
- Wait, wait, can we just listen to "Mac the Knife"
before we get to 1966?
- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
So "Mac the Knife" is from 1959, is that right?
- So in a two year period,
he drops "Splish Splash," "Beyond the Sea,"
and "Mac the Knife," three iconic recordings,
all very different.
- He's killing it late fifties.
♪ Oh, the shark, babe ♪
♪ Has such teeth, dear ♪
♪ And it shows them ♪
- I love this song.
I've always loved it.
- I know.
♪ Just a jackknife ♪
♪ Has old Maggie Heath, babe ♪
♪ And it keeps it out of sight ♪
♪ You know when that shark bites ♪
♪ With its teeth, babe ♪
♪ Scarlet billows start to spring ♪
♪ Fancy gloves ♪
- This was released in 1959.
♪ With old Maggie Heath, babe ♪
♪ So there's never, never a trace of rest ♪
- Also, just like him dropping these lines about like,
that this dude wears nice gloves,
so he never gets blood on his hands
when he's like killing somebody.
♪ Like a body just oozing life ♪
- A body just oozing life.
♪ Someone's sneaking 'round the corner ♪
♪ Could that someone be Mac the Knife ♪
♪ There's a tugboat down by the river, don't you know ♪
♪ Where a snake ♪
- It's basically the exact same tone as like,
"Beyond the Sea" or some like, pop jazz song of this era
that could basically be about like,
baby, let's get together.
Except he's just describing these violent scenes
with this dude, Mac the Knife, sneaking around.
But it's the exact same, don't you know?
Yeah.
♪ Not just about Louie Miller ♪
♪ He disappeared, babe ♪
♪ After drawing out all his modern cash ♪
♪ And now Mac, he spends just like a sailor ♪
♪ Could it be our boy's done something rash ♪
♪ Not just about ♪
- Ho, ho!
♪ Yes, you can talk dreams ♪
♪ Ooh, Miss Lottie Lanier ♪
♪ And old Lucy Brown ♪
♪ Oh, the line forms on the right, babe ♪
♪ And out that Maggie ♪
♪ Back in town ♪
♪ I said Jenny Diver ♪
♪ Whoa, Sukie Tawdry ♪
- Sukie Tawdry.
♪ Look out, there's Miss Lottie Lanier ♪
- He's shouting out Lottie Lanier,
who's a German singer,
who famously sang a lot of these Three Penny Opera songs.
See, Mac, can you play the Lottie Lanier, Mac the Knife?
I'm just curious what that sounds like,
just 'cause, yeah.
I don't know if I'm missing,
if Bobby Darin was just copying some other covers,
or if he just had such a good ear
that he heard the French beyond the scene,
was like, "This could be a banger."
And he heard the Three Penny Opera,
Kurt Weill Brecht version,
and was like, "Ooh, this could be cool, kind of jazzed up."
'Cause when you hear,
I mean, Three Penny Opera is very interesting,
and that German songwriting team from that era,
very interesting,
but it takes a certain type of visionary
to think you could translate that
into just like a pop hit, clean cut, 1959 America.
- Bob writes about the original
that you're talking about a little bit.
He goes, "The song is from the German play,
"The Three Penny Opera.
"Not really an opera, but more like a play with songs.
"The flip side being Porgy and Bess,
"which was thought of as an opera too,
"at least by George Gershwin.
"It was not really an opera either,
"but rather just a simple story
"of a couple of people with songs scattered through it."
- I remember in Chronicles
that Bob Dylan also talks about seeing Three Penny Opera
and him being blown away by the writing,
specifically the song "Pirate Jenny."
(singing in foreign language)
- I mean, when you hear this, it makes a lot of sense.
It does sound like some, like a weird spooky polka.
(imitates polka)
Totally.
(singing in foreign language)
- But still, yeah, not an obvious choice to do.
'Cause his version's so smooth and fun.
And this is like spooky German carnival music.
- Yeah, his version is super dynamic too.
It keeps like crescendoing.
- He's writing about Porgy and Bess
and Three Penny Opera here.
Porgy and Bess takes place on Catfish Row,
a play that glorifies the pimp, the prostitute,
the drug dealer, and murder.
The Three Penny Opera does pretty much the same thing,
only on a much more sinister level.
A world of small-time petty criminals,
sneak thieves, gangster pimps, pickpockets,
the subculture society that Hitlerism put an end to.
One of the songs is of course "Mack the Knife."
See, here he goes harsh on Bobby.
He goes, "Bobby Darin broke through on the national scene
with the teenage hit 'Splish Splash,'
a monkey of a song,
where his finger-popping and crooning style
was put to good use in the rock and roll domain.
Were there similarities between him and Frank?
Maybe.
You would have to think so,
but Darin was headed for a dead end
and Frank would go on and on and on."
Yeah.
Harsh, man.
I mean, he died so young, too.
[singing in German]
Let's get into some '60s, Darin.
So what was the next song you picked, Jake?
Well, so he had a hit in 1966
with this Tim Harden song called "If I Was a Carpenter."
I couldn't find it on Apple, which is fine.
I found a really great live version he did in 1971.
And Tim Harden actually is the guy that wrote
"Reason to Believe" that Rod Stewart covered.
Oh yeah, right.
Great songwriter.
So this is just like the most like
once upon a time in Hollywood
kind of transformation.
[singing in German]
Do you know this song?
Yeah, yeah.
I've heard other versions.
I don't know if I know that.
This one.
[singing in German]
I remember like listening to the old East Station growing up
and like I'd hear Mack the Knife sometimes.
And then sometimes I'd hear his 1966 version
of "If I Was a Carpenter"
and being like having that weird chameleon experience
of like, this is the same dude?
Right.
[singing in German]
Splish Splash, Mack the Knife, and this could not be,
the vocal style could not be more different.
It just reminds me of that like sort of like
Wonder Years, like Mad Men style thing.
Like the 1960s, right?
Yeah.
[singing in German]
Bobby Darin is 100% on the Mad Men journey.
For sure.
Which you'll see in "Beyond the Sea."
But yeah, just like a dude in his 30s
and kind of like in the peak hippie moment
trying to figure it all out.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that Frank Sinatra never,
he never dabbled in that.
He was a little bit too old.
So he probably thought the hippies were bums.
[singing in German]
Somebody explained to me this story that
there's a period where Lee Hazlewood
was dating his daughter, Nancy Sinatra.
You know, they made all these records together.
I think Lee Hazlewood maybe even wrote a book about it.
Just like he was this kind of like long hair,
hippie dude dating his daughter.
And he met Frank.
I'm sure Frank was just like,
this is this clown.
Scumbag.
Get out of here.
Scumbag.
Well, I was digging around a little bit
and I saw that Bobby Darin played a week of shows
at the Troubadour in May of 1969.
And I just went straight to like picturing
like Rick Dalton and Cliff going to the,
being like,
- Right, once upon a time in Hollywood.
- You know who's playing at the Trouble Week?
Remember Bobby Darin?
He's doing like, and then they go
and he's playing all these like protest songs.
And like, yeah, Rick is just like pissed.
- What happened to you, man?
I'd love to get the set lists from that week at the Troub.
There are some live recordings.
I found what,
there's a live recording from that,
from the Troubadour set in May of '69.
And he does a monologue in the beginning
about him like self-releasing his own albums.
I don't know, it's pretty interesting.
- There's an album on a label called Direction Records,
which no one's ever heard of.
Only because it's my own label.
And the reason I started it was kind of interesting
maybe to some people.
When my contract was up with the last company
that I was with,
I should have said latest, no, last.
I decided that I was gonna try something,
you know, I wanted to say something else,
things other than the things that I was doing before.
So other labels came to me and they said,
we'd like to sign you.
And I was very flattered by that.
And I explained to them what I wanted to do.
And they said, oh yes, that's marvelous.
