Hey everybody, it's Brendan from Whittis and you're listening to four Finger Discount.
Four Finger Discount. Dude, Hey guys, Dana here for a very special
edition of four Finger Discount this week. I was very lucky to be joined
in the studio by the frontmen of wheatas he is mister Brendan B. Brown.
Brendan spelled correctly by the way bre and d A n the way Brendan
should be spelled. He's currently in Australia tour in the country on a solo
acoustic tour with art from Everclear. Tickets for the remaining shows are available in
the description of this podcast, so if you check out the dates and you
can get to one of the shows, make sure you do so. But
the guys that were playing in Geelong a couple of days ago, where we're
based obviously, and Brendan's stopped by the studio to chat about the classic episode
New Kid on the Block, you know, the one Laura Powers look could
have been me Homer withes all you can eat Escapades and the one that was
written by Colonel and O'Brien and we figured Nikid on the Block. We chose
this one because it has the time of the whole Teenage Dirtbag s story.
Now, look, this chat it goes for well over ninety minutes, and
we do cover the main stories and themes and plots of the episode. But
honestly, this just turned into one of the most enjoyable conversations that I think
I've ever had on this podcast. Honestly, I am not kidding. You
know. It's fun, it's informative. From a music side of things,
it's nostalgic when we do a little bit of a dive into the whole Teenage
Dirtbag video and the song and how it all came about. But it actually
gets pretty personal at times too, And you know exactly what I mean.
When we get to those moments, you'll think, Jesus, I really think
you're gonna love this conversation. Like I said, it's one of the most
enjoyable conversations, one of the most enjoyable pieces of work I've ever put together.
I absolutely love this funny story. Once the chat was done, I
was driving home with Brendan to his hotel, and just on the way home,
we decided to go for an impromptuy lunch date. I figured why not
Brendan from Witness has invited me out for lunch to take this opportunity, and
we went down to the Geelong waterfront. We went to a place called Bayview
shout out to Bayview and he had the grill barrow Monday and I had the
Yep, you guessed it, I'm dando, you know me, guess what
I got the chicken burger and Brenda then shatted me to an ice cream afterwards
and just walked around Geelong for a little while. We paid a visit to
the Pop Cultural Record Store and just yeah, honestly, just an overall great
afternoon, so much fun and absolute delight. I should also remind you guys
too that Waitas They will be returning to Australia in April for a full band
show at the Pandemonium Festival. Pre start tickets go on sale for that on
January twenty second. I'll chucklink for that in description of this pot as well
if you want to get tickets for it, and you're gonna want to because
not only doesn't have a waitess, but the headliners are people like Blondie,
Alice Cooper, Placebo. You're gonna want to go to this one as well,
also, speaking of things that you're going to enjoy, my man Guy
Davis, he shall be returning to the hot seat once again next week by
my side here in the studio as we get back to our usual schedule of
season eighteen reviews, where we're going to be doing a review of the episode
the Boys of bumm Us. Look at for that in your feeds next week.
Also forget, of course, if you do enjoy the show and you
can't afford to do so, we really appreciate support by joining the Forefinger the
Scant Family on Patreon for as little as just one single dollar wedoo. On
Patreon, we go exclusive podcasts such as Talking Seinfoud, Speaking of the Hill,
Tales of Futurama, the Movie Guys, and so much more on the
Facebook group of this core group, and all the other fun stuff that you
get by being a supporter of ours on Patreon. But for now, it's
time to sit back and enjoy my conversation with the legendary Brendan B. Brown
of Whites as we review a new kid on the block. Enjoy now,
I'm not gonna lie. You're the first. I've been doing podcasting for nearly
twenty years now. And you are the first Brendan that I've ever actually had
on any of my shows. Did you ever find that it's hard to find
another Brendan? It is and spelt the right way too. Yeah, it's
always Brendon. I never forget my school photos, my football photo as well
as a kid, always brend On Brendon. I mean, how many times
you tell them? Yeah, I've kind of over it. I'm not correct
people anymore. I'm sure you know brand still do it annoys me? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah yeah. And it's you know, it's a proper Gaelic
name. Yeah, and there are so many wrong versions of it that brand
get Brandon a lot. They can't get the A n. That's the hardest
one for them. It's always Brandon. I've had Brandan, Yeah, I've
had you know, I've haven't even had watched people spell it with an eye
and I'm like, oh, man, is that what you just do?
Triple Ban now? Just so you discover that, Yeah, I guess.
But has Australia been this time of record? Has been what twelve years since
you've been here? Yeah, it's been beautiful, weather, it's been amazing.
Perth was incredible, But that's always good weather. Yeah, really nice.
I swam in the Indian Ocean for the first time, you know,
it's great. Yeah. Give any favorite spots that you always go to.
You came here first time? What two thousand and one. I quite like
a place near Sydney called Manly Veil. I've heard you mention that a few
times. Yeah, and there's a beach up there, Shelley Beach that that
I've it whenever I'm here. Didn't get to this time, just for timing,
but but yeah, whenever we come down, I try to spend a
few days with my friend Dave Froggett there. And he's a guy I met
the first time we came through. He was really nice to us, and
we we're both guitarists, so we just kind of bum around the house and
play guitar all day. You know, it's perfect. But I try to
get the jet lag out on like a three day you know window. It's
the best way to get jet lag for you sleep whenever your body tells you
to. All that nonsense about oh it's you got to wait until it's sleep
time and all no, doesn't work. Just take what you can get when
you can get it. We've made a mistake. We took the kids to
Inglam and wash from England, so we haven't see the family three and five
and jet lag not good. No, it's it's worse on the way back,
always is. Why is I think probably because losing a night on a
plane is much easier than losing a day on a plane. That's that's what
it is, I think. But detime your plane flats accordingly, try to
but it's not always financially possible. You got to go for like what you
can afford, you know. Yeah, but I think that I think that
if you just I've always done this. Just if your body's telling you to
sleep, just do it. And don't eat. That's another thing on the
plane or once you get off. No I've eaten on the plane before,
but like I'm always stick off the plane food. Well, yeah it's not
great. But once you're off right and you're you're starting to feel it,
just go to bed, even if you're very hungry, Just go to bed
right, sleep off that first whatever it is, like four hour stretch that
you can get, eat something and then go back to bed again. Don't
try to do anything. If you have to do anything when you land,
you're you're doomed man on a honeymoon to America. We land in La.
My wife, she's just a guy. Get she goes, right, let's
go do all these things today because we land in the morning. Oh sweet,
I love you, but unfortunately I love the enthusiasm. But that's sadly
the way to ruin the rest of your job. I shouldn't in the honeymoon.
Look well, it depends on how it depends on how my morning.
Yeah right, yeah, sorry, I didn't mean that, and I ruined.
I ruined her honeymoon by taking her to the Simpsons studio. She was
like, oh, this is great, yeah right right, this is your
stuff. Yeah yeah, but I'm slowly trying to get her into it.
You know, she's my age thirty five, and she's seen maybe three episodes
of the Simpsons. It's not wild interesting. So I was in college when
the Simpsons really kicked into full gear. Really prior to that, I had
seen Tracy Ullman show and caught a few of these like weird sort of I
remember thinking, oh, this is like adult animation, yeah, which I
think that's kind of that. And uh, doctor Katz, you remember doctor
Katz. I know the name. I don't record. This is sort of
like earlier like adult animation stuff, before that became a thing that everyone was
doing. Yeah, that's now the thing, isn't it? It is the
thing? Yeah? So I I love the Simpsons. Matthew, our bass
player is there is our resident Simpsons experts and he really is. I could
tell that from the emails. Yeah, yeah, you know we have this
thing. What are you going to do when you get back from tour?
I don't know, probably sitting in my underwear and watch the Simpsons like that's
that's his that's the thing to do for him to recuperate from tour. You
know, see what mid thirties, late twenties, late thirties, late thirty
that same age. Yeah yeah, yeah, but that's just what happened.
Was we just grew up in the Simpsons. It was just that past time.
True. What was your version of the Simpsons then? Going on,
interesting question, I probably inspector gadget. Okay, I still replayed when I
was growing up. Yeah right, but I was. I was drawn to
dramas when I was a kid. I much preferred drama or good times.
It was my favorite. Like when I came home from school, I watched
Good Times. Yep. I was a bidy bunch of kids growing up,
budy bunch, so I had to watch the Body Bunch. Yeah. So
yeah, it was like this was me. I was a little bit more
drawn to like, like more serious TV. But not to say that The
Simpsons is actually pretty serious TV. And I was reminded of that in the
past couple of days when I've been refreshing on this episode that we're going to
talk about, but we've been touching on New Kid on the Block because it's
sort of that teenage comparison it has. It has elements of that. First
of all, the voice of the new kid on the Block, the new
girl that's uh doing what's her name from? Uh? From Roseanne? Yes,
that and that right there got me because I remember Roseanne intensely and it
was kind of like, oh, that's so cool. And they did make
that man that sort of like tomboy archetype, so so devastatingly attractive to me.
On the side I had to crush on Laura Pale was growing up,
right, I've felt the hell out of that right as soon as it happened,
and I was like, whoa man? And I did remember the episode,
but you know, not the details. You know, there's something about
a girl that's going to go out and kick the football with the boys,
not afraid of boys. It was extremely like alluring, you know, it's
like, oh, she's a what is your badass? She's the Jim Bog
Yeah yeah, yeah, and it does. They did a good job of
illustrating how and this is the realest thing I think in that episode is how
that does throw the bullies for a loop. Yeah. It's like, you
know, all of a sudden, all of their all theirslin geometry is screwed
up. You know, they can't they can't do their old boy friends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, I enjoyed that. Yeah,
Pamela Reid, have you heard that, Pamela Reid? Yes, I heard
so she Have you seen Kindergarten Cop? Yes? So she is Annie's partner
in kindergarten. Okay, she's the voice of the mother in this that's that's
that was familiar as well. Yeah, I felt like the mother's character was
a little underdeveloped. Yeah, well, she gets her chance in an upcoming
episode later on margin the Lamb where she's she's a badass as well. I
wanted to know much more about the mom. The mom uh what felt super
strong and you said what Laura gets from Yeah, yeah, but but also
like I was like, Oh, they're just going to put her in Mo's
and just leave the character there. And I was like, hope, that's
not it. And now you got me wanting to watch another one. Yeah,
Madgin the Lamps. It's a Thumber and Little Waiste take off essentially okay,
and she takes Madge on the lamb. It's a very very good episode.
It's fantastic. But what are your memories of The Simpsons? So you
in college? You said, so, you have really been in the target
demo by the time the show was really out. Well, so it has
to do with like, when you're in college, you don't watch much TV,
right, And then when I got out of college, I also wasn't
watching much TV. And the reason was that I didn't have a TV.
Like I was living in a you know, a converted living room apartment,
and The Simpsons was just something that seemed like out of my reach. Then
we did have a TV for a while there, and I was sort of
like becoming a songwriter in full and watching a lot of much music and MTV
and whatever else. So I actually I'm a little too old to have hit
that perfect stride of like like Matthew was in I think probably early high school
and then all through high school, Simpsons was a serious iconic thing for him
to come home and watch. That said, I caught up on it a
lot in the early two thousands and really enjoy it still. It's one of
those things in the school yard is like, have you seen the new Simpsons?
