An Overdue 60 Songs Mailbag

It’s been [redacted] years since our last mailbag episode, and Rob is finally back to answer all your burning questions about the ’90s, 2000s, and more. He’s joined by Bandsplain’s Yasi Salek to discuss everything from Jason Mraz to Weird Al to chain restaurants. Tune in to hear their responses to your queries (as well as Yasi’s plea for a Fuel episode). (00:00) Intro with Yasi Salek(07:57) Opening the mailbag: What is a “goth”?(17:25) Which songs explain the 2020s so far?(28:36) Which episode would you do over?(35:26) Thoughts on Weird Al and regrettable hot takes(57:48) Favorite eras of music and ’90s artists Rob’s grown to love(01:11:08) Questions about chain restaurants, surprises from the podcast, and living in Ohio(01:30:48) Final question: Are you scared of Swifties? Power up your play with Nintendo Switch 2. CONNECTInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/60songsthatexplainthe90sTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@60songsthatexplainthe90s Host: Rob HarvillaGuest: Yasi SalekProducers: Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, Justin Sayles, and Olivia Crerie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:12Speaker 00

  Hello, friends. A quick note to say that 60 Songs is now available on YouTube. We made it. Success. That was easy. You can now watch full episodes of this show on YouTube, and you can also check out our new social media accounts on Instagram and TikTok, all using the name 60 Songs That Explain the 90s. We have heard your cries of despair and confusion, and we have therefore embraced various popular online platforms. So, watch us on YouTube. Check us out on TikTok and Instagram. I'm on Blue Sky and Twitter still, under the name Harvilla, H-A-R-V-I-L-L-A, but maybe stay out of it. I don't know. We'll put all the links for these in the episode description as well.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening and/or watching, and we'll see you on the internet.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  This episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s is presented to you by Nintendo. Some things stick around for a reason. A great song, a favorite movie, a game everyone wants another turn at. The Nintendo Switch 2 system fits right into that tradition. With two controllers included in games like Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bonanza, and EA Sports FC 26, there's something for every age and every mood. Whether you're at home or on the go, it's easy to keep the good stuff in rotation. Learn more at nintendo.com/nintesowswitch2. Games and systems sold separately. Games rated E to E10+.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Hello there and welcome to a mailbag episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s Calling the 2000s. It has been quite a while since we did this. I meant to look up exactly how long, and I didn't. So, I'm going to say two years and hope that that is basically accurate. We have not done this since I went on video. I will say that. And so, this will be my first mailbag with me looking directly into a teleprompter. As I answer your questions, thank you so much to everybody for reaching out, for sending in questions, comments, grips. My guest today will not be a surprise to many people who addressed questions directly to her, just assuming she would be there, and they were, of course, correct.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  Yasi Salek has joined us once again, host of Band's Plane, queen of the podcasting realm. Yasi, thank you so much for gracing us with your presence.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Rob, what a pleasure and an honor to be here on your... It's not biannual, because that means twice a year, right? What is... How do you say it? When it's every two years, bicentennial.

• 3:56Speaker 00

  Isn't biannual the same?

• 3:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Bicentennial is not accurate.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Are you sure?

• 4:01Speaker 00

  Okay, all right.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Is it not?

• 4:03Speaker 00

  This is the first one in 200 years. It feels like 200 years. It is the spiritual bicentennial of our previous mailbag.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  That's how people feel when you go on break. They feel that it's the bicentennial podcast.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  Apparently, they do, yes. Eons pass.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  How are you doing, Yasi? How are you feeling? What's new in your universe? Is there anything you'd like to tell us about yourself before we embark on this project?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Is there anything I'd like to tell you about myself?

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Like a workout routine? What's the workout routine? Like, what are you... Are you... Are we bench pressing? Like, what's going on workout-wise, health-wise?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Sometimes we're bench pressing. Today, it was military press, which is the one that goes overhead. And then, I don't know why it's called that, support the troops, I guess. And then, the other lift we did today was a sumo deadlift. So, that was today's workout. It wasn't...

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Who is "we"? Do you have like a spotter?

• 5:06Speaker 01

  No, I go in a little group. It's a little fitness class. It's really lovely.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  What else do I want to tell you about myself? Well, Band's Plane is in the midst of our indie sleaze arc. I don't know when this comes out. Hopefully, it'll still be indie sleaze arc. And I, much to my...

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Two days.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Two days. Okay, perfect. We'll definitely be right up in it. Much to my shock and awe, you've not done "House of Jealous Lovers" by The Rapture?

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's on the long list. That would be a good... Are you doing The Rapture? Can you say that?