You wanna do some of those protest songs, very good.
(audience laughing)
All right, well, we have a special protest department.
(audience laughing)
Yes, we have a whole A&R staff
for just devoted to protest things.
(audience laughing)
Yeah, so they didn't understand what I wanted to do.
So I went to another label.
And by the time I got to the other label
for the appointment, like a week later,
two or three of the guys from the label I just left
had already moved over to the next label.
(audience laughing)
In the protest department, you know.
Okay, so anyhow, I said, no, it has nothing to do with that.
I just would like to say some things.
I said, well, yeah, you'll do one or two of those
in an album, you know, but you're gonna give 'em
a lot of that Mac the Knife stuff, aren't ya?
Uh-huh.
(audience laughing)
So I said, no, I already did that.
And that's a nice treat, and I love it.
And I don't put it down.
It was delicious to walk through all those years.
But it's, you know, some other things have happened for me.
And I would just like to, in the meantime,
I had to start my own label.
(audience laughing)
So that's what I did.
And the first album was called Bobby Darin,
Born Walden Robert Casado, which is my real name.
I mean, the opposite wouldn't be true.
I mean, imagine being born Bobby Darin
and calling yourself Walden Robert Casado.
(audience laughing)
That wouldn't make any sense at all.
That's a good one.
And at the time that I changed my name,
which is back in, I was like,
that was a very hip thing to do, you see?
You had to change your name.
Truth was not so important in those days.
Hmm.
(audience laughing)
Right, so, you know, and then I discovered
the truth is never important.
(audience laughing)
1969, wow.
I love this.
Anybody stick ball?
(audience laughing)
But, no, and I discovered like that all kinds of people,
you know, it didn't matter the age.
Everybody that wanted to go into show business
changed his name, didn't matter.
For example, just think about magnificent romantic image
such as Cary Grant.
Now, his real name is Archibald Leach, see?
Or Leach or something like that.
So, I mean, imagine that guy running down
in the midst of that temple in Gunga Dean, you know,
saying, "On the name of our majesty,
"you're all under arrest,"
and his name is Archibald Leach.
I mean, nobody would believe that, see?
But Cary Grant, he could do it and get away with it.
Or Robert Taylor's real name is Spangler Arlington Brew,
which sounds like something you should drink
instead of go to sea, you know?
But, so that's how Bob Dylan's real name
is Bob Zimmerman, you know what I mean?
So, I mean, we're all show business.
- Wow, Bob reference, I know.
- It all creeps into us sooner or later.
In any event, I started talking about this album
and there's a selection in it, which goes like so.
- You're just like at the bar of the Troubadour.
- Two more whiskey sours.
♪ How do you kill a mountain ♪
- This sounds so good.
- Yeah, this is sick.
I got very curious about these.
- This is live at the Troubadour?
- Yeah, he's working with a four-piece band.
- People just could play on another level back then.
- It's true.
♪ Away ♪
♪ Every day ♪
♪ And soon the clay ♪
♪ Will fade away ♪
- I kinda wanna hop on Discogs
and try to track down some of those
self-released Bobby Dyran records.
- That was really fascinating.
It's also so funny too that in 1969,
he had probably just turned 33.
- Yeah.
- And it's just interesting how back then,
culture shifted, especially in the '60s,
was shifting in such a major way.
A guy like him, he probably felt so ancient.
He probably felt like he'd lived five lives.
When he references Mack the Knife,
which would have been a decade earlier,
it probably felt like 30 years,
the way he's talking about it.
Yeah, I mean, Mack, everything's different.
He's just struggling to find himself.
But here, him on stage at the Troubadour,
he's the same age as Taylor Swift now.
- Right.
- Whereas now, a lot of artists,
by the time they hit 33, it's a little bit like,
okay, kind of entering a new phase.
The youth phase is more or less over,
tiptoeing into adulthood.
Whereas back then, this dude probably felt
like what we would consider a 55-year-old man now.
- Oh, for sure.
- Stay with me.
- And the way it sounds like,
he was at this point pretty washed up.
None of the labels were interested in him.
Self-releasing his weird hippie music.
It's just like, I wonder who was at these shows in '69.
'Cause it wasn't, I doubt it was the youth,
but it was the cool 22-year-olds.
- Right.
- Who were going to see a Neil Young show or something.
♪ Cut the root ♪
♪ Remove all the fruit ♪
♪ And the ocean's floor ♪
♪ Will be like a ♪
♪ Who will lie no more ♪
- Rick Dalton's be like, "Come on, Cliff,
"let's get out of here, this sucks."
(laughing)
- Let's go get some margaritas.
- Splash, let's get the hell out of here.
It's also fun when you picture this generation of dudes,
like Bobby Darn seems like an interesting guy,
but it is too bad that like,
I guess everybody's so susceptible just to kind of trends,
that even back then, a guy like Bobby Darn probably felt
like there's some really important stuff going on out there.
It's important that I speak on it.
I want to stand in my truth.
I don't want these, like he's saying,
I don't want these labels giving me
their fake corporate version of protest.
I want to do it from the heart.
I've been reading things.
I've been looking around at the world.
I got something to say, but then he's doing this pretty well.
I'm not knocking it.
It's just that still his version of standing in his truth
as a 33 year old guy still just sounds like the music
of the moment, you know?
It would just be so much more interesting
if there's a guy like him, Bobby Darn, he said,
"You know, my real name is,
"my real last name is not Darn, it's Casado.
"I'm an Italian guy, I was born in East Harlem.
"I used to do this kind of old fashioned showbiz stuff.
"And then in 1966, I took acid for the first time.
"And I've been getting back to my roots
"and I've doing kind of like a psychedelic,
"Roman Catholic interpretation of big band music."
- Yeah.
- It's just too bad that like,
there weren't more like weird things
where people had that experience
and they did something totally different.
Like, that's what you would hope.
It'd be like, oh, Bobby Darn takes acid
and starts reading the Tibetan book of the dead.
He's not gonna make music that sounds like
Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, whatever.
He's gonna do psychedelic Italian big band music.
[laughing]
But we never got that.
- Yeah, I mean-- - Maybe somebody else did it.
- Maybe some weird like Walker Brothers stuff or like--
- Right.
- It's funny 'cause you know,
like Del Shannon put out a record
around the same time period
called "The Continuing Adventures of Charles Wendover,"
which I believe that was his real name.
- Whoa.
- It's kind of similar where it's like a guy
who was a big star in the late '50s
kind of puts out his weird late '60s, early '70s
like psych folk record.
- They all tend to have something in common.
They're like hitting the same themes.
It is funny that nobody,
none of these guys got into the counterculture
and read the books and took the drugs and then like,
or just, you know.
- Made like Buddy Holly--
- Invented minimalist techno.
- Or did like, almost like a,
just teeny bopper Buddy Holly stuff.
Like songs that they could have written 10 years prior
when they were like forming their aesthetic pathways.
But then just, yeah,
like wrote like Buddy Holly style songs
or Everly Brothers songs
about like transcendental meditation or whatever.
- Right, yeah, that would have been interesting too.
It's like you come back from seeing "Beyond the Veil"
and say, you know, the main thing I realized
was that, you know, time isn't real
and I am gonna eternally make music
that sounds like 1959 'cause it just doesn't matter.
That 1959 is as present as 1969,
but my lyrics are gonna be informed by my experience
seeing the face of God
and understanding the oneness of all things.
- That'd be so sick.
Just like the exact same arrangements as "Mack the Knife"
except it's Tibetan Book of the Dead lyrics.
- Buddy Holly to me is one of the real like,
I mean, there's so many like what ifs in rock history
of people that died way too young,
but what would Buddy Holly have been doing in 1969?
- Great question.
- You know, we'll never know.
But yeah, maybe this Bobby Darin thing
is a weird adjacent answer to that question.