It was just it was the thing very much like that. And then
we evolved to south Park because south Park became the naughtier version of the Simpsons,
right, and then Family Guy came out. They kind of found that
middle grand between south Park craziness and Simpsons more granted him, But I've never
been a huge Family Guy fan. I have absolutely no knowledge of Family Guy.
I have a friend back home He's trying to get me into it all
the time, and I'm just like, dude, I like, there's no
space on the table for this right now. And Rick and Morty kind of
took me into a newer, like animated space. Anyways. Yeah, so
we got a south Park podcast here too, and going back and revisiting those
earlier south Back episodes. I forgot how great Today were as well. Did
you watch the south Park? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah that became popular.
Yeah, well so so that was like once I did have a television
and a VCR, that became a thing that like all all like young adults
were watching. Yeah so yeah. So unfortunately, just the timing of my
life, I kind of had this moment of no TV when the Simpsons started
to kick into full gear. But you have come to appreciate it just as
much as any of the Rick and Morty stuff that I'm into, or or
South Park or Mordi fan. Yeah what, I haven't seen any of the
newer episodes. Then I haven't caught up either because we've been on the road.
Yeah. Do you want to binge watch? I do? Yeah,
I do. I prefer to watch a whole season. It's funny how I'm
viewing Habits of Change, isn't it? Yeah? Very much so. In
fact, I don't want to watch it until I can watch the whole season.
Really. Yeah, So you will wait till it's finished and then watch
it, Yeah, because the character as are more interesting when you don't have
to be minded of what happened. Yeah, you know, I missed the
aspect of spending the week dwelling and thinking about, Oh, I wonder where
they're going to go next with it. That's interesting. So you're into like
edging, Well, see, I do podcasts. We have to have content
to talk about. So it's like if you just blow your loan in the
first we went there fast, didn't we? Wow? No, I get
what you're saying. So I was how old are you? I'm thirty five,
right, I think for a second. Then okay, So so you're
not technically from the generation of TV people who did not have the option of
Benjing one hundred percent? Did Yeah? You did? I did? Break
I didn't. No, I didn't have the option, so you didn't.
The internet became more probably like two thousand. So growing up I was four
or five when what about TVO and things like that. Didn't you have the
ability to record TV shows when I was maybe thirteen fourteen? Okay? Interesting?
Yeah, So when I was a kid kid, if you fucking you
missed what was on TV, you miss it? Right, Okay, so
you know the feeling feeling, So for me, I when I like,
okay, there's I'll go back to what I was talking about. Before the
Good Times, Right, Good Times was my favorite. I went I went
home and watched. I was heavily invested in the characters and where they were
headed, in what was going on, and it was full of like interesting
conflict and stress and I just was drawn to that for some reason. And
I the episode where the father dies is for me was this moment of like,
had I missed that, it would have it would have ruined the show
for me because I wouldn't understand, you know, what was going on.
So I have that fear of like like I don't want to get invested and
get invested right in these characters and then like miss their most important life moment.
Now that's like I'm creative person, So I get maybe too too heavily.
It's too real, you know, in some sense. And I can't
I can't understand why people would be like, oh man, it's just a
show. That's the beauty of a good writing. Though, Yeah, that's
it. That's why that's why you watch. I don't know why that's why
I watch, Yeah, you know. And I was the same way with
the Sopranos, you know, like I don't want to have to find or
find out from somebody that's something developed, and I'm watching the whole season.
Yeah, do you not missed the Sopranos when at first I was still a
little bit too young, I was not thirteen watching I somehow missed the spoiler
that way I ended everything, so I was able to watch it as if
I was watching it in like the nineties, early two thousands and not have
anything spoiled. Yeah, I loved it. I don't think that a thirteen
Well, I'm sure that there are thirteen year olds who could fully process the
complexity of the Sopranos. But I'm glad that I didn't watch it when I
was thirteen because I couldn't watch it when I was thirteen when it came out.
Just mobsters, Yeah you know, yeah right? So but uh yeah,
I think so we have different we have slightly differ I'm more of a
much more of avenger than you. I think, like I will take the
whole thing all at once. So I binge now and I hate myself for
it. It's really Yeah, you have self. What do you like with
intros? Now? Do you skip the intro even shows that you love in
Simpsons? No, for me, my wife, she's obsessed with Friends skipped
at it, No, you do not. But she watches Friends on loop.
Right, She's just more wife than obsessive Friends fans. Always been a
Friends fan, but now she's fans. She skips the intro because she's like,
I can't be bother. I've already heard a million times and I'm like
for me, though, a good theme song sets you up for the show.
It puts you in that frame of mind of what you should be feeling
when you watchings and how you using it. Right, Like sometimes when I'm
working, I'll put on the Big Short in the background, or the Assassination
of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford and just have it playing on the
TV while I'm working in the other room. Yep. Because it's a sort
of like flow of like, Okay, I know how this narrative is.
It makes me feel a certain way. I'm I'm not. My distractions are
not things that will take me away from this work. They're this, they're
this other thing that already right right right, So maybe she's using it for
background noise and doesn't need the intro. Yeah, that's true. Yeah,
it's when we do it for the reviews. Now she's found and now that
we're reviewing the episodes, it's almost ruining the show for her because she prefers
to just watch it not critique it, and shows like Friends, you watch
it and you're like, there's a lot of shit you can critique here.
Yeah, I'd rather just watch it the way I used to. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, I have over critique things that you watch always, but
I never I never had a show where I was just like along for the
ride. Yeah, I never had that. What's been your favorite ride show
wiseen? For me? I think it was Breaking Bad. Oh, that
was really good. That's a really good one. But that just sort of
just it peaked at the right time and then it was out. Breaking Bear
was really good. The one I still talk about the most has to still
be the Sopranos. Okay, yeah, that's the one who I have a
friend who and we we still go deep on talking about that show. That
ending. Yes, yeah, atual thoughts, I think Tony died on the
operating table and it's a sort of a Jacob's ladder you're taking thatach, Yeah,
yeah, kind of, it's a Jacob's Ladder, uh occurrence at Owl
Creek Ridge kind of bite, you know, you know what I'm talking about.
Where so dealing with compressed time, lots of things are artificialized, right,
They're not. These are your dreams. Your brain is firing off,
like the possibility of a life with all of the endorphins and the the uh
d m T is firing and you're having this sort of like leaving your leaving
your life moment, and so time can stretch and characters can become bizarre.
There are so many things about the post shooting Tony episodes that are unreal weed
very very sort of like completely unreal. I don't think Chase cared. David
Chase cares to tell everybody how it is because he wants people to interpret it.
And the way that I interpret it is he never made it off that
operating table. He died there, and everything else is peculiar, like peculiar
flashes of a life that didn't complete, that didn't happen. Do you have
people take approach with your music, Yeah, very much. So. I've
said this before about Teenage Stirpeg, you know, because there's a sort of
origin story about the murder and whatnot, right, but but what the only
thing that really counts is how people see themselves in the narrative. That's the
only thing that matters for a song, if you plug yourself in and you
understand your life a little bit more clearly because you kind of walk through the
song with the characters. That's the only thing that gives it new life.
That's the only important thing. And however, young people need to do that.
I'm is none of my business, like in that sense, it belongs
to them and the author is dead like what my intentions were anyway, So
yeah, yeah, because I always saw as just the good guy wants the
girl who's with the bad guy, and that's just that's the simple approach.
Because I still have memories. It came out when I was in grade six,
which is our last year of what you call elementary school. Yeah,
and there's this girl, this big crush on but she was dating the bad
guy, and I was like, teenage door back is just my life.
It's just it. I felt it, right. There's a bit of that
in the Simpsons episode she winds up with the bad guy. But you know
what, I think that they give her. They give her control the whole
time, oddly, which is a really interesting choice, and I love that
like that she's just like I just want to date this bad boy for a
little while. Maybe he's an idiot, and I'll get rid of him.
Because if at Lisa li likesh or she goes she gushes, Yeah, she
gets it. She's like, oh I know why you know? And Bart's
baffled. Do you hate that ideology of girls love the bad boys? It's
always because always always thinking myself is like the good guy. I was never
the bad boy. Always just like it annoyed me, like why do you
like these guys? They look good for you. It's a funny. It's
a funny arc type. I I've seen it in my own life, but
much more dangerous like way yeah, like like scary, like and you know,
there's a line there where my mind goes where it's like she really want
to be with him? Or is she afraid he's going to kill her?
Yeah? If she breaks up? Like is that that? That's where my
mind goes with that because of where you know, how I grew up.
Okay, but in the Simpsons, all of that sort of like washed and
in the song in teenaged her, what's kind of washed over by somehow she
majestically has this power that she's in control of her own life. In some
sense, that's a little bit unfair to what women's lives are actually like,
Like we're giving them this control that we haven't given them in the real world.
And you know, I think I think about that. I thought about
that watching the episode. I was like, well, I'm glad this is
a cartoon and it's not going to be like, you know, domestic abuse
kind of situation, because I'm I'm sorry to say, that's where my that's
where my mind goes. Yeah, you know, I mean I've experienced similar
things like growing up. Yeah, yeah, I do like the idea though
that the Simpsons. I never saw this as a kid, but it's nice
that kids growing up in the nineties had a character like Lisa, a female
character who had sort of power over her life, Smarter than her dad,
smarter than head, and she was sort of being held backed by a family.
But still you knew she was going to make something of herself. Yeah
she was. Well, you thought she's gonna be fine. Yeah, right,
And that's a comforting thought because and you know what, this episode hit
on something that I don't always think about with The Simpsons, and you are
reminded from time to time, Homer's an alcoholic, Like, he's fully and
completely abusing alcohol, choosing alcohol over the nurturing of his kids all the time.
So just because it's funny doesn't mean that the little Leasa Simpsons in the
world are aren't seeing that in their own homes and going, yeah, I'm
definitely getting the fuck out of here, you know, as soon as I
can. Dad way smarter than you, I'm getting a job when I'm sixteen,
I'm getting a fuck out, you know. And that's I hope that
that works out for the for the lease leases out there, you know,
I assume it doesn't always, but but yeah, it's the Simpsons is complex
like that always has been. And that's one of the reasons I revisited it
and still keep it like as a thing like I have. I don't know
why I was compelled to do this, but I purchased all of the Blockbuster
Video Simpson's memorabilia. Really, yes, back in the oh geez, was
it the late nineties when the Blockbuster video started shutting down? Why what made
you want to do that? Because they were offering these they just looked great.
They were fantastic looking toys and bobbleheads. And so was DVD sets and
things that the the n VHS sets and I still have them money of my
v I have the Simpsons Monopoly game from the late nineties, and I was
thinking, I don't know why I was compelled to buy them. It was
just it looked important Iconically, physically, the art of it was beautiful.
Could just sense that times were changing, you thought, if I get it
now, I did sense the times were changing. Because I can't remember the
year. It might have been right after we signed our record deal because at
the time when was two thousand. No, actually we signed in December of
ninety nine a deal memo, but the full one was executed the following spring
and the end. At the time, I was working a day job that
I kept even though we signed a deal for another six months. I worked
my day job while we were signed, and I was working at a VPN
service place in Times Square right forty six and seven. Yeah, because I
lived in Manhattan at time, and the guys who ran that place where IBM
engineers, very very knowledgeable Oracle and IBM engineers, And they said to me,
when I found out I was a musician, I was had a CD
I'd brought them a CD and they were like, you know this is software,
right, you get your digital rights all sorted out. They knew.
They were like, this is going to be free or you're going to have
to like figure something out like vinyl or something. They and they they clued
me into like no, no, no, no no, no, you
don't understand is that this can be ripped onto here and they show they showed
me the whole process. This is like ninety seven ninety eight kind of time.
This is before you could download song with Willi Nilly. Yeah, this
was before you could really download anything before because I was the other one because
yeah, because yeah we're talking Netscape. Yeah right, So uh I knew
some abstractly something was going to happen where music was not going to be the
way that it was like, it was going to be this. It was
going to be a piece of software digital. Yeah, it was already a
piece of software. Every CD is from nineteen eighty two or whatever when the
first one came out, it is all software copyable. And so uh when
I saw the Simpsons stuff, it was probably right around that time where there
was this sense of like, oh, you might not be able to get
this stuff anymore like thing on before, with a little bit of like of
like what did I miss out on in the nineties on this show that there's
like the Blockbuster video was decorated with it, and I was like, I
should buy this stuff. This is cool, and you did get it and
I did buy it all. I bought every single thing I had. Yeah,
I still have Wow. Yeah, you should be pacing that online.
You have you pist No, No, it's just just hiding near my guitar.
I know. I know the Simpsons Monopoly game. I don't care what
it's worth for one reason or another. That's the one I really care about.
Yeah, I've got a copy of it somewhere in the gun. Yeah.
And a Burns the Burns doll. Okay, I felt those were cool.
So Blockbuster had dolls. Yeah, they were selling Bible had dolls and
stuff in New York on Long Island. Yeah, shortly before Blockbuster went out
of business. This is before people knew to keep that kind of shit,
right. Everyone now buys three copies of it actually figured one to keep one
of display one or whatever totally. But when I was growing up, it
was like Mum just gave him to the we call them, the Salvation Army,
just the the shops that what do you call them, strip store?
Right, Well, it's prior to eBay. Yeah, so so before before
there was a virtual marketplace where people could say, yes, my original ad
at Walker is perfect condition, and it's the one with the weird little Cereal
number on it. And yet you know, my world changed when I discovered
eBay in like ninety nine, two thousand, mine too. Yeah. I
started buying vintage BMX spikes that I could never really yeah, yeah, yeah,
okay, yeah, I got really into that, and I saved the
band later on when we hit hard times, I saw them. I liquidated
them on and had they had gone up in price, so I was able
to fund the band for a little bit longer. Yeah yeah, wow,
not all of them. I kept a few, but I've got so much
stuff that I've told my wife I'm going to sell one bag. It's just
the idea of taking the photo and then the posting and I can't read Bob.
Yeah, one day somebody will write a book about what the fiscal forces
and memorabilia forces were gathering that gathering storm at the end of the nineties.
If you recall, there had never been such a thing as a box set,
right, and then suddenly Blockbuster had, for a very short period of
time, the unedited VHS box set of Star Wars, the one before he
before he untouched. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I kind of
remember that there were original VHS's that you could get your hands on that was
part of a set, and then he edited them, and then it was
DVD, So I don't think the d d original see, yeah, he
ruined them, Yeah, he ruined them. You know. The thing that
bothered me the most about I know that, I know that, I know
that Hans shot first, I know I know all that, right, that's
it's it's all garbage what he put in there. But the thing that bothered
me the most was the explosion of the Death Star. Was so much cooler
before because it looked like a possible space explosion would look. It looked like
a collapse, it looked like it it looked like there was a no pressure
explosion right where where there's no where the fire goes out quickly because there's no
oxygen. That was cooler, way cooler. I mean, we don't want
to talk about the Han going over Jebba's tail. And things like that.
That sucks. What is going on? Why did you do that? How
did anyone approve that? I think he just George surround himself with yes.
Men have to have been the case, right, I think that. Look,
there's Rush is my favorite band. But there's a video that they made
that is arguably maybe the worst looking video of all time, and therefore it
becomes goes over the line and becomes the best don't want to gangsters, It's
it's close. I want to be gangster is probably worse, but it's it's
for a kid at that time. Look, man with the et in the
corner really triggering me on this whole thing, So back off, no,
no, I'll I'll get into that in a second. But there's a video
for Time stand Still, one of my favorite songs. We cover it live
right. The video for Time stand Still is all of that sort of grabbed
animated moving around the screen, characters like it's VHS early. It's terrible,
and Amy Man is in it, which makes it even like more peculiar and
wonderful and strange. But but this video is is is a is a people
getting a bad new toy, okay, right, and then it's doing stuff
with it, and that's what Lucas did with the Star Wars. He got
a bad new toy. Yeah, you know this is I wish we could
have done this back in the BLA. You know his parents are telling him
to stop it, right, yeah right, STI I did it with at
eight is my favorite movie. Love at ruined ET Well two thousand and two,
you re released it for the twentyth anniversary and he got the deleted scenes,
much like the Star Wars ones. And but he computer generated ET.
And when you've gone from a person in a puppet that's physically there to c
GI, it's just not the same. And it looks shit. And he's
like ET when he's running at the start, he makes him like he's galloping
and things. And the Spielberg has acknowledged I made a mistake. And when
they re released it on Blu ray and four K, it's the original version.
Good yeap, good good job. The self knowledge is difficult for those
guys who are in that rarefied air. I'm glad Spielberg has it. But
I've always wondered what the Simpsons these earlier episodes because everyone always hates that the
first season because they look so clunky. They're clunky. What they would look
like if they reanimated them today, I thought, don't do it, don't
do that. No, No, that's the charm of it again. It's
like if the Sopranos first episode looked better because they shot it on some other
format that wasn't that great looking. No, I haven't bet to watch it.
What format? I've got the Blue I've got the Blu ray box sect
if I bought it recently, and if I were to do it, if
I should do it today, I would just do it on on like a
streaming which will be HD. Yeah, so should you watch that? Not
really ideally, but we're not in an ideal This is a good question.
So I was talking to the guys in Everclear about this the other day.
Digital masters, the dawn of digital masters, or early early to mid nineties,
right, they started using these machines called aid ads. They got away
from two inch magnetic tape, which was analog, and they started using these
digital formats. And they use those digital formats up all the way up until
the dawn of pro tools, which really took over around two thousand and one
two thousand and two. Right, So this is decade or a little less
than a decade of early digital masters. They're all going to decay. Ours
are lost from the first records, right why you read made the album?
That's why? Yeah. Yeah, And I'm wondering about that a lot lately
because you know, with title and even iTunes and the distribution distribution places are
using higher reds in the ninety six K stuff. Now, is there going
to be this generation of lost inferior masters? Is my question? Like where
the streaming services they just sound grainy. It's like you're constantly watching the first
episode of The Simpsons, or the sound or on TV show is so fucking
bad. The explosions are too lad. You can't hear the dialogue, yep,
yeah, yeah, it's it's then they're also that's that's a strange new
toy seven point one or whatever they're messing around with. Now, it's just
like, yeah, that's it's. I love that you're making this music mix
in the background, but there's a dialogue scene, right and it's as loud
as the music and I can't hear it. Yeah. We have to live
with subtitles on now, right, right? Yeah? Right, we had
the subtitles on anyway, because we've got kids in bed and we try to
keep it down. But when you got the TV down already, it's weird.
You can't hear anything. It's very weird. Yeah, I agree with
you. We sound like old guys. But a man shakes at that cloud,
grandpa. But let's talk about like the two anyway. So like is
the acoustic You're coming back from pandamaic. That's April, isn't it. Yeah,
come back for the full electric band six piece in April. You've always
been an acoustic guard there, right, I always write an acoustic The first
album is all acoustic guitar. I know that people don't understand how it's all
electric, but I put my my acoustic guitar through an electric system. So
if you hear an electric guitar on the first record, it's almost always my
Martin tripleo. Yeah sixteen still right. Yeah. I had to retire it
from the road because it's got a sort of a design flaw that's revealing itself.
Oh okay, you don't want to reveal it? Yeah, well no,
no, you can only repair it once. Oh and then after that
it's curtains. So I did the repair and I was advised to keep it
off the road because that's that's the end of that. Well, it's the
one from the video, right, it is the one from the video.
Yeah, And I have a search alert on reverbount on eBay for those guitars.
They're kind of getting rare, and they're not that they're not that collectible,
they're they're in the two thousand dollars range. Would you ever sell that
one? Because you sign el you sold your box and shit, there's always
gonna be times where you fall on hard times. You gotta sell stuff.
But there's something sell the part with If I'm selling that guitar to survive,
you're in trouble, right, it's over. I should I should already have
gotten a job at a deli. I feel like that the teenage dort Bad
guitar would sell for quite a bit, though, right, I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know how much things are worth. What
do those guitars go for when they're not the teenage dorpe Bank guitar? About
two thousand bucks? You're gonna get ten for it, right, I don't
know. Man, you're making me wonder, You're making me worry. Let's
call my girlfriend, Hey, can you get the guitar out of the house
and put it in a safety box somewhere. She's not there. When you
get back, the guitar's gone. House is gone. I've always wondered with
that video. So because it wasn't a hit in America, the song now
it became a hit here first it is now it is now we get the
majority of streaming is American. Yeah, okay, now see as a keep
growing up in Australia, it just it felt like the biggest song in the
world at the time. It was the biggest song in our world. It
was you know, in December of two was number one on the pop charts
here and it was quadruple platinum. Yeah. The film clip though it wasn't
made for Loser? Was it the song? No? No, So they
just the director she wanted. She picked it up for the film, Amy
Heckerling thought to fit the movie yet But so you hadn't made a video for
it before Loser was coming to the Equations. Correct, it was just Columbia
TriStar and we were on Columbia Records. So they were like, oh,
we have this perfect cross pollination moment here. We can get you in the
movie and we can make the video that has the movie stars in it,
and it was just like, yeah, they got to do that, you
know, because they were Jason coming off of American Pie like they that's that
were big stars, very serious. Yeah still are you know, of course,
I think I think we got really lucky that they that these knuckleheads from
Long Island had these two top shelf thespians in there. You know, It's
like it was like and Amy Heckerling also is a genius. I've watched the
movie several times. I love it because for a couple of reasons. I'm
glad you did, because so many people tell it's a ship movie, and
I'm like, I love this movie. No, it's just not her.
It's just the slower like it's this it's kind of people who would say that
would say I like pulp fiction, but not Jackie Brown, you know that.
But I like it personally because two things combined in the beginning, in
the first five minutes of that movie that that that's just my heart's pumping out
of my chest when the first time I saw it is uh, Dan Ackroyd
is on the screen and he's he's wood Blues Elwood Blues. I was the
Blues Brothers was such an important movie for me. It was so huge.
It was just like I knew every line. I watched it every time it
was on any of the cable channels. I had the vhs. I have
the two copies of the soundtrack on Final Kid, I was gone. So
that's what cool is? Oh god, so cool and relevant. They chase
Nazis off of a bridge in Chicago. Hey, that's still happening, you
know. So Dan Akroyd's Elwood Blues and he's on the screen and right,
he's the dad. He's the dad. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a
helicopter flying shot out of the Twin Towers the year before they fell down,
and that's our home, you know. So it really it really tied the
room together for us, put a bow on the nineties, yeah, and
put us in a new place, strangely without the towers, you know.