- Back to Bob, it's interesting that Bob Dylan is,
I mean, it kind of shows what everybody's always known
is that Bob Dylan, he's mystical, he's inscrutable,
he can seem kind of capricious at times,
but he is kind of what he says he is.
You know, when he's the voice of a generation
writing these like kind of unbelievable songs
that speak to the moment,
pulling this like deep, weird poetry out of the universe.
And then in the late '60s,
when kind of the hippies go mainstream,
he becomes a little bit trad.
He's making like a-
- Nashville Skyline.
- You know, he's making Nashville Skyline,
distancing himself from the counterculture.
And then eventually he ends up in his kind of groove
where people are like, "What's up with you, man?
"Why'd you bend on stuff?"
And his vibe is kind of like,
"Listen, I'm just an entertainer.
"I write songs, I perform them."
And you know, everybody always thinks
he's being a little bit ironic when he says that,
because obviously there's so much weird,
vibey stuff in his music.
And yet there probably is a pretty strong degree of truth
in that where he,
there might be a type of weird mysticism
that comes out in the music,
but at the end of the day,
he's a dude who, he is a song and dance man,
and he loves songs, and he loves showbiz.
- He changed his name, just like Cary Grant.
- And also, I mean, I'm sure many people have referenced this
and we happen to be talking about
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Quentin Tarantino also just dropped a book of film criticism
which I haven't heard. - Oh yeah.
- Have you heard about this, Jake?
- I've heard about it, yeah.
- It's eerily similar, I would say.
It's, from what I've read about it,
it's Tarantino talking about his early movie-going
experiences and films from the '70s
that he considers to be important.
I don't know if his book's a little more personal,
but it's, he's somebody who's always said
he loves film criticism, he's influenced by film writing,
he famously worked at a video store,
he loves the history of cinema,
he likes talking about cinema, he likes,
I tried listening, he has a podcast.
- I know, I checked it out.
- With his boy, Roger Avery.
- Yeah. - I listened to one episode
once and at a certain point,
I just had no idea what these guys were talking about
'cause I hadn't seen the movies.
- Yeah. - It truly was like,
wow, these guys are still too dude to work at a video store
just talking about obscure movies
and they know the stuff inside and out.
They know exactly when these directors made their movies,
they know who starred in them.
These are guys who are just so passionate
about the history and the form.
Anyway, there's something funny about him
releasing his book when Bob Dylan releases his song book
'cause they are people who,
as much as they might tap into something transcendent,
their vibe as human beings does seem to be
just like real regular fans.
- People that are revered as incredible artists
but who also never lose sight of entertaining.
- I read the novel, before this book,
Quin Tarantino just released the novelization
of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."
And I read that and in that,
you learn more about Cliff Booth
and he's very into film.
Did you read it, Jake?
- I read like half of it
and I put it down to read the Bob book, actually.
- Similarly, Cliff Booth is very into film.
That's sort of a back story that they,
you know, there's sort of his personality trait
that didn't make it into the film,
but there'll just be pages of him talking
or thinking about his,
just three pages of his favorite,
just listing his favorite samurai movies.
- Yeah.
- It's just, yeah, and there's a point like the podcast
where you're just like, I mean, I really am loving this,
but I have no idea what I'm reading anymore.
- Yeah, Cliff goes to this cinema in little Tokyo
that must've existed in 1969
and watches like Japanese samurai movies.
- Yeah, I remember reading that part of the book
and like, just like, okay,
I'm not gonna just keep reading the titles.
I'm gonna like, I'm just gonna skim to the next page here.
- I mean, I will say in both these instances,
it is, it's a service.
I, you know, it'll be interesting to see
what our generation's version of it is,
but it's a service to be really passionate
about a bygone era and kind of keep it alive.
And I like when there's these kind of well-known figures
who do that.
I guess another example is Scorsese.
You're always reading about, you know,
Scorsese pours all this money
into preserving world cinema heritage
because, you know, he's so passionate about, you know,
a director who made five films in Senegal in the '60s
and wanting to make sure that the, you know,
it's preserved and restored and things like that.
Because after Bob Dylan, some of these songs, you know,
who's gonna be talking about them?
You know, "Mack the Knife," that's a hit.
People always be talking about it.
- Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in here I don't know at all
that I'm excited to learn about.
- It's cool when an artist is like really passionate
about something, even if they don't draw a direct line
to their own work.
But yeah, Bob Dylan is, if Quentin Tarantino
is like the kind of video store generation,
Bob Dylan's kind of like, you know,
the record store generation where, or even before that,
he's like talking about a bygone era of like, you know,
78 singles and stuff like that.
Just really passionate about the old time America.
- Old weird America.
Do you know the song "There Stands the Glass" by Webb Pierce?
- I don't know if I'd heard it before.
I listened to it when I started reading the book.
- 'Cause in the book he's talking about,
'cause like the way this book is formatted
is that like the beginning of the chapter
is like his interpretation of the lyrics essentially.
And then the second half of the chapter
is him sort of more zooming out
and talking about the artist in sort of a historic context.
"There Stands the Glass," like it's all about like a dude
just like downing bourbon at a bar
who committed all these like war atrocities.
And I was like, is that in the song?
♪ There stands the glass ♪
- Wow.
♪ That will ease all my pain ♪
- Oh, I know this song.
♪ That will settle my brain ♪
♪ It's my first one today ♪
- Oh, this is a classic drinking song so far.
♪ There stands the glass ♪
♪ That will hide all my tears ♪
♪ That will drown all my fears ♪
♪ Brother, I'm on my way ♪
♪ I'm wondering where you are tonight ♪
♪ I'm wondering if you are all right ♪
♪ I wonder if you think of me ♪
♪ And my misery ♪
- You guys fans of Sam Hunt?
- Oh, sure.
- I love Sam Hunt.
- Did he cover this?
- Well, no.
- Sam Hunt did a version of this?
- No, throw on "Hard to Forget"
and just check out how wild this is.
- Well, yeah, in Bob's imagination,
before we get to the Sam Hunt,
this guy, he fought like a savage.
He stuck the bayonet into baby's bellies
and gouged out old man's eyes.
He's been unfaithful to the human spirit
and he's assassinated priests.
He's lost his independence years ago.
He's lived on rations
and he's done degenerate and demonic things.
He plugs his head into nightly dreams
and sees million dollar wounds, purple hearts.
He sees his ranks whittled down piecemeal.
He rounds up elderly women, children,
torches their huts and turns his machine gun upon them.
So he's just like, he sees shadowy figures
in black pajamas and canonical hats.
He sees a little two-year-old boy and murders him.
He sees his buddies slit a little girl open with a knife,
strip her clothes off and (beep) her.
Like, then he shoots her with an automatic,
his horny buddy.
So when Bob hears that song,
I guess that guy's like the bar who's in a war
and they committed all these war crimes
and he's having his first drink of the day.
Damn, Bob.
Bob went in on "There Stands the Glass."
I don't know about all that.
It sounds more like he's missing a lover, but.
That's so funny when you play the Sam Hunt version.
If this were the guy in this song.
Okay, play the Sam Hunt version.
♪ There stands the glass ♪
Is this just Sam Hunt?
Wait, this must be another dude named Sam Hunt.
Listen.
Oh, it's a sample?
Oh, okay.
Oh my God.
I love it.
♪ It's my first one today ♪
♪ Hey, I saw your sister's work ♪
This is the Baz Luhrmann,
the "Web Pierce" biopic version.
♪ Saw your car at the mall ♪
♪ I see your face in the clouds ♪
It's so cool.