And it was just like, wow, it's all a full stop for a
generation, wasn't it. It's a new world after that. Yeah, it
was like it's time to be an adult. There's a Simpsons episode where he
goes to New York and he has to beat it's when he goes to the
two towers and he's got to get these cars and jacked up. You remember
that episode and the Cloff clash guy, and you watch it now and you
go, oh, yeah, they're not there anymore. Yeah, it's crazy,
isn't it. Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff
you're watching. They're not there anymore. You know, they're all over friends
landscapes. Yeah. Yeah, they're all over the movies and TV. I
always thought they should have built them the same exact way. I thought so
too, because that Freedom Tower looking things sucks. It doesn't look I mean,
I don't want to the glasses doesn't look great. Nah, but it
sucks. But it's in It's it's a nice building. I guess I meant
to represent a new way forward maybe whatever. It's a lovely building, but
it's not New York City. It's it looks like some a Houston oil building
or something, you know, And I just it's a tough situation. I
guess. Yeah. Well no, I mean George Pataki made his high school
or college roommates architect in charge of it. It was it was you know,
net bub nonsense, yeah, or corrupt whatever you want to call it
but crony. So because you're from New York? Was that? How many
New york Ins what's the term for New Yorkers? New Yorkers? Yeah?
How many New Yorkers do you talk to who wish they were built the same?
It's hard to find one that doesn't really, Yeah, real New Yorkers.
Yeah, like people who like live there when it went down. Yeah,
they're like, Noah, man, build the fucking towers again. What
are you kidding me? They do they before building them again now? Or
is it just too late? Yeah? Do it again. It's New York
City. You can tear anything down to start over. Yeah, that's that's
the rule. We do that all the time. We don't have precious se
like that. We do what we want in terms of the shape and the
landscape. The whole entire island is artificial. And maybe there was a time
when we should have left the Native Americans alone. We have completely fucked that
and missed that opportunity. It's a different place now. It represents something different
in the world. I used to represent opportunity. Well, I think it
represents getting out of the shithole that you're in and getting somewhere else, giving
yourself a chance to yes, get believing in yourself and getting somewhere else,
getting somewhere else. I guess it's a draw. Yeah, I should say
that. I'm a person who's in favor of giving several states back to the
Native Americans in America, right I could. I could do a list of
states that I think should go back. There's so many broken treaties in America
that it would be it'd be hard to quantify justice. It's just too much
tolen. It's the same thing with African Americans who were descended from slaves.
It's trillions of dollars in reparations that are due, and we'll get it.
We go to get it right, you know. But I that's said,
I think that New York City is an iconic place where people leave their horrible
little life and go find another one. Those towers were important in that,
and I you know, iconography is always important to humans. It's one of
the reasons that Church tried to control it so severely. They know, you
know, iconography is important. See. I was too young to sort of
really appreciate them when they were still here. I still have memories of laying
in bed and here mum screamed. She looked at the television because she saw
the plane hit the second one, and it didn't quite hit Becaud would have
been. So it was two thousand and one or about eleven twelve ish,
Maybe I knew something was happening, but it didn't. It didn't sink in.
But so those towers you're saying, for someone who grew up in New
York, they represented New York? Was it just those two towers? Were
they the true symbols? They were the important ones? Yeah? I mean
they hit the right target. Yeah, you know they knew what they were
doing. Yeah, not just because of world trade or whatever. You know,
I'm talking about like Maderna, you know, like and the and then
the notion of pluralism, these that that two that two opposing ideas can co
exist in a society, and that we will not choose violence, and now
we can go into our foreign policy being total shit. You're absolutely right,
But the notion of pluralism is what we're trying to do ostensibly. Right in
New York City is a place that I feel pride in in that regard.
Because this is going to sound a little weird, but it's almost like if
you're a racist in New York City, you're probably going to fail because you've
got to put your bullshit aside to live with your neighbors and co exist and
get to know each other on this in this like mashed together, you know,
microcosm. And one of the one of my favorite things about the city
is that you don't have time to judge people on on their background or the
color of this. You got to fucking move. If they know how to
do it and you don't, you have to. They become your teacher.
It doesn't matter who they are, what they do, male, female,
non non binary, whatever color, whatever, religion. Fucking let's go.
You know. That was the one thing that kept a better mean when we
arrived in twenty sixteen was just we got out of the station and it was
just move, yes, people, let let's go. Yeah, we're here.
They're doing it on dragon a suitcase. I'm just trying to keep up.
You know. It was chaos, Yeah, chaos, But but you
live in that long enough and you realize that you're in the you're in the
experiment. You're in the grand social experiment. Can we live together? That's
where it's actually being put to practice. Yeah, you know, and you'll
get a lot of people from the Red States in America talking about what a
mess the cities are and ball on. People are just afraid to learn how
to parallel park. Fucking cowards. Man, I don't have to learn seriously,
seriously because my wife looked at me, She's like, you don't have
to parallel park. I was like, I'll learn, man, Yeah,
yeah, you gotta learn. Yeah, if you're coming to the city from
somewhere else, you got to learn how other people and other things work.
And that's terrifying to some people. They won't do it. You know.
It's like you watch Seinfeld and I have a big episode just about a parking
space, right, you know, like I always wonder who owns a car
in New York? I do? Is it? So? When I was
driving, it was just constant traffic? Are you just is that just?
Is that just left of you that? Yeah? You learn? You learn
where the windows are, Yeah, ninety five to eleven fifteen, there's a
good window. Okay, if you can, if you got to be at
work early, like I did in the nineties, you jump on the subway
or you walk. I walked from Avenue being fourteenth Street to Times Square almost
every day. And I walked at as fast as pace you've ever seen it,
Like, and I and I had all these hacks, like I knew
that if if there was like if a street was closed or a sidewalk was
closed, I knew I could jump in a subway go underneath card like I
was a rat, you know, a lizard living in a place where rats
and lizards would thrive, you know, so not lizards so much, but
they did. My friend John, his father in Bushwick, has a little
skink living in the backyard and none of us are sure how it's surviving the
winters. So this is very strange for New York. It's obviously an escape
pet. But there is a lizard in the in the in the no no
in. I think they live in Ridgewood, in the border of Queens and
Brooklyn. So we're always wunning lizards under rocks. Yeah, yeah, that's
common here, but not New York City. We have a critic here,
right, yeah, more pigeons, right, pigeons, But the pigeons are
and now the birds of prey are back. I have bald eagles off of
off of my apartment. Yeah. Wow do they nest that? Yeah?
They nest On. Yeah, you can make good money. Just put a
lot of streaming that ship. Yeah, they're they're they're a bitch to catch
on camera. They're so fast and there and you know, I mean there,
I have. I have a few good ones I'll show you or off
the air, but but they're just so you just you don't you don't want
to grab your camera. You're like, holy shit, that's the one thing
I height when you got to gigs now as the cameras. Yeah, you
think you're never gonna fucking watch this again. You're never gonna put it on
YouTube? Why are you actually filming this? What is the connection between our
brains and our fingers going? You have to feel this? Can I tell
you why I have more patience for that than a lot of people I know.
I understand why people who are in the arts are like, put your
fucking camera away and just enjoy it. I get that, right. But
but the fact of the matter is that the music industry and the arts in
general, movies, TV, they all thrive and survive because people make time
for this product when they don't necessarily have that time. People are working two
jobs and they have kids, and they're running around like lunatics trying to get
in America anyway, health insurance and like get all their shit together. It's
rat race. And if somebody has time to show up at my show,
who the hell am I to tell them how to what to do with it?
You know, you want to take your camera or take your camera,
you know, I mean I just think missing the experience. Well, if
you're watching it through a through a screen, yeah, but what is the
experience to them? Right, to those people? Right, Like I'm trying
to put myself in the shoes of somebody who does not have the luxury of
just like absorbing art all the time? You know, would you have filmed
and I say, dacy concept with you Find? If you had the capability
and Monte ninety three or whatever not? The first time I saw them was
nineteen eighty eight. Would you if you had the capabilities we have now,
would you have filmed it? Three you Find? Or would you have?
Just really a good question. I was so shook up by the fact that
I was in the room with Angus Young. Where was it Madison Square Garden?
Wow? Fuck, that's without my parents? How were you fourteen thirteen?
Amazing? Yeah, it was amazing. It was on the on the
Blow Up Your Video Tour. It's all when Bonton Mill has go to see
spinal tap, right right. I know I probably not, probably not,
but you're you're asking an impossible question. It's like it's like the two dimensional
man getting a three dimensional question because that that technology, the notion of that
did not exist at the time. But for like video cameras and actual you
know, snap cameras, and that the idea of bringing any of that to
this show was just not in my grasp. Like I just didn't have it.
I didn't have one, didn't have access to one, So it just
was so far afield what you're talking about. You can't apply the ease of
access of today to those people because those people didn't understand that ease of access.
Trying to explain it to my five year old how we didn't get to
you can choose what we want to watch when we want to watch. It
just kind of standing. Right. I have this thing that I talk about
sometimes if I could travel back in time and do anything, I would take
my iPhone back and show it to Ben Franklin and be like, hey,
doctor Franklin, this is remember you did the experiment with the key and the
lightning, Well, we used that force in the universe to make this.
And here's a picture of you painted on Facebook, right, trying to take
it all in. I know it's a lot, but like you know,
we're we're doing this now, you know, and it was you you discovered
it. So but uh yeah, I can't break that barrier. Time is
locked. The I go back and tell five year old me that there will
be a point in time where you'll be able to watch any episode of The
Simpsons whenever you want at your finger tips. I just don't think I would
have been able to comprehend it right because it was six pm weight nights,
that's when it was on here. Yeah, and then I had marathons on
the weekends on the cable, but it was just six think ours was six
pm. I don't remember if it was was six pm. I remember it's
there was a lot of programming there was in Living Color was on Fox back
then, which was I have to say, you know what, I watched
that more than I watched The Simpsons. Yeah, okay, that was that
was more of my alley, do you Jim Carrey fanly huge? But the
Waynes brothers and David Allen Greer and and I have to say that that was
the first like it was like the Black Saturday Night Live. It was fucking
awesome, and it was on earlier, you know, it was on earlier
than early enough for me to watch it all the time. Yeah, that
show is great. That show is great, and Fox has become this horrific
thing. But but but that's just TV in general now that right, I
guess I'm talking about the news network. Okay, but but Australian man,
so he sold it, right, I think he sold it. I think
he's still holding on white knuckled someone there controlling them. When we get our
society back, it'll be like they'll cut off his dead hand holding onto it
still, you know in space. Well, here's your society. But we
can't seem to get this hand off. But uh, but the uh yeah,
that was a that was an you're talking about having to wait checking the
TV guide? Do you remember that? Man? Love it? Call me
a nerd, I don't care. One of my favorite pastimes the weekend was
when Mom would go shop and she'd become the TV guid and I'd highlight.
But I'm going to watch for the week. Yeah, oh, man,
set it in my memory, Tuesday seven thirty, Do not Miss Funnies home
Videos? Yeah, TV Guide and Reader's Digest. Yeah, Like there were
just these two little things that were on the coffee table. What is Digest?
The people would come to your door and say you'd do one for free?
I'm like, well, still free fucking why not? Exactly exactly?
Yeah I didn't. Man. Man, how often do you watch The Simpsons?