♪ Smell of perfume and glow ♪
♪ I swear your number's on my phone ♪
♪ Once the call ♪
♪ It's kinda funny how I can't seem ♪
♪ To get away from you ♪
♪ It's almost like you don't want me to ♪
♪ You've got a cold hand ♪
♪ Cold hard truth, I got 'em bottled and whipped ♪
♪ But I got no proof that you showed up tonight ♪
♪ And that dress just a mess for my head ♪
♪ So much for a soul ♪
♪ Wrong out of sight, out of mind ♪
♪ Girl, you're looking so good ♪
I don't see what the "There stands the glass"
sample adds to this song at all.
Maybe he just wanted to break some off
to the estate of Webb Pierce.
I think that it, I mean, I love it.
I kinda like it.
I mean, it's not-
I think that it connects it,
I do think that it connects it to like a tradition,
you know, 'cause he's already-
Yeah, yeah.
It is basically getting very close to whatever,
you know, we've talked about it before,
the country trap is.
And the sample, it's sort of like, I guess,
literally what a hip hop producer would do.
With, you know.
Sure, yeah.
Like a classic chopped soul sample.
♪ I don't know where to see ♪
♪ But I got no proof that you showed up tonight ♪
♪ And that dress just a mess for my head ♪
♪ So much for a soul ♪
♪ Wrong out of sight, out of mind ♪
♪ Girl, you're looking so good ♪
What's Sam Brun's song about?
Is he drinking or is he going by the mall?
He's drinking because of the jilted lover,
the woman who's like,
he's having a difficult time in the relationship.
Oh, it's the same thing.
Sam Hunt's drinking that too.
Sam's at the Cheesecake Factory drinking.
Just getting hammered.
Not reflecting on his war atrocities.
Yeah.
There is something very poetic about the original too,
where I think what really slam dunks it is,
'cause when it opened,
"There stands the glass that will ease all my pain."
You're like, all right, guy's getting ready to drink.
We've heard that before.
That will settle my brain.
Okay, you want to get trying to just calm down.
And then just the killer line,
♪ It's my first one today ♪
Yep.
Then it's like, oh God, oh no.
It's the first of 10.
That's when it gets really depressing,
which is a really good kind of a way of unfolding the story.
'Cause you're first like, all right,
who hasn't needed to take the edge off with a drink
at one point in their life?
Everybody.
Everybody's had a stressful day.
I could really use a drink.
But this is that line,
"It's my first one today."
Suddenly you have a vision.
Oh my God, it's 9 a.m.
You just woke up,
probably hung over from the night before.
You're about to drink all day long.
You're in a dark place.
Even if it's like 5 p.m.,
he's been looking forward to,
he's like, "This is my first one.
This is my first of many."
Right.
This is the best part of the day.
It's just as I'm starting.
And also, yeah, even if it is,
you're right, early evening, late afternoon,
it's my first one today.
That also implies a dude who every single day-
Today.
Wakes up and the clock is ticking.
That sounds like somebody who drinks every day.
The clock is ticking, just like,
"Thank God it's 5 p.m.
Let's (beep) start drinking.
It's been a really hard day not being wasted."
You like Jake's Sunday morning coming down?
Uh-huh.
You know, that when he says he has that beer for breakfast
that tasted so good, he'll have one for dessert?
Uh-huh, right.
They're on Sunday morning coming down,
doing a little country moment.
I think the Willie Nelson version
is probably the nicest one.
Does Kris Kristofferson do that?
Yeah.
Yeah, he-
Because he's the more famous one.
That's the one I know.
He wrote, yeah.
He wrote it?
I thought he wrote it, yeah.
Yeah, I think he wrote it.
But yeah, I like Willie Nelsons
and Johnny Cash does a version.
I don't know if I've heard the Willie Nelsons.
Oh, put on the Willie Nelson if you can find it,
'cause I think it hits the emotion best.
And then Johnny Cash has a good cover of it, too.
(gentle music)
♪ Well, I woke up Sunday morning ♪
Good Lord, his voice.
♪ With no way to hold my head ♪
♪ That it didn't hurt ♪
Hungover.
(gentle music)
♪ And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad ♪
♪ So I had one more for dessert ♪
(gentle music)
♪ Then I fumbled through my closet ♪
♪ While my car was parked ♪
♪ I went to the closet ♪
♪ Bought my clothes and found my cleanest dirty shirt ♪
Hard relate to that.
(laughing)
My cleanest dirty shirt.
♪ I shaved my face and combed my hair ♪
♪ And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day ♪
Surprise he shaved.
Yeah.
(gentle music)
♪ I'd smoked my brain the night before ♪
♪ And read some songs that I'd been picking ♪
♪ But I lit my first ♪
♪ Watched a small kid cussing out a can ♪
♪ That he was kicking ♪
♪ And I crossed the empty street ♪
♪ And caught the Sunday smell of someone frying chicken ♪
(gentle music)
♪ And it took me back to something ♪
♪ That I'd lost somehow somewhere along the way ♪
♪ On a Sunday morning sidewalk ♪
♪ Wishing Lord that I was gone ♪
♪ Is there something on a Sunday ♪
♪ Makes a body feel alone ♪
♪ And there's nothing ♪
It's a cool companion piece to "Sunday Morning"
by Velvet Underground.
Yeah.
Just like feeling like ass on a Sunday morning.
(gentle music)
♪ On the sleeping city side I walk ♪
It makes you wonder, when did Sundays start to suck?
Historically speaking, Sundays must have ruled
at some point if you work every day
and then Sunday go to church, take a load off, no work.
Picnic in the park.
Spend time with your family.
Sundays are probably the best day of the week at some point.
Did Sunday start to suck in the '60s?
Well, if you're just like a--
Where the song is from?
If you're just a Ne'er-do-well, you know, drifting deadbeat
like the guys in these songs, then--
Sundays always suck for you.
Yeah, it sucks.
And I think especially if Sundays is, you know,
a time when you've fallen from grace,
it's gotta hit hard.
Right.
And you're looking at all the responsible people
who have families or going to church
and you're just like, right.
Yeah, I'm on the other side of that one.
♪ Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday ♪
♪ On the Sunday morning sidewalk ♪
♪ Wishing Lord that I was gone ♪
♪ 'Cause there's something in a Sunday ♪
♪ That makes a body feel alone ♪
Well, and like, Sundays are a hard day to be alone.
I mean, arguably Mondays are better
because Saturday night, you went hard
'cause it's Saturday night.
So you're paying the price Sunday morning.
Monday morning, you're not at work
like the rest of the working stiffs are.
So you took it easy Sunday night,
nursing that hangover.
Monday's a bright, sunny day for you.
Yeah, what do you think Garfield's problem was?
'Cause Garfield wasn't like a working,
like Garfield was lazing around all the time.
He had no reason.
It's interesting Mondays to suck.
No, yeah, I think we're covering
something very interesting.
It's like when you're kind of just like mid-level depressed,
your least favorite day is Monday.
When you're really depressed,
your least favorite day is Sunday.
If you've really tasted the dark side of life,
you hate Sundays.
In fact, next time someone tells me they hate Mondays,
I'll say, well, you should check your privilege.
If you hate Mondays, that means you must have it pretty good
because a really sad person, they love Mondays.
They hate Sundays.
Yeah, give me a call when you're crying on Sunday.
I can think of times in my life
where I was just like feeling weird.
And I actually, I can almost remember this feeling.
It is pretty different being older,
but I can almost remember the feeling of just being like,
yeah, maybe hungover, maybe like feeling like isolated
or something on a Sunday
and just trying to like get through the day.
And then Monday starts, the world's back to work,
things are happening and being kind of like,
even if I had some bull had to do on Monday,
if I had to go back to work, I was like, all right, yeah,
good, I'm glad Sunday's over.
Sunday's way more existential.
Monday's just like, the reason people don't like Mondays
is just work sucks, I know.
- Yeah.
- Sundays are like your looks peering into the void.
- Oh, for sure.
- You guys ever get the Sunday scaries?
Do you know about the Sunday scaries?