Not as much as I used to, like per week since I started
doing the podcast, maybe two three times a week. Okay, I used
to go to bed with it on. I was big on the Simpsons commentaries
when they released the DVD sets. That was sort of my introduct That's where
podcasting for me started. I think listening to these audio commentaries and movies and
the Simpsons ones really shock a chord with me. So I'd go to bed
every night listening to the Simpsons creators talking about the show. I'd watched the
episodes so many times I didn't need to watch them anymore. I wanted to
listen to the creators how they made the show. And now I think,
because I'm critiquing it, it's almost like it's become work a little bit,
which is a shame because I used to watch it so often and I wanted
to introduce it to my kids. But I just think I've been talking about
it all day. There were jokes in this episode that that that I I
was like, Oh my god, this show was really funny. I laughed
out loud. You wrote this episode. You're kidding me. So everyone talks
about the Monty episode, Everyone talks about the Homo goest to college. This
is the forgotten Conan one. This is the forgotten con So I'm so glad
because, first of all, I think he's a genius. The second of
all, the joke that got me was so freaking Conan, like the beard
of bees. Okay, yeah, I had to stop it. I laughed
hard enough to mix them to miss the next bit of dialogue, so I
had to rewind. And then something funny happened with the streaming off our drop
box? Did I say that? Where where the ride where the audio was
off was sink with So I watched the rest of the episode after the Beard
of Beer out of sinc Audia. It was so good, it was like,
it made me think about it harder. Actually, you know, Yeah,
but you imagine Colan doing it as a skit on his show, Can't
You the Beard of Bees? Yeah, you know you're now And then I'm
sitting here talking about it the way you tied where you tried to tie teenager
Bag to this episode earlier. It is a lot more like that like it
than I had originally than it originally float over me. I thought it was
just cliche, but it's actually more to it. Yeah, there's a little
bit more to it, especially when Mo shows up with the knife. Shit.
There's one mistake there though, when everyone knows the Simpsons address and everyone
seven four to Evergreen terraces right, and but in that call says ten ninety
four Evergreen Terrorists, And it's just so bizarre that they said the wrong address.
It's been acknowledged that seven four to two Evergreen Terrorist was their address.
MO had been to their house, but he says ten ninety four, and
it's just so weird. That's interesting. It's a glaring error. Maybe they
had to ignoled she addressed before then. I don't know, is that the
first time they talked about the address of the actual address. Maybe that's the
only way I feel like you could talk making see, the thing is the
problem is that I think I think this is true of phone numbers as well
in Hollywood. If you accidentally list to somebody's real phone number or address,
you have to like fix that. Yeah, And maybe they didn't have the
ability to actually fix that, he knows, because how do you get anyway?
The most things. Just I just love Jimbo. My pants are shave
for me, just gonna cautch you. Well, that's another thing. That's
another thing. It's a cartoon, right, shop owner from where I grew
up, was coming after you like that with a night would you had to
run? You know? But uh yeah, just as a as a so
the dirt bag persona and can talk about that for a second. Right.
The problem, initially, at least my in my youth in summer of nineteen
eighty four, was that it could mean it just it was just a misnomer.
So I was a dirt beck because I was into a c d C.
Right, and then murder the guy got arrested with an ac DC shirt,
So, uh, he was into a c d C too. Were
your parents like, no, you can't listen to it anymore? No,
my parents liked a c DC because it's reminded them of Chuck Berry good,
right, but there was concern. I remember my dad coming in when I
was that's two summers later. I was listening to Lousying this guy with Diamonds.
I'm a CD player. This was like the first CD we ever got
was Sergeant Peppers, and I was like rewinding it, rewinding it, rewinding
it, rewinding it, rewinding, just sitting there with my guitar, like
listening over and over again. And my dad came in sort of concerned,
and he says, you know, Brun, it wasn't always about drugs.
And I was like, what, I'm listening to the kick drum and the
breakdown? What are you talking like? And oh oh oh yeah, I'm
right right right. So it's like the eighty parents misunderstanding their kids is something
that somebody needs to write encyclopedia about because it was profound, but it is
looking for things to blame. Uh yeah, I mean there was some it
was V Day games in the nineties, right. So in America, at
least all these World War II vets and their families moved to Long Island because
they were scared of the urban centers, right, And you know, they
call it white flight, you know at the time, and there was a
time where it was redlining, and these neighborhoods were all set up to be
like sort of really racist and horrible. But the untreated you know, traumas
of the World War two generation just rained down on their kids in these newly
established like you know suburbs, which were brand news for experiment, right.
So, and behind these closed doors there was no therapy. Everyone's a victimisty.
Yeah, there's lots of a violent violence and you know, abuse and
whatever else. And and then you entered drugs like real you know, psycho
stuff like LSD and mescaline and lots of heroin and then crack and then you
know there's like you combine that that that's that's that's the eighties. That's where
they where they where they all where they're all washed up on shore. Was
the late seventies and early eighties, and so you had these and the economy
sucked, so these nuclear families had kind of like unraveled and fallen apart.
Both parents were now working. It was the the baby boomer generation was trying
to do what their parents did because they thought that was a good idea.
Who god knows why. And then you had, you know, like the
latch Key generation, the eighties, kids who parents were never home, lots
and lots of drugs, lots and lots of violence, you know, spending
your time in the woods with no money, trying to figure out something to
do with the other kids. It was like Lord of the Flies. Yeah,
you know, the Stranger Things. A good sort of interpretation with the
Eighties would lie. I have to say, I've never watched it, but
I have had so many people say this is you. You got to watch
this thing, and I'm like, ah, I don't want to. I
don't want to books, I don't want to, you know, I wrote
that song and then but but I got you know, it's cool that it's
cool that those that those memories. The thing is, like I was talking
about this before, like dirt Bag is sanitized, you know, Happy Ending
the cartoon is sanitized in terms of Lisa and the how they're approaching feminism in
the episode. The real world is not that great to revisit if you're not
with your therapist. Right, So it's kind of like separating learning how to
separate fact from fiction and art from from life can be challenging if like,
if like the imagery of your childhood is is being commoditized over and over again.
Not that that's necessarily bad. I think that's kind of how the system
works, right. We're capitalistic, so we picked the bones and resell.
But but I'd say, like that period of time is also locked away,
you know, and in a good way, Like that's a good thing.
It took me a long time to unmaladapt right, Like I thought everybody got
into a fistfight when they disagreed when I was twenty seven, you know,
and that's not how the world is. Yeah, I've definitely got issues from
my childhood that I should probably say a therapist are bad, But I just
it's the fear of just talking about it. I guess, yeah, yeah,
you'd be afraid. The problem with me was that it's at some point
it fucked me up so bad that I was kind of like contemplating suicide.
Again. I had done that when I was in high school, and I
didn't attempt, but I was like when you're when you're conjuring up, like
what's the right way to make sure that there's no coming back kind of thing.
And this is before it was acknowledged that it's okay for a man,
it's help. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, No, my dad never
talked about anything, that's what that's never said I love you to me ever,
right, right, I know he does, but he's never said it.
My dad said it. But that's hard to describe, like like do
you are we talking about the same way? Maybe maybe maybe you're Brendan.
Maybe your may in like ten years. Yeah, I think I think that
he My dad was an orphan, right, His mom died of alcoholism when
he was nine, and his father died in an accident at work. Right,
So he was like he was like the red headed step child, kind
of icon archetype kid for for his youth. And I think that the ah
his ability to to teach me things and be a parent was you know,
as limited as you would expect. He didn't experience it any right, right,
So, and I was lucky because my parents stayed together, and well,
some people would say that my mom's alway says she stayed together for the
kids. Right. There was so physical issues or anything like that, a
lot more emotional yelling and screaming. We could go down a rabbit hole on
this. That's really deep we were actually talking about Homer here. Should they
split off, like for the good of the kids would have been better.
We're now reviewing the teen seasons of the Simpsons. We've gone from the start
with out season eighteen, and it came to a point about season ten or
eleven where they just they gave up giving Homer, holding him a cannibal for
his alcoholism. So in the early nineties, in these episodes here you touched
on it earlier that you know, he's always putting the drinking ahead of his
family, things like that, but often enough it would come back to buy
him on the ass and he'd have to be held a cannable and still put
his hand up and say, look, I shouldn't have done that. Next
episode, he's back to doing it whatever. In the teen seasons, we
get what they call jerk ass Homer, where he's never held a cannibal.
He's just a prick to everybody, he's a drunk, he's a horrible father,
and it's just the show's not fun anymore. Really, Yeah, I'm
glad you didn't pick one of those. That's an episode and the listeners have
been just like, I'm sick of you bring this one up, but it's
called Codependence Day. And in the episode, Homer drink drives with margin,
the car crashes, then wakes up in the ditch the cars upside down,
puts her in the driver's seat and doesn't run it and lets her cop the
blame, and that makes her think that she drink drives. Wow. Not
good. Very bad, Yeah, very very bad. So you're talking about
this this episode with an intensity that although you're a Simpsons professional, you did
not approach the episode that I that I was taught here to talk about.
And I think that that means that you definitely need to talk to a therapist.
And they bring this one up in the friendliest, most loving way.
I'm saying it's because my wife did that to me. I shouldn't, no,
but I there's look the way that early psychological psychological damage works, right,
Yeah, your brain forms these neuropaths off of it, and you think
they're okay, and they ain't. No, So you're just like functioning along
with this, like your brain's firing the way that it always has, which
is shittily. And and you come into you develop, you grow up,
your responsibilities increase, your your worldview increases, either money and financial, responsibility
and trickiness all becomes serious. Yes, and you are stuck now in a
place where you realize you're not equipped to get through this without something terrible happening.
And that's when you have to see a therapist, which is actually,
sadly sometimes too late. Right. So with me, I got lucky.
I found the right one. I oh, were you and defend we started
signa therapist twenty ten, okay, yeah, and the childhood trauma yes,
yeah, yeah, very much so. And that was you know, everything
I was taught was that that doesn't work, that's talk, therapy is nonsense,
that that's a bunch of hocus pocus bullshit and lolma if they ever tried
it from people who had never tried it or never would. Right, So
I was raised as a skeptic on that whole thing, reinforced this garbage,
right, and realized that it that I better try something. So I did,
and I was on my own with it. It was sort of like
got an our keyboard player at the time. Gerard gave me a name and
it worked. And I still go to doctor Suzanne Lackman in New York and
once a week if i'm home. Still yeah, yeah, and I don't
roll in there with nothing to say. I do like prep work. I
think hard about, like what's the most embarrassing moment of the week for me
that I wish didn't go that way and get into that one, you know,
like just beat yourself up a little bit and unpeel the onion and trying
to figure out why you're doing what the hell you're doing. Are you a
dweller, I'm a dweller. Dweller absolutely, I'm in a near constant state
of dwelling on something. I've gotten better at juggling moving on my dwells,
yeah, my dwell plates, but now not moving on. I mean if
I if I screw something up, I blame myself forever on stage or just
in life, everywhere, every single thing. And I at the same time
that I'm trying to let myself off the hook, I'm trying to learn that
never do that again, right, which requires a bit of like beat yourself
up right for it. It's it's a fine line, and you're not good
at it. If you're not, if you've been you know, unaddressed issues,
it's just get worse. So that's my opinion, my experience. But
how is that as a musician though, because I feel like we're very much
like perfectionist wise, do you go back into the songs and go fuck?
I wish I had have done this now. Oh yeah, how hard is
it for you to not dwell on that kind of stuff? Impossible, totally
impossible. I do better new stuff, And like when I make a new
album, the Valentine LP or twenty thirteen record, first record I made after
therapy, and could you send a difference. Oh yeah, it's my favorite
one to play live all the where you were in live. No, it's
just free of Like I listened to the first record and I'm like, shit,
man, this is really angry. I was so angry and I had
been ripped off. I missed out on a record deal. Somebody stole some
songs from me and stuff in New York music industry and jerked around and DEMI
dev grow it wasn't but I it was a million dollar deal. Shit that
I missed, and I had done the work for it and was cut out
at the last minute. And I was the first weaatest record I was working
on until then is actually kind of represented by the ten additional songs that we
added to the twenty twenty version. So if you want to hear what the
first Weaedest record would have sounded like, I'm up and screwed around badly.
The twenty songs version has the alternate universe first first Wheatest record on it,
so you wanted to do twenty No no No. I had a different prior
to being ripped off in the nineties. I had a different approach to Wheatis.
I was writing more sort of like emotional like and more emo stuff,
and sort of more a bulliant or a happier, more forgiving place. Who
were listening to at that time? The otis who would count at that point.
I was listening to Everclear, I was listening to Annie DiFranco. I
was listening to Soul Coughing. I was listening to the Indigo Girls a lot.
The Foo Fighter's color in the shape was was part of the repertoire as
I was making the first record, and then I had all these songs and
when the guy when I got ripped off, a lot of them morphed into
these angry pieces. Sunshine is Truffles is really angry? Those truffles is I
wrote when I was thinking about all the shit that kids used to see to
each other in my high school. That's just a document of some of the
more sanitized stuff that kids would say to each other. And my high school
is nasty like about that, you know, we I mean so gnarly.
We're boys' school. And I missed school. But I don't miss the drama
of school. No, I missed the socialization of I get to see my
friends anywhere near is often anymore, being in dad and everything now and working
full time. But I missed the idea of being able to go to a
place and know your friends are going to be there. But the drama and
you put yourself through at school, and you think, why did you do
that? But you're just going through things. You're a teenager, you know.
Yeah, Well, I mean kids are nasty and violent and violent and
horrible to one another. And it was the boys' school I went to in
the eighties was about the pinnacle of that. You know, I'm terrified.
My son's just started school last week. He's five, so I know what
school's like. Yeah. It's just trying to be his dad and guide him
through it. That's the terrifying part of it. I don't have kids.
I'm fifty years old, and I don't have no plan for kids. And
I think one of the reasons is because I'm I almost didn't make it myself.
I'm reluctant, reluctant to assume that I'm prepared to guide somebody else through
that. Do you think you'd have to relive your issues if I wouldn't know
how? And it's going to be a new issue, right, Yeah,
it's going to be like something I could. I could never imagine sending me
photos on my phone exactly, the failure of my imagination based on what I
went through. It's like one of those things is like, no, I'm
not having kids. I don't want to put anybody through that. I I
was almost casualty. I'm not. I'm not, you know. It's a
lot of fear there. Yeah, I also don't. I pursued other things
so so fully that apparent I am not, you know. But yeah,
So it's like it's good you can acknowledge that, though, sure, because
some people don't and they have kids, and they have kids anyway, and
they shouldn't have yeah, and we have some kids shouldn't be born. But
like some kids are brought in for with the wrong intentions. Who who knows
how how these things happen? You know, I mean, I mean I
look at myself sometimes I think, Wow, when you were eleven years old,
you were basically on the like the serial killer path, Like how did
you get off of that? Oh guitar? Oh, that was a close
call, Like like wait, wait a minute, what made you think serial
killer pop? And what why? Is? Oh? I was so such
a dark little kid after the sort of like rougher stuff of you know,
traumatic events. Yeah, I can tell you it was. Ah, I'm
a I'm a sexual abuse survivor, and I uh, I never told anybody
until I was in my thirties. Just imagine being in young mind being shaped
almost permanently by by the worst betrayal or the kind of thing, and and
you're uh and it's you know, being a male and sort of cis ish,
you know, is back then was like you could tell anybody that,
like, you know, no fucking way. And then you get to the
point where you haven't, and later in life you're like, I'm much more
comfortable not talking about it, you know, But you're fucked. You're completely
your your approach to shit is as wrong as it can get. You just
don't know it, and you just have been kind of trudging along trying to
be normal when you're not, like, you know, trying to just like
everyone assumes everybody is normal, right, so you just get on it.
No, there's no normal, but there's there are there are versions of right,
there are versions of not normal that are like way more toxic than others.
Right. So so that was it for me. It was like,
you know, uh, I was just very very dark kid like way dark.
My mother actually referred to it as like my like she referred to it
as my black period where I was just like I wasn't a goth or anything
like that. I just didn't talk like I was just like shut off,
so so shut off. I was just so shut off all through high school.
What got you through that or what not? That got you through it?
But it was only one There was only one effective distraction, and it
was playing guitar every Saturday and Sunday. Yeah. Yeah, I went to
a school. I went to a boys school that wasn't an hour and a
half commute from my local town. Okay, right, So I was on
the train for three hours a day and I was essentially from the age of
thirteen, I was like a New York City commute commuter. Yeah yeah,
and it was three hours of homework when you got home if you didn't do
it on the train. Doing your homework on the train was risky because there
was construction workers and other people who were like, it was this rich kid
on with the tie on the train, you know. So even though it
was like the majority of people who went to my high school, their parents
were cops and firemen. But it was like just just the guitar, always
guitar, always guitar. First it was ac DC when I was ten eleven,
twelve thirteen, and then Metallica and then Rush and Print and more complicated
stuff, and it's very different, so hard, so hard to play print
songs. I remember trying to figure out Raspberry Beret on the guitar forever and
not getting it. Dire straits. But like the control exercise of teaching myself.
I didn't want lessons. I took lessons for three months with a really
nice guy, but I was like, there's something wrong with this. I
want this back. So I took the control of teaching myself how to play
guitar in this sort of like bubble of like if you're not in control of
your life, you don't feel like your control of your own body. Even
then you're kind of like in a place where you have to have some sort
of you have to exercise control over something. And that was for me his
guitar, because you stuff produced all the music and everything. Yeah yeah,
so I'm controlling. I love to be in control of everything. Yeah yeah,
when it comes to my podcasting, I mean yeah, yeah. So
it was like it was like that. It was like that was the distraction
or the positive distraction that got me to a different places. I felt you
could feel like total self satisfaction at having figured out how Angus actually plays riff
raff. That was so much more important to me than anything else. It
was like the most this other world. It was like a transcendent importance,
which no, how did you learn that, because it is before you can
just go on the internet and just look at the colds. I paused the
tape cassette, Ye rewind every thirty ten seconds and nope, nope, nope,
by note, nope, by note. Every time you met him.
No, I had the chance to meet him. We were on the same
label in two thousand and two and They played a show at Roselamp Ballroom,
which was like a twenty five hundred capacity club in New York City in two
thousand and two, and I got a ticket from our A and R guy
at the time at Columbia Records. I will forever owe him. But they
fucking destroyed the place. They hung their true their arena, not arena arena,
PA a twenty five hundred club. So these huge arrays are hanging down
to the hang do you hear me right now? I wore ear plugs the
whole time, and they opened with Helen in a Bad Place to Be,
So for me, that was my favorite ACDC song. Just ripped my ear
plugs out right away and I was like, oh no, no, right
back, hen No, there was no cameraphone. I didn't have a cameraphone
yet, so so I did properly in just two thousand and two. Prior
to you know, cameraphones were around, but they were garbage like you would
never you know, back when you had to pipe for a text message.
Yeah no video, there was no video. Yeah right then, I think
I had a next tell. I had a nextel hip pager. Yeah,
two way, next heel pager. Snake. Yeah, yeah, neat old
stuff. Well, so I got into the meet and greet right, and
I can't understand. Sorry, I was Angus for Halloween in nineteen eighty five
and again in nineteen eighty six. That's kind of kid I was. I
was like, no, this is good enough costume. I'm sticking with it.
And uh, the door swings Over're in the meet and greet area as
this like sort of this like staging area for people who were in the meet
and greet. There's only about twenty people who actually were in the meet and
greet, and uh, the door to the dressing room area swings open,
and I see Cliff with his knee with his leg up against the wall.
And as it's the door swinging back, I see Angus walk out into the
hallway like with Cliff, and I went, nope, really I left,
Yeah, I left. I left because I wanted to keep him where he
was like in like on that stage like so good, like so like so
awesome. I didn't I didn't have anything to say room the teenage doorback,
guy, I really love you, I sang about Iron Maiden, but I
you know you well no, no, no, no, no. It
was like the pretense for being there, like why are you here? You
know? And the reason I was here is because we're on the same label.
I didn't feel like telling him that. I didn't feel like saying any
of that ship to him. If you saw him at a super Michael,
would you say hello? If I thought it wouldn't make him feel weird,
I might, But look, he's just a guy, right. Neil Pierce
talks about this and in these interviews that he did when he was alive,
he loved Keith Moon, but he would never hang out at Keith Moon's hotel
waiting for him to come outside, right, And it's like whether or not
Angus knows that he taught me how to play guitar, like my initial everything
about my pentatonic scales and which technique is, Yeah, my earliest technique is
only Angus. The teenage doorback technique is sort of a Mark Knopfler hybrid.
But but my earliest everything is Angus Young. It's the initial, the first
lessons the grammar school guitar is Angus Young. And I don't know how to
tell somebody that you know that sounded like an obsessed with that sounded like a
like like you're angus. Your neurons shaped my neurons right, like for better
or worse, like whatever happened. That's that's why, that's who I am.
And it's almost like I want to tell me the story that and it
means so much to you. But he's headed a million times before as well.
Yeah, and who cares? Right in the end, I think the
only person who maybe understands is is Axel Rose got to sing with them,
you know, and probably gets it. The two new guys in the band,
they have a new bass player, new drummer, and they just announced
the tour of Europe. Yeah, possibly next year Australia again. Oh man,
Yeah, I'm waiting for New York. I want to see him at
Madis Square Garden again. Actually they probably they probably wouldn't play the garden.
I saw it. The last time I saw them was twoy and sixteen with
Axel at Madison Square Garden. Yeah. Wow, And I was surprised.
Axel did a really good job. He's straightened himself out. He really did
a great job. Man, he killed it. It was obvious to me
that at some point in Axel's life he learned everything from Bond. At some
point bond was his most important sort of focus and because he got it right.
Can't get that right unless that's true. Unless you burn those neuropaths when
you were a kid, you can't do that stuff, you know. So
I yeah, that's that's why. That's why I didn't want to talk to
him about bullshit. Do you dwell on it? No? I know I
made the right decision. Yeah, if professional context ever puts us in the
same room again, it might be different, but only if I feel like
I'm not going to weird him out, because it's just it's just it's I
don't know. I don't want to weird him out. Yeah, I don't
want him to think something of me, But you let me that you ever
think in it. I think maybe maybe he'll just forget who I am in
an instant. But but I you know, I just I like him where
he is. Do you dwell on anything from Teenage Peg? Not from teenage
Starpeck? No got that one right, it did? I feel good about
that one. There are things about the first record that I like, As
I said, like feel too angry for me these days, But that record
is is what it is and couldn't have been anything else. Yeah, and
uh and dirt Peg is you just smile when you listen to it? I
smile. Yeah. I love playing that song. It just takes me back
to a so when I was just happy. Yeah, I mean I'm not
happy. I'm happy now, but it's just it's the nostalgia and it's just
it's a feel good story and it's just kind of a smile. Yeah.