Is that more of like a knowledge worker,
like a office job type of thing?
- I don't know what that is.
- I've heard of the Sunday scaries.
It just means like you're scared about going to work
or you just have a bad, weird feeling.
- Yeah, that's that pre-Monday kind of like,
you've got some work emails trickling in in the evening
that are trying to get ahead of the Monday rush.
You're like, oh, I gotta adjust my sleep schedule now.
I don't know, I got that project.
- Right.
- Yeah.
- But you know what's weird?
I do think, and I think this is a good argument
for that all of our consciousnesses are connected into one,
is that I feel like a lot of people get that feeling
even when they don't have a job.
There is something about, and I've had, you know,
pretty real regular type jobs in my life long time ago,
but there are times where I still feel it.
And that truly is the danger zone
because if you play your cards right on a Sunday,
you spend time with people you love,
it could be very beautiful first half of a Sunday.
If you're waking up hungover,
slam two, live by yourself and slam two beers,
walk out the door and smell other people's fried chicken,
that's gonna be tough.
But if you have friends and family, Sunday can be great.
Have a nice breakfast, walk around, do this.
But even when you have a lot of stability in your life,
I do think the Sunday scaries sneak
into the collective consciousness.
I haven't had, I don't work an office job,
and yeah, Sunday evening is like,
it can be kind of a strange vibe.
- I wonder how, 'cause you know how in some calendars,
Sunday is the first day of the week,
like it's not actually Monday.
I wonder if that has anything to do with this.
- Because it's the first day of the week.
- Yeah, like-
- Maybe it's because it's not settled.
Some people say Sunday is the first day of the week,
some people say Monday.
It's weird, we don't know.
- It's the uncertainty of it.
- It's the ambiguity.
I think, according to Wikipedia,
it actually looks like in the West,
Sunday is the first day of the week.
Is that your, Jake, is that your understanding?
- No, Monday is the first day of the week.
I don't-
- I've seen it on calendars.
- I don't buy into that.
I mean, yes, Sunday is the first day in the calendar,
but I, there was a first column on the left,
but it doesn't track.
Monday is the first day of the week.
- The show rules.
I'm looking at a Wikipedia map here
that's color-coded by the days of the week,
and we've got like Russia, parts of Africa,
Australia, Monday is the first day.
That's a wall of blue from North America
down to South America.
- It's a blue wave.
(laughing)
- But I just want to say something,
regardless of if you think Sunday is the first day
of the week or Monday is,
we can all agree that after Monday,
you're usually gonna get Tuesday.
Then Wednesday, some people call that hump day.
- Oh yeah.
- Then Thursday, things get pretty interesting.
There's a real vibe shift on Thursday.
- Yeah, that order is universal.
- And then Friday and Saturday, everybody's having a ball.
Here's the truth,
is that Monday is the first day of the week,
Saturday is the last day of the week,
and Sunday is the void.
- So what happens when, you know,
I believe the UK has been experimenting
with a four-day work week.
- Really?
Wow.
- Yes.
Yeah, that's--
- Nationally?
Wow.
- Nationally, they, I think,
spent the summer on a four-day work week.
Certainly, there's news that I'd read.
So what happens, do we just, so three-day weekend.
- So they work Monday through Thursday
and you get Friday off?
- Yeah.
- I wonder if that could backfire.
I mean, I'd like to imagine those people get--
- They should do Monday off.
- Oh, that'd be interesting.
Yeah, to take the sting out of Sunday.
- You gotta keep Friday, Friday.
- No more scaries.
- Of course, everybody should work a little bit less
and deserves more time off,
but I wonder if it'll be one of those things,
like when they start adding lanes to highways
to help with the traffic congestion
and it just gets worse somehow,
if it'll be like something where
having Friday and Saturday off,
actually, it's like you're pulling back a rubber band
and you get even more hardcore Sunday scaries on Sunday.
And actually, you know, in 10 years,
they'll look back and be like,
"Oh God."
- "What have we done?"
- "The Sunday scaries are a national epidemic.
"Things are really getting weird."
Will Sunday have even more Sunday-ness
in a three-day weekend?
That's the question that the UK is playing.
They're doing a very dangerous experiment right now.
- You know, this is reminding me of,
do you guys see that news article
about the Chick-fil-A owner in Florida
who's changed his calendar to make it a three-day,
14-hour a day work week to avoid burnout?
It's apparently, it's taken off.
Justin Lindsay, the local operator of Chick-fil-A Kendall,
that's Kendall, Florida, said, quote,
"My idea was to provide staff with this gift of time
"by creating a scheduling system
"where they could know exactly which days they worked.
"The program started in February,
"has resulted in 100% employee retention
"and a flood of new applicants."
People are loving the three-day week, the gift of time.
There you go.
- I mean, I would way rather work three 14-hour days
than six seven-hour days.
- Yeah.
- Absolutely.
If it's a day when you have to work,
it's a work day.
Let's do that 14-hour shift, hell yeah.
You probably get so in the zone by the end,
you're probably just making the best chicken sandwiches
of your life by hour 14.
- Oh, no doubt.
- I would totally be down for that.
♪ So low, it's so low ♪
♪ It's a lonely weekend ♪
♪ It's so low, it's so low ♪
♪ It's a lonely feeling without you ♪
♪ Monday I was gone ♪
♪ And Tuesday you were working late ♪
♪ Wednesday went to hell ♪
♪ And Thursday kinda had to wait, yeah ♪
♪ Friday and we're leaving ♪
♪ Going out of town again ♪
♪ I should see what's going on ♪
♪ Only got a couple friends ♪
♪ It's so low, it's so low ♪
♪ It's a lonely weekend ♪
♪ It's so low, it's so low ♪
♪ It's a lonely feeling without you ♪
♪ Guess everybody else is out tonight ♪
♪ Guess I'm hanging by myself but I don't mind ♪
♪ It's so low, it's so low ♪
♪ It's a lonely weekend, yeah ♪
- I wanted to just quickly shout out,
'cause remember a few episodes ago,
we did the 30th anniversary of Alice in Chains' "Dirt,"
which I know really opened the doors of perception
on your end, Ezra.
I don't think you were that familiar with that record.
- No, I really appreciated that episode.
'Cause yeah, after that, I was listening to "Dirt"
quite a bit.
I was going pretty deep on Alice in Chains' history,
listening to some of their other work,
reading in-depth Rolling Stone profiles
from the '90s about the band.
- You're all in on AIC.
- I'm Alice-pilled now.
They're very, yeah, excellent, excellent album.
And I'll be having "Dirt" nights
for the foreseeable future.
- Well, there's another record
that celebrated a 30th anniversary just this past week.
That came out in November of 1992,
and that's Ween's major label debut on Elektra Records,
a division of Warner Communications.
Their record "Pure Guava," which was their third album.
But I was reading the 33rd and third book on it.
Well, actually, it's on,
there's a 33 and a third book on "Chocolate and Cheese,"
which was the one they did after "Pure Guava."
But there's a whole chapter about "Pure Guava,"
and it's talking about after Nebraska,
"Pure Guava" was the second low-five four-track record
released by a major label, which I thought was fascinating.
- Yeah, interesting.
- Anyway, I love, this is sort of all an aside,
but "Pure Guava" has been one of my,
it's my favorite Ween album, which is saying a lot,
'cause that's a band I love.
- Are you a bunch of a Ween guy?
I mean, I know we've touched on them
a little bit on the show.
- I've never gone deep on Ween.
They're one of those bands that I always assume
I'll have my moment with,
because people that I like, like you,
and people I knew growing up,
that they always seemed like a cool band.
And especially, I knew that they were from,
not that far away from New Jersey and Pennsylvania,
and they just kind of seemed like,
yeah, New Hope, a place where I've been, Bucks County, PA.
So they're just one of those bands
where I just felt like, oh yeah, they seem fun.
And I always knew the song "Spirit of '76."
- "Freedom," yeah.
- Oh, "Freedom of '76," yeah.
And I was always like, it was funny,
but the chords are so sophisticated.
So I always had a feeling one day I'll get in,
but they strike me as a band similar to Bobby Darin.
They're so chameleon-like that you could only
really get them probably when you've listened deeply,
because I love "Freedom of '76."
I love, I hear that song, "Ocean Man."
- "Ocean Man."
Well, I mean, that's actually a lot of funny tie-ins
with Bobby Darin, not only, yeah,
I couldn't let our chameleon episode go by
without referencing "Wean."
And also they put out that record, "The Mollusk,"
which features "Ocean Man," which is their ocean-based,
water-based nautical album,
much like Bobby Darin's early work.
- Yeah.
- Matt, throw on the first track on "Pure Gua-,"
so just picture 1992,
the president of Warner Communications being like,
what is this record that we're putting out?
- This record is like so out there.
Like a lot of it's not even like really rock music.
It's a lot of it, it's like,
there's a lot of drum machines,
a lot of like, every song,
there's like a different vocal sound.
♪ I was so happy ♪
♪ I don't know why I want to fly ♪
♪ Try to fly, try to fly, made a tie ♪
♪ And then it tried to get me down ♪
♪ I wanna buy it, make me buy it ♪
- It's not like good music in the traditional sense.
- But which of course "Wean" is very capable of.
- Of course, and we'll get into that in a second.
- The sound of "Pure Guava" is weirdo.
- Yes, and now go to track three, "The Stallion."
♪ Marked ten at sudden speed ♪
♪ Flying to the wind now ♪
- This is straight up amazing songwriting.
♪ I'm throwing at my feet ♪
♪ Something of likeness to you now ♪
♪ I spotted you in the sun ♪
- I just love like the drum machine usage.
♪ I called your name from a distance ♪
♪ I thought you was the one ♪
♪ I called again ♪
♪ I do declare ♪
- And I also love to think about how to step
with the other big releases of 1992 this was.
♪ Some love from above ♪
- You're just thinking about like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden
and Alice in Chains and Nirvana
or like 10,000 Maniacs or whatever.
♪ And don't fall too soon ♪
♪ Don't see the blood from the mouth ♪
- I mean, the chord progression is pretty 1992,
but not the vocals.
♪ I'm the one holding the time back ♪
♪ From the sun as I scope the land ♪
- It strikes me that "Pure Guava"
is probably a difficult entry point for Ween.
- It's how I got in personally, but yeah.
- But you were there.
- You were there.
- 15 years old.
- My favorite Ween is the first three records.
I love "Chocolate and Cheese" and "The Mollusk"
when they got more pro.
But it's the first three records where it's all just like
weird drum machines and like them messing around
on a four track is like, that's my favorite Ween.
♪ Get the cards at the table ♪
♪ Scream softly, you are able ♪
- And then, Matt, go to like,
when the gong gets tough from the get-go.
Like, what, I don't even know what this music is.
♪ In the middle of a situation overlooked by fools ♪
♪ Tables turned, lessons learned ♪
- It's not like a goofy rap song.
♪ By the rules ♪
♪ No time is lost, that's the cost, oh brother ♪
♪ You get a shot in the end ♪
- I don't know what this is.
- I mean, the first thing it makes me think of,
is you know that like, that 80s cover of "The Money,"
"That's What I Want,"
that they always use in movies, it's like,
I want money, that's what I want.
♪ Go, go, man, go ♪
- The best things in life are free,
but you can give them to the birds and bees.
- Yeah, maybe they're doing like a funny like, German, like.
♪ I'm gonna go now ♪
♪ Isn't that right, dude ♪
♪ So right ♪
♪ The gong gets tough from the get-go ♪
♪ Go, man, go, oh brother ♪
♪ I'm gonna go now ♪
♪ Isn't that right, Gino, tell me ♪
♪ Tell me true ♪
♪ The gong gets tough from the get-go ♪
♪ Go, man, go, oh brother ♪
♪ The gong gets tough from the get-go ♪
♪ Go, man, go, oh brother ♪
♪ The gong gets tough from the get-go ♪
♪ Go, man, go, oh brother ♪
♪ Oh, take it ♪
♪ Smack dab in the middle of a situation ♪
♪ Overlooked by fools ♪
♪ Hmph ♪
♪ Tables turned, lessons learned ♪
♪ You get burned for playing by the rules ♪
♪ You know that happens, Gino ♪
♪ Don't I know ♪
♪ The time is lost, that's the cost, oh brother ♪
♪ You get lit on in the end ♪
It makes me think you could make like a real spectrum
of like '80s and '90s, like, funny white guy music.
And maybe one end of the spectrum is like,
they might be giants, who I imagine you don't like, Jake.
I do not.
Then you get like, Phish, Ween.
On the same, "Bare Naked Ladies."
Oh, "Bare Naked Ladies."
And then I guess there's like,
in terms of like how cool the people are like trying to be,
like I feel like "They Might Be Giants" is like,
they revel in just being kind of like, yeah.
Dorks.
We're dorks.
Phish, I think, is so in their own world
that they're like,
"We don't give a (beep) if you think we're dorks."
You know what it is?
Phish isn't nerdy the way that,
I think it's almost not even dorks.
They're saying that "They Might Be Giants" is very nerdy.
Very comic-on.
"They Might Be Giants" is nerdy.
"TMBG" is nerdy.
Phish is dorky.
(laughs)
Well, Phish is also-
We're splitting the diff.
I think Phish is also like,
they're like, "We're shredder musicians."
Well, I'm talking about early Phish
'cause eventually they kind of had more emotional stuff.
But I think they're kind of like,
"We're shredder musicians.
"We're having fun.
"We're not trying to be cool
"in the classical sense of being cool."
Then Ween is somewhere in between.
And then on the other side of the spectrum,
you have like Beck and Pavement
who actually are trying to be cool.
I don't mean that derogatorily.
You might just say they are cool.
I think Ween was trying...
I mean, Ween had a very antagonistic relationship
with their audience in the beginning
when there was just the two of them.
And they just had like a drum machine on stage.
And they were just playing gigs in New Jersey.
And people hated that band.
And they relished in that.
And they relished in doing like...
Yeah, doing like an eight-minute version
of "When the Going Gets Tough" from the get-go.
And people just being like, "What is this?"
Matt, I just want to close out the Ween discussion
before we get to the top five.
Put on "Sarah."
Because then there's all this weird-sounding,
borderline bad music.
And then there's just gorgeous ballads like this one.
(piano music)
♪ Well, I find you in your sleep ♪
♪ Sarah ♪
♪ I will tell you what you mean to me ♪
♪ Sarah ♪
Did you play "Tender Situation"?
I didn't play "Tender Situation."
I think it's a...
"Tender Situation."
I thought about it.
I think it's a beautiful song.
Yeah, I know.
It's beautiful.
It's a beautiful song.
It's an incredible song title.
So he has the vocals pitched up on all these songs?
No, not on this.
This is just him singing.
It's wild.
I mean, he's an incredible singer.
That's the weird thing.
You're listening to this record,
and the vocals are all pitched on a lot of them,
and then a few of them, he just sings straight.
And he's such an incredible singer.
Yeah.
So you're just like, "Damn."
To also think more, and we talked once about
that there used to be the slight beef
between Phish and Ween.
Yeah.
If I had to describe--
and of course, I relate to all this music.
I've definitely dabbled in funny white guy music in my life.
But the--
Oh, yeah.
If you think about being in high school or something,
there's something about--
Phish seems like a bunch of dudes
who just maybe have their own kind of funny little club.
It would probably be really nice
if you sat down at lunch with them.
They have their own--
some dudes in the band who are just kind of--
and you sat down and be like, "Hey, what's up?"