I'm super happy that that happened. I have a career in music, and
that's to me was like this. I remember watching Angus when I was ten,
thinking if I can do any version of this, any version of this,
I'll be okay. Yeah, And maybe that's the distraction I was talking
about, and not the guitar, but but the but the point is only
that, like I look forward to playing that song every night, because I
said, you have a get sick of it, but you don't, No,
never, you can't get sick of it because when it's when it's the
song, you can't be sick of it. We're lucky that way because a
lot of bands from our generation, they had like a cover that they did
or this song that was again our guy's idea, or is a co write.
It's not necessarily their identity song. Tanage Starback is my identity song that
I've worked on for four years and I'm still proud of it. And it's
in four years for this song. Yeah, man, I had that riff
when I was in high school. Really yeah, I was messing around with
that riff all through the colas. When you call the first time you strummed
it the idioh Man so early, so early. I had that riff so
long ago that I probably played it on a Gibson SG that I had when
I was thirteen. It's like Frank Pixies, he comes your man. He
wrote that when he's like fourteen. Yeah, you know, I didn't write
the song, no, but he had the idea of the song, right.
I think he wrote it later, but he could in his head.
I had the riff, an idea of it. Yeah, I had that
riff and and I put the put the song together in my voice, together
with it my finding my voice and learning how to sing it all from like
ninety five to ninety nine. What was it originally? What do you mean?
What was it original? So when you were originally strumming it, what
were you singing a well? So, first of all, it's not strummed,
it's finger from right. But but that that in my head, it
was just a cool guitar part. It was just like a skill on the
guitar that I felt was like, Okay, I've never heard this. I've
never heard anybody do this. You're trying to be original eventually on the guitar.
You're trying to be originally. It's hard. It's really hard. You're
like, you're like, who am I? Why can't Why don't I have
original thoughts? Like you know, and and then eventually you kind of like
you accidentally have original thoughts or synesthesia happens when you're sort of crisscrossing your senses
you're smelling a taste or you're seeing a a sound or something like that,
you know, and that becomes this you know, incepted moment. Right you
can like the first time and go down bong. Right, that's it right
there? You did it, like you figured it out, and can you
recall what was in your mind? Was it excitement? Was it? Well?
So, having had the riff for a while and been sort of cool
with like, Okay, I can write my own guitar parts. I'm a
guitarist, you know, that lasted for decade even more, you know.
And then I was twenty two and I was in just got out of college
or whatever, maybe a little earlier than that, and I'm contemplating, like
no, no, no, no, no, Like you need to sing.
You need to create a story, a short story, narrative with characters,
and you need to develop them, and you need to like this needs
to be a little novella and has to make sense, and you have to
feel good about it. It has to identify you, you know, you
have to. It has to be an identity song. I know that Rush
has Tom Sawyer and a CDC has Back in Black, and there's sort of
like songs in E at the bottom of the guitar, you know, the
open string that are sort of these foundational, like rock songs. It's like
I wanted an E. I wanted to have this that's my E riff,
you know, and then build around it this sort of short story about somebody
who doesn't stand a chance. Yeah yeah, yeah, So that was the
that was where it came from. That's where a narrative came from. And
when I actually got the first melody and the lyric, I was lying on
my futon in Queens at that apartment that I was talked about earlier, where
I was paying two hundred fifty dollars a month, and then my my one
room was identified by the blankets that were hanging. I didn't have a door.
It was just gets yeah, exactly. And I I was lying on
that futon thinking about Metallica and Cyndi Lauper at the same time and just sort
of daydreaming on not even their melodies or their music, just on there.
How the way that they made me feel as records made me feel like just
kind of like letting it simmer in the stew, kind of of feeling emotions,
like without the melody in and while playing that, and then I went,
her name is Noel. I have a dream about Sima. I started
the first verse lying down on my back with the guitar and st After the
first thirty seconds of having repeated it to myself, I sat up and I
turned on the four track and I started to get it down. That's exciting,
yeah, and that and that was that was how Actually I didn't even
have a four track. Then I had a dictaphone. Wow. Yeah,
it was on a dictaphone, little tape cassette dictaphone lost that recording machinery somewhere
in the buried in the world. I think with the masters. The masters,
No, no, no, that that never went to the record label.
That little tape is mine and you still got it. You definitely still
I think it's still there somewhere. Yeah, you gotta gotta unearthed it and
get a dick to phone and play it back then maybe the original yeah yeah,
yeah, you know you you know, you're not thinking that at the
time. You're really like, you're somewhere else. You're like, no,
no, no, no, fuck the tape. I want to where this
needs I need twenty four tracks, you know with expensive microphones. No,
don't show this to anybody. They was sitting there listen to and play right,
you know, right, Yeah, everyone's trying to get bit a million
dollars for Paul McCartney's first like real to Real demo. Yeah no, I
they didn't think of that that way, but I was. I was obsessed
with getting it down because I wanted to play it back to myself and play
along with it, pick up where it leaves off, that kind of thing,
like get another step in the in the puzzle, you know, piece
of the puzzle, and eventually I had verse one, verse one, pre
chorus one, chorus one, verse two. Uh oh no, no,
no, I stopped. I stopped at chorus one. I didn't know what
to say about verse two for a while, and then I got verse two
as soon as I got to feel like I needed to turn violent a little
bit. Verse two. Is that the controversial one? Yes? Yeah,
that was the one that the label was upset about. Yeah. They tried
to get me to change it. Honestly, I was, like I said,
ten or eleven, trying to source an uncut version of the song.
It was difficult. It's funny treasure. Yeah. I felt that way about
a c DC's version of School Days when I was your age or the time
yet. And I was lucky because my parents rented a room to an Australian
student called Lou and she brought me back the Australian TNT release which had school
Days on it, and I was like, I'm the only one and he
probably were one of the other ones. I was probably the only person on
Long Island who had a copy of that. Yeah, but that that line,
though I don't the only way I first heard it. I hired Loser
from the video shop and they played the young cut version at the start when
he's walking to the apartment. That was the first one ever actually heard you
say the words he would a gun to school. Yeah. Yeah, the
links that I would go to just to hear you say that word. It
was like taboo. You can't hear him say that word. And I finally
got to hear you say it. At the time. You will appreciate the
irony. They wanted me to change it because Walmart didn't carry foul language records.
But Walmart did sell guns, so you could get the gun, but
you couldn't get the song that mentions the gun. You can buy them,
you can't use them. It was a time in America. You can buy
them, you can use them on each other, but you can't talk about
them in music. I've always was it. I've always wondered because in the
clip you sort of roll your eyes when you say it. You roll your
eyes. I roll my eyes in every take with more. They picked the
one where I was the least sarcastic looking. Is it because you knew it
was going to be edited anyway? Yeah, I already knew it was edited.
They were playing. I was playing along to the edited version, okay,
and every time I made sure I did that. Yeah, fuck you
guys. I'm glad that's the reason. Yeah. Yeah. And our guy
actually liked that, Kevin Patrick, he was like, oh you oh,
that's great that you're just sticking it to him. Yeah, because it wasn't
entirely his choice either. We're talking about the whole entire apparatus of a multinational
media corporation and their retail outlets that goes beyond the A and R office.
You know, did you have much say in the film clip? Not?
No, not really, But I knew that they were taking the narrative and
that I was kind of okay with that. Yeah. Yeah, because Jason
and you know, on set with you because you're playing at the bowl right
at the end, at the at the prom. My original idea for it
was that we weren't at the prom, that we were outside at a bonfire
in the rain with playing for the kids who didn't go to the prom.
I felt like that would be cooler. But but they I think they did
a good job. It was just always on you know, It's just it's
just it's such a big part of that childhood. Yeah, it's cool,
it's cool. I like I said, we're really lucky, Like we're lucky
at a bunch of idiots whoever came out of Long Island. Me in particular,
because I was unprocessed, you know, damage at the time, and
I was starting fights with everybody who disagreed with me and trying to keep that
control, you know, like trying to make sure nobody damaged anything in my
name, you know, or put something out in my name. That was
something I didn't want to be behind. Plus burned. Yeah, I've been
burned really bad. I knew that. I knew they were scombacks. I
was convinced of it. I didn't have to be taught, you know,
it's like you're the enemy. Yeah, how'd you cope with the fame?
So it was just like overnight, because I know in America it wasn't necessarily
it evolved to that, but in Australia you were just like huge times.
We never felt it. And in Australia, well, because we were here
for a short period of time and it was work, work, work,
work, work, and then we had to go home and home nothing's going
on, so it still nothing was going on when it was a hit here.
No, no, it had come and gone in the States. The
American record label was sort of I remember them being sort of embarrassed about another
territory getting it right, but still kind of like, Okay, this is
good, you're earning money. And and then it blew up in England and
that's when it really got weird with the territorial pissing that was going on between
the two companies, the English office in the American we were assigned to new
E and our guy the American side wrestled it back for the video for a
little respect if you recall that video as Brittany Murphy in it. And then
that was a second hit in the UK, but not here. I don't
think I think Here's much. Leroy was a second sing was the next one,
right, which we filmed here in Melbourne in Melbourne at the High Five,
and then we and then when we were over in England, it was
it blew up really hard over there, and so much so that we were
like playing the Prince's Trust party in the park for like Prince Charles and stuff
is crazy. We were in between like meat Loaf and Beyonce. So it
was it took us on a ride. And then the third single became this
humongous fight and this is where ET comes back. The third single this entire
time was this, He's just waiting for me to tell this story. I
see you, I see you. E T get you home soon enough.
Puppet right, live sized puppet staring directly at me. I'll have you know,
like strategic position, strategically, no chance of me avoiding the eye contact
with e T. Anyway. Uh God, he's still cute though he is.
Yeah, But but the the video for that song, our third single,
Want to Be Gangster, has an ET suited man in it, and
was it designed to look like a or just came out that way. I
don't know, man, I don't know. But the puppet, like,
yeah, I was terrified. So let me say I'll say this. The
guy who did the teenage story Bag video also did they Want to Be Gangster
video? Right, So we trusted him, and the pitch that I got
him, I still would trust him. But the pitch that I got was
see, even George Lucas gets it wrong sometimes right, and it's Pielberg.
So if this is gonna be a cross between Brother from Another Planet and two
thousand and one space obusely, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna do
this story of like, uh, this person who doesn't belong in this society
kind of thing. Right, Well, you saw what we got and was
it was quite a far away off from either one of those films or any
of these intent behind them. At what point during the shoot did you go,
I'm not sure it's exactly what we had in minds. Right off the
bat, they had these guys like these solo guys dressed up. Yeah,
Like I kind of thought it was racist. I was like, what is
this what? You know? Like it's all out of your hands, by
the way, because the money spent, you know, and you're rolling.
Everyone's like, yeah, this is it, man, you really got you
really got this right now. It's so two thousand by the way, Yeah
yeah, it's really two thousand and and I I I worried. We worried
openly as a band on the set with each other during the filming, like
what is this gonna look like? You know? I don't know, I
don't know, man, Like the you know, the car with the hydraulics,
it's the six or four dropping down with like I just this is not
what we it's not what we wrote, it's not the song we wrote.