Yeah.
Whereas Ween have almost that slightly aggressive
underachiever vibe.
Yeah, so full burnout.
But who's super smart and once in a while
makes some really cutting remark in class
just to be like, "Yeah, you know what? F*** you."
Yeah.
I don't think they're nice guys.
I think they--
Yeah, I think the guys in Phish are sweet.
I don't think the guys in Ween are very sweet.
But I'm not friends with any of them.
So I could care--
You know what I mean?
I don't really care.
Yeah, but let's say you go to a new high school in 1992.
You see Phish sitting at a table.
You see Ween sitting at a table.
You're a Jake-type dude.
You're an idiosyncratic guy.
You like music.
You like to crack a joke or two.
You go sit down with Ween and just be like,
"Oh, you like the T-shirts they're wearing?
What's up, dudes? I just moved here."
Within five minutes, you're leaving the table like,
"All right, f*** you guys."
You go sit down with Phish.
And they're just like, "Hey, man, where are you from?"
Yeah.
I think that's the vibe.
"Hey, man, you like the Dead? Cool, dude."
Oh, yeah. You could actually talk--
Yeah, you would sit down with Ween and be like,
"Hey, I noticed a sticker on your guitar case.
You guys like the Dead?"
And they'd just be like, "No, we don't."
"Who?"
"Jerry who?"
"Jerry Garcia."
And you'd just be like, "All right, you know what?
I'm going to go talk to those guys."
I could also see that he goes and says it,
and Dean just looks at you, just doesn't respond.
Right. He tries to keep his eyes open for like three minutes.
And by the way, this might be true about their personalities.
I don't know enough about Ween to say.
I'm not actually judging the personalities of the guys in Phish.
No, absolutely not.
I'm describing the personality of the music.
These are the personifications of the music.
And I prefer, vastly prefer the cagey, borderline ass [beep]
by the Ween.
Anyway, shout out to Guava.
I can't believe that record's from '92.
Can you just for me just play "Tender Situation"?
"Tender Situation."
I'm so glad you shouted out "Tender Situation," Nick,
because it's track two.
So like, after "Little Birdie," which is--
An impossible song.
I know, "Little Birdie" is insane.
And then this is track two.
Again, thinking about the executives being like,
"I like track one. What's track two sounding like?"
Okay.
♪ Let's take a break as the fires will break ♪
♪ Tender situation, tender vision ♪
♪ Feels good to me ♪
♪ Feel salvation ♪
♪ This is the deed ♪
♪ Tender situation, make a move ♪
♪ Man, stay true, okay ♪
♪ Taste the waste, man, taste the waste ♪
♪ What is your place in my glorification ♪
♪ Yeah, this is really ♪
Very ASMR.
♪ Take a situation ♪
♪ Get off the bar, man, shake and paint ♪
♪ Taste the waste, boy, taste the waste ♪
♪ Pump it up straight up, man, on stage ♪
♪ Dude, this is really a tender situation ♪
I love this groove, though, dude.
It's cool.
♪ Stay safe as the fires will break ♪
♪ Tender situation, tender vision ♪
[laughing]
♪ This is the deed ♪
It's like not overtly funny.
I mean, it's called "Tender Situation," but then it's so restrained.
It's just like, it's not like a joke,
but it is weirdly emotional and haunting.
I guess that's, yeah, the early Ween stuff is very often haunting,
and it's sort of funny, but like,
there's just like a weird repressed emotion or something underneath it.
♪ Taste the waste, pump it up straight up ♪
♪ Dude, this is really a tender situation ♪
[siren]
I love that.
This song rips live, too.
You just get into that groove.
♪ Fan out, fan out ♪
[siren]
Should we do the top five real fast?
Bag it out?
All right, we're going to do a speed round.
♪ It's time for the top five ♪
♪ Five on iTunes ♪
86.
Why 86?
It's a secret because it had something to do with a segment that we didn't do.
We didn't get to.
What was the segment?
It's a secret.
From us?
One day we'll do it.
Oh yeah, the [beep] thing. We'll get to that.
All right, cool.
We'll reject that after.
This week, for no reason in particular,
we're counting down the top five songs of 1986.
Number five, "Bon Jovi," "You Give Love a Bad Name,"
off "Slippery When Wet."
♪ Shot through the heart ♪
♪ And you're too late ♪
From "Tender Situations."
It almost blew my headphones out.
Also, guys, it's episode 186.
There you go.
Next time we'll do 87.
♪
♪ An angel's smile is what you said ♪
♪ You promised me heaven then put me through hell ♪
♪ Chains of love got a hold on me ♪
♪ When passion's a prison you can't break free ♪
♪ Oh ♪
Wait, hold on.
Matt, can you play the song,
"If You Were a Woman and I Was a Man," by Bonnie Tyler?
Have we discussed this before?
It says in our notes that this song was written
by the songwriter Desmond Child.
Oh, wow.
Originally for Bonnie Tyler under the title,
"If You Were a Woman and I Was a Man,"
he was dissatisfied with its success or lack thereof,
and he rewrote the song with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora.
♪ If you were a woman and I was a man ♪
♪ Would it be so hard to understand ♪
♪ That our hearts are hard and we do what we can ♪
♪ If you were a woman and I was a man ♪
♪ I was a man ♪
♪
♪
Wait, so when did this song come out?
♪
I'm just thinking of Desmond Child.
He's written a lot of songs for--
Oh, yeah, yeah.
He worked on "Livin' on a Prayer" and stuff.
Oh, yeah, he was a major--
He wrote a lot of the Bon Jovi stuff.
I didn't know that they worked with a songwriter.
I thought--I thought Jon Bon Jovi--
Desmond Child worked with a lot of, like, hard rock bands.
I think Aerosmith, too.
I totally thought Sambora and Jon Bon Jovi wrote that stuff.
I think it's '86. Bonnie Tyler?
That's the same year as this.
The same year this dude Desmond Child--
I mean, the songs are pretty different.
It's just the chorus.
The production on this is--
♪ For just one day ♪
♪ If you were a woman and I was a man ♪
♪ I wouldn't be so hard to trust ♪
I mean, maybe we're listening to the incredibly, like,
remastered version of the Bon Jovi,
but this is so thin and cruddy compared to that Bon Jovi.
This sounds like "Tender Situation."
Yeah, same year.
"You Give Love a Bad Name" is a better song.
It's pretty funny, though.
It is funny just to be like, "Yeah, I wrote this song."
It just--I really think that chorus melody
could have gone somewhere.
It'd be one thing to be like, "I'm a songwriter.
I wrote this song. I don't think Bonnie Tyler nailed it.
I really think somebody else could have a hit with it,"
but just to be like, "So we did our thing with this song.
I just feel like--let's just, like,
really take it down to the studs.
There's something good about it.
Let's rewrite the chorus lyrics
and make it--make it a totally different song."
Well, I guess it worked.
And, like, so shortly after it was released.
Yeah.
♪ You give love a bad name ♪
♪ Ba-do-do ♪
The number four song this week in '86,
"Eddie Money, Take Me Home Tonight."
Oh, hell yeah.
So far '86 is--
Big song.
Pretty solid.
I don't want to dredge up the past here,
but that last song we were just listening to,
Bonnie Tyler's came out in March.
Bon Jovi's, July.
Oh, that's so weird.
It's such a crazy turnaround.
Weird move, Desmond.
[laughs]
Did Bonnie Tyler know that?
[laughs]
Bonnie Tyler's just listening to the radio.
It's like, "Hey, that's my song."
What the [bleep]
♪ Are you the answer I should wonder ♪
♪ When I feel with my appetite ♪
♪ With all the power to release it ♪
♪ It isn't sick or sick ♪
Eddie Money's one of those funny '80s rock stars
who I don't really have a sense of.
He died in 2019.
Ah, rest in peace.
As I listen to this, I realize
I only know the chorus of this song.
♪ Give me your heart, we'd better go ♪
♪ Take me home tonight ♪
♪ I don't wanna let you go to see the light ♪
♪ Take me home tonight ♪
Wow, this is a great story.
Like, he's born in '49, graduates high school in '67.
At the age of 18, he falls in the footsteps
of his grandfather, father, and brother
as a New York City Police Department trainee.
But he leaves the following year to pursue a career in music.
Whoa. 1968.
Maybe he cruised out to L.A.
and caught those Bobby D-Darren Jones.
[ Laughter ]
That's a true.
Almost a New York City cop.
He's one of those guys, too.
His name is Edward Joseph Mahoney.
And he became Eddie Money. That rules.
♪ Take me home tonight ♪
♪ Take me home tonight ♪
♪ I don't wanna let you go to see the light ♪
Wow, he was actually from a family of Irish cops.
Yeah. Also, like, he was 37 when this song was a hit.
Do you think his family supported his decision,
or they were bummed?
I bet they were bummed.
Until they heard "Take Me Home Tonight,"
and then they said, "All right, I get it."
So that's actually Ronnie Spector singing.
♪ Just like we're saying ♪
♪ Be my little baby ♪
♪ Baby, my darling ♪
What she sang on "Be My Baby."
Whoa, yeah.
It's pretty unusual for the '80s to have that type of, like,
like, meta--
Is that a sample, or--
I don't think it's a sample.
I think they're just--
She came back in.
She actually came back in.
Interesting song.
All right. Number three.
Madonna, "True Blue."
Wow.
Yeah, this is a pretty strong top five.
It's funny.
A lot of shuffles in the '80s.
♪ Ba-ka-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da ♪
Mm-hmm.
"My Baby Takes the Morning Train."
What's the Michael Jackson shuffle?
Oh, um...
"The Way You Make Me Feel"?
Yeah.
♪ The way you make me feel ♪
♪ We make me feel ♪
♪ I've looked into their eyes ♪
♪ But I never knew love before ♪
This is also a real, like,
one of those '80s, '50s throwbacks.
Yeah, throwback. Totally.
♪ I've had other loves ♪
♪ I've, I've, I've sailed a thousand ships ♪
♪ But no matter where I go ♪
♪ You're the one for me, baby, this I know ♪
♪ 'Cause if it's true love ♪
♪ You're the one I'm dreaming of ♪
♪ You're heart-to-heart like a glove ♪
♪ And I'm gonna be true, no, baby, I love you ♪
Apparently this was about actor Sean Penn.
Yeah, they were married, I think.
Were they married?
I think so.
Yeah, I think they were.
♪ Those teardrops, they won't fall again ♪
♪ I'm so excited 'cause you're my best friend ♪
♪ So if you... ♪
It's funny, like, early Madonna just having this, like,
great instinct for, like, alternating between, like,
provocative, like, a virgin, and then just, like,
real down the middle, true blue, kind of, like, sweet stuff.
Yeah.
She's a chameleon.
Oh, totally.
Total chameleon app.
Yeah, but you can still see...
Madonna has her Madonna-ness is embedded in every song more...
Yeah.
...than a Bobby Darin-type chameleon,
where you hear the wrong song,
you just totally have the wrong picture of the guy.
Somehow, yeah, I don't know why,
but even hearing that song, it's like,
it's down the middle, but it's got that Madonna vibe.
Number two song, "The Human League," with "Human."
[drums playing]
Produced by Jimmy Jim and Terry Lewis.
[drums playing]
"Human League" really did their thing in the '80s.
Yeah, this is a good song.
[drums playing]
Boom!
Oh, yeah.
[drums playing]
So, I guess this song is totally credited
to Jimmy Jim and Terry Lewis as songwriters.
They just handed this to "Human League."
[drums playing]
♪ Come on, baby, drive me wild ♪
Was "Human League" like a British pop group, or what?
Yeah, they were like New Wave.
I think their first big hit was, you know,
that I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar.
"Don't You Want Me."
Yeah.
♪ I ♪
♪ Won't you dance with me ♪
♪ I would have ever tried to hurt you ♪
I do love this sound,
this, like, sophisticated '80s balladry.
Kind of like a Howard Jones vibe, too.
Yeah, spanned out ballet.
Yeah.
♪ I'm only human ♪
♪ I'm only human ♪
♪ A flesh and blood ♪
It makes the story even more interesting.
So, Jimmy Jim and Terry Lewis wrote a song called "Human,"
and then were they just like...
[laughing]
Who?
They just decided to call it "Human League."
Just like, "Hey, guys, we got the perfect song for you."
[laughing]
♪ I've looked down and saw your face ♪
♪ Nothing could change the way I feel ♪
♪ No one else could ever take your place ♪
♪ I'm only human ♪
Yeah, great song.
♪ A flesh and blood of hate ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
With a different production, this could have really been like,
what do you call it, Jake?
Like a CBS song?
No, this is total CBS stuff.
I mean, if I was...
Yeah, my CBS playlist, like, this is totally on it.
Oh, so wait, when you speak of CBS music, are you pro?
'Cause usually I feel like you're like disgusted by...
No, no, no.
Oh, okay.
You're on that CBS wave?
Yeah, or like Eileen's car, it's the same kind of thing.
It's like, I mean, stuff that is palatable for a retail environment,
you know, it's broad enough that it's not going to offend anyone.
But still actually has some personality and aesthetic sort of value.
This would totally be on my CBS bangers, for sure.
Oh, wow, okay.
Like, I think early in the show, I made a Home Depot playlist,
and that was more classic rock kind of stuff.
But it's stuff that you could credibly hear at a Home Depot,
but it's still like a great playlist.
Copy that.
Okay, the number one song this week in 1986,
another song with the same writer and producer,
the man Tom Scholes from the band Boston with Amanda.
One day we got to go deep on Boston, just like a real fascinating, weird,
like this idiosyncratic kind of genius songwriter/producer dude.
Yeah.
Basically by himself created a few all-timers,
but then like weird bad blood in the band.
Right, and then much later, like the singer committed suicide.
Right.
Like in the early 2000s, maybe, which I always thought was so weird,
like this sunny, glossy music.
And I think he'd been kicked out of the band at that point.
There's some people, maybe it's an inappropriate speculation,
but being like, oh, he was like felt so abandoned by Boston.
But clearly this Tom dude probably felt like it was his project.
This was the band's first officially released single since '78.
So they like had those first two records.
Also good for them for coming back and just like, you know,
vaguely having some light '80s touches,
but everything else about this song outside of like some idiosyncratic
drum sound choices is pure '70s.
Oh yeah.
Well, yeah, he recorded demos for the song in 1980.
And as you guys pointed out on the Dirt episode,
Boston clearly a huge influence on Alice in Chains.
For sure.
Which I love.
All right, we'll see you guys in two weeks.
Thank you to Boston for this beautiful song.
Going out on Amanda is pretty solid.
Yeah.
I feel like today's the day
I'm looking for the words to say
Do you wanna be free?
Are you ready for me?
To feel this way
I don't wanna lose ya
Soon, it may be too soon I know
The feeling takes so long to grow
If I tell you today will you turn me away
And let me go?
I don't wanna lose you
I don't wanna lose you
I don't wanna lose you
I'm gonna take you by surprise
And make you realize Amanda
I'm gonna tell you right away
I can't wait another day Amanda
I'm gonna say it like a man
And make you understand Amanda
Oh yeah
Oh yeah
You and I
I know that we can't wait
And I swear, I swear it's not a lie girl
Tomorrow may be today
You and I girl
We could share the night together
It's now or never
And tomorrow may be today
Feeling the way I do
I don't wanna wait my whole life through
To say I'm in love with you
Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig
green.
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