We wrote a song about a Long Island guy who's like, who doesn't get
it? You know? So it worked out the way it worked out.
And I've had people say to me that, and I disagree that the video
is so bad it's good, and I don't have to push back on that.
I think it's just so bad it's bad. Do you not blind to
audiology? But something can be so bad that it's good or just this in
particular, I understand why people can fetish something that is that was so horrible,
the way that the room, the film that are you familiars right,
things of that nature. But sometimes bad, it's just really badly bad,
playing bad, you know, regular bad. You know what it was was
we used to have every Saturday morning, my sister and I would get up
we watched the Rage Top fifty and it was the only way to watch unedited
film clips uncensored. But then some kind of gun for some reason. But
anyway, they had the Top fifty no commercial breaks. Was on the kind
of your PBS. It was at ABC. Oh yeah, and they just
play all the songs and it's want to big gangster film clip. It was
just this idea of this alien, was just the either image of it in
my mind, and it was before the Internet. And then like ten years
later, I was like, I remember this alien that looked like ET.
I don't know what it was from what a scene? All the time?
Was it Alpha? What was it? I've got a Google I'm like aliens
that looked like ET. I'm like, what is this? And then one
day popped up and I was like, that's the fucking alien. Yeah yeah,
yeah, it's bad news. It's bad news, very strange. A
lot of views on YouTube though, sadly money you know what you know it
was, you know, it broke my heart the most about that. When
we recorded it the previous August. We recorded it it Abby Rhodes Studios in
room two. We're Sergeant Power. It was made and Bruce Dickinson from Iron
Maiden rode his bike down from his house in London and sang on it.
That's Bruce Dickinson singing and ship yeah yeah, that's him. And I produced
a song in Abbey Road in that room on that gear, I took a
nap where Paul played the fucking blackbird guitar lick and did get did that song
like right to the entrance to the courtyard there, and I was so proud
and so happy that we had reshaped this song because I'm not gonna get into
it. But there were so many alternate versions that the an R guys wanted
that they had sent out to mixing engineers and you know, remixing engineers,
and everyone had this hair brain idea like, oh, this is gonna be
the one. One of them was. One of them was Dear Prudence,
like sampled underneath us, and I was like, I'm not releasing a sample
of deer Prudence in England. You can fucking forget it, like it's not
happening. It's not happening stops and they thought. They were like, oh,
it's a mata, man. You don't want to be rock star,
you don't want to play the game. I was like, fuck no,
no, hell no, man, I'd rather yeah, throw me in a
meat grinder, I read. But then so we got we we wrestled it
back and got brus On to want to be gangster, and we were so
proud of the recording. I'm still proud of the recording. The actual single
version is dope and and then we got this video stuck on us, and
I think that the the video was just sort of like the the vomit of
all of the bad feelings of of getting to that single, which was really
weird too, because we had had two successful ones and there was still all
this like gnarliness about who we were and what kind of music we were making,
so much so that there was an internal disagreement at the label that was
really intense between the American people and the and the UK people. We were
assigned a UK and our guy who was sort of a new metal dude,
which we weren't in any shape or form, and you know, it just
went weird, got weird in a hurry. Yeah. So with the UK
officers taking credit for the success of Teenage over there, oh, that was
a that was a big part of it. What it's like anytime they can
rub New York's nose and it like, we got this right and you fucked
it up. But people, it is people. What do you think it
was about the US audience that it just didn't take off the way that it
was delivered? And there was some radio shenanigans that I won't get into.
Okay, Yeah, that were like you could say that we were being kind
of used as a pawn in there in the larger game of the radio politics
in America and not necessarily for the good of the song or for our careers,
which those politics don't really exist anymore. It's all kind of faded now.
They'll find a new way to screw with people. But but I but
I but that particular version the you know, I know of this for a
fact. People that we worked with wound up testifying before Congress because of the
bullshit they really yeah, yeah it was it went it went big because this
doesn't It just blows my mind. It just wasn't a success in America.
I'm thinking the Teenage JEP the song that was like the song about generation almost
you know, like everyone loved it. Like I said, it's come around
now. One Direction had a big hand in that. Yeah, they tore
it in America to sold out stadiums and gave it to a whole new audience,
bigger audience than than radio has. And there's a lot of rock stars
who be too scared to let a band lop one Direction take their song because
of its one direction, right, they've got a huge audience. But well,
it's a boy band. So the way that that works is that they
can cover it. I have no saying whether or not they cover it.
That's called compulsory license. So you can't stop a cover. No, I
can't stop a cover if it's a dead cover. If it's just they do
the song the way that it is. You can't say anything no that they
have to pay me, okay, right, Like I'm you just can't say
you don't make it, right, I can't say don't make I can't stop
them. I can ask them politely and request that they not cover it if
I don't like it, but I can't stop them from doing it. I'll
cover is a cover, and if they change it that becomes an interpolation.
Then they need my permission, okay, right. So that they didn't change
anything, they went they went in on that song and they did a good
job and they loved they loved the song. I think those kids genuinely loved
the song. And I met them and talked to them about it and great
musicians. Yeah, yeah, amazing. Their band is so smoking. One
Direction band was the best best players in the country at the time. I
think for that age. Bracket still friends with those guys Josh and Sanda.
I played with you right on our bunch of our records. Yeah, yeah,
so you get styles on at some point. I think he's doing his
own thing. But but but yeah, I would love to have him on.
Yeah. Absolutely, he's a great singer. Yeah, he's got a
big depth of knowledge of music. I think for somebody who grew up when
he grew up. He's a guy like all of the Fleetwood mac chops and
like you know, he's he's a smart kid, great actor as well.
Yeah, he's good. Well, I've been holding you long enough me.
I was longer than I thought I was gonna be sorry about that. We
didn't talk about the episode too much. That's fun, is it cool?
Okay? Fun? Yeah? Yeah yeah, but like the one thing I
do want touch about the episode though, sure, the Homer b plood can
eat one of my ba plots of all one of the best side side show
literally a side show. He becomes a side show. Like that's and that's
that's conan, Like, let's make a side plot where Homer becomes a side
plot in his own side plot. We went fishing. Yeah, I really
felt for Marginal. I was like, man, you fucking kidnapped your wife
because you couldn't eat like all the food in the restaurant. You kidnapped your
wife and makes her sit next to him when he becomes the grotesque at the
end in the window. Yeah, he really good illustration of the maniacal the
madness of capitalism. If you get a freebie, you know you're gonna take
it to the place no one could imagine. We're in the wrong here,
though. I Mean, that's what I've always loved about this story. And
I'm like, it technically does say or you can eat. It does,
but but it doesn't say. It doesn't say make your wife sit there and
then be an accomplice in which is alleged to fish. But yeah, yeah
right, like like I mean, homs Homer's piece of ship, Like we
need we need to kind of come to terms with this a little bit because
I think that you were mentioning family guy. I think there are other shows
where the piece of shit Dad is kind of like let off the hook even
more and has become a normalized like you know, swinging a miss there people,
because we had this chance with like we know Homer is not that great,
you know, he's he's a failure. Basically, it's like he's not
doing the right thing. But then they throw moments out like you know,
they do it for her. When he cuts back to it's got funny episode
and Maggie makes three and it cuts to his because no photos of Maggie in
the in the album, right, and it cuts to all the photos of
Maggie in front of his workstations he's got because it says your heat, don't
forget your heat forever, and he's blocked the letters, so that just says,
do it for her with photos of Maggie. And you're like, fuck,
well, what are you confusing me? Because one minute he's an alcoholic,
next minute's doing this shit. You know, I mean, there's writers
doing this to you. You understand you're manipulating. It's a cartoon, right
right, right. Well, so to enlighten me, where is Maggie at
this point in the Simpsons arc, as in in what way? Like does
she exist? Well, she's she's there getting baby seated by Laura. Okay,
because I barely remember seeing her at all in this in this episode.
I think with these episodes, he kind of didn't tend to focus on Maggie
because he wanted the craziness, right Conan. Yeah, this is the more
granded Conan episode, but still you had to have that wacky side plot.
But Maggie, there's so much you can really do with Maggie. She just
has to sort of be a baby on the floor. She's always like pulling
the plug out of the dam. Yeah, you know, like she was
doing something. Yeah, but I still to this day quote that they could
have been me. Still, I still can't get past the beard of bees.
That just floored me. Man, It's so funny my two favors that
could have been me and the sigh. Yeah that was good. Yeah.
Yeah. The visit to Grandpa is a little We haven't talked about that at
all. That's an interesting one. Yeah, he wants he wants the dirt.
He wants to figure out how to do this. Bart's an operator.
Bart's not really a dirt bag. Bart's Bart's is kind of a scumbag like
his father is. Well. Yeah, Bart's a good kid at heart.
He just does He's just not sort of guided in the right way. He's
got a terrible sort of father figure. He's got terrible father figure. The
best. Yeah, I think that Bart's good side is the desire to not
let his mother down. I don't think it's from within. Yeah, I
think Bart Bart is probably on on the bad tracks and like like Homer,
you know, and he missed, he missed the smarts that Lisa has.
So you know, it can like it's a little sad. The sentences is
a bit sad all the time, but always sort of like pretty solid.
Yeah they try, they try, but they're not in the overly eighty style.
No, no, not the good times. Stir of bags told you
it was a fun chat. Honestly, how great was that? I know
we didn't necessarily talk about the Simpsons all that much, but who cares.
We cover so many topics and it was so weird. I'd never met Brendan
before, but as you were just sitting across me, hey, I'm just
thinking there, I feel like I've known this guy forever. We just connected
on so many levels, and yeah, it was just an absolute, absolute
delight to have him in the studio. So thank you Brendan for joining me,
and of course thank you guys for tuning into the show this week.
I hope you did enjoy listening to it as much as I did recording it
with the man himself, Brendan B. Brent Off Wits. As I said
at the start of this podcast, there are still a few remaining dates for
his solo accoustic tour with art from Evercley. You find those dates and tickets
available link for that is the description of this podcast. And we just show
be returning to Australia in April this year for the Pandemonium Festival. I think
there's four dates for that. Pre sale tickets go on sale on January twenty
second. I believe I'll chuck think for that inscription of this podcast as well.
But thank you all again for tuning into this this week's episode of four
Figured Discount. We shall be returning to our normal programming next week where Guy
Davis and I shall be reviewing the Boys of Bummer from season eighteen. So
the way there's going to be work going forward is now we're going to do
our season eighteen reviews of course, plus we're going to be doing having more
guests on the show too, just to chat about some more classic reviews and
just just have a bit of a banter, just have some fun. Check
things up a little bit here at four Figure Discount, I forget check out
all our other shows going down to South Park, the one about Friends,
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talking Sign for Speaking of the Hill tell us if you joun with the movie.
Guys, we do so many podcasts here at four figing a discount.
I love doing it. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be able to do
this for a living. I do not take it for granted. I do
not take it for granted the fact that you guys support us each and every
week as well. So thank you so much for continuing to support us here
at four figure discount. I hope you enjoyed my conversation here with Brendan B.
Brown of Waitus. Next week is The Boys of Bummer. But I
am Dando signing off and I'll catch you guys next week. Cheers, s