• 5:40Speaker 01

  We're doing perfect song, "House of Jealous Lovers."

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Which will also be out this week. Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  It is an objectively perfect song.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Look forward to that little crossover to a song that made "Explains the 2000s" on Band's Plane.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  We got a question, like, do you agree with it being called indie sleaze? Did you call it that at the time? I think it's pretty well-established that this is an entirely retroactive term.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Totally post-facto, but I'm gonna say something.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  I've come around.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  I've surrendered.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  You're pro indie sleaze.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  I'm just like, first of all, who cares? Like, who cares? Like, you know what I mean? And secondly, like, it's kind of a pretty good descriptor. Like, it was kind of indie, and it was a little more sleazy in many senses.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  It sticks.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  And I was like, it's not like Joy Division went around calling themselves post-punk, you know? And like, no one, like, sniffs their nose at the term post-punk. Just like, let it go. It's also, it's already stuck. We're not getting rid of it. So, I think it's either just...

• 6:49Speaker 00

  That's a good point. Let's, you know...

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Get on board or, you know?

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Just be raging against the machine. Yeah, that's right. Indie sleaze is here to stay.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  I'm really thrilled to do this with you. I can't wait to see what your adoring fans are demanding to know of you. We do mailbags all the time because I'm lazy.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  So much indie rock. That's all right. This is not lazy. This is not a lazy process. This is important engagements with listeners. You know, it does give production a break from cutting 50 song clips and 10,000 words, you know, on blank, blank, blankety-blank artist. You know, there is that element to it, but I do think it is important.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  It's for the real heads. This is for the real heads.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  That's right, for the real heads.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Okay, well, Rob, do you want to get started?

• 7:43Speaker 00

  I do, I do. Thank you again for doing this, Yasi.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, it's again...

• 7:46Speaker 00

  I wouldn't want to do this.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Couldn't be more of an honor. Well, first off, we have a question from Dr. Jerry Taco. And before we get to his question, I would love to ask you if you think he is a medical doctor or maybe he has a PhD? Do you... A Chinese medicine doctor? Like, what kind of doctor do you think Jerry Taco is?

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Okay, first of all, you're in the wrong doc, but we're gonna roll with it. Second of all, Dr. Jerry Taco. Dr. Jerry Taco. I don't know if this is a medical doctor. I'm gonna guess a psychiatrist. I just, I get that vibe. You know, I think it's... I don't think this is a... We're not dealing with a brain surgeon here, but we are dealing with a trained professional.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Maybe he's a chiropractor. Okay, I'm so sorry. I was in the wrong doc, and I'm really...

• 8:37Speaker 00

  That's fine.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  And Jerry...

• 8:38Speaker 00

  It's all right.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Jerry Taco, at least you got your name talked about. Let's get to the correct doc.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  Let's do it.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  With love and respect to Dr. Jerry Taco.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  No, no, I go ahead. Let's... We've committed to Dr. Jerry Taco, whose question is, what is a Goth?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Dr. Jerry Taco would like to know what a Goth is. I trust you more than me to answer this question, but I did... That's unfair of me to make you answer the question. I... What is a Goth? A Goth?

• 9:12Speaker 00

  These are my friends who I play

• 9:13Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's not like

• 9:14Speaker 00

  every week.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Is it not kind of, I feel like this person must be young. I mean, goths are people

• 9:23Speaker 00

  No.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  mostly coming from the, no, they're not people. No, they are not people.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  No, they're not.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  They are

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  ghouls and goblins rooted, you know, they, they come from the eighties sort of post punk world of, I'll tell you what, I saw multi generational goths, which was one of the most beautiful visions of my life a couple of weeks ago when I went and saw The Cure in Scotland. And there was truly

• 9:52Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  of all ages and sizes. For example, I saw a man walk through the crowd wearing a full, from the back, he just looked like he would be your investment banker. He had a polar fleece

• 10:04Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  and some chinos and a like

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Sensible.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  cropped haircut, turned around, just a smear of red lipstick.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Really incredible.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  It's a tasteful, yeah, yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  A subdued goth. Yeah, they were black. They wore dramatic makeup. Their hair is often black.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  They're sad and or gloomy and or angry.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  For the melancholy, the, the more mysterious and melancholic shades of life. That's what a goth is, Dr. Jerry Taco.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  There we go. God bless you, Dr. Jerry Taco.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm on the right dock now. You guys have to apologize for the mishap.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  It's all right. That, that was perfect, actually. That, that works.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Listen, sometimes God works in mysterious ways, like we said.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  That's right. That's right.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  This question

• 11:02Speaker 00

  as the case may be. Yes.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Is from Lindsay, who may or may not be a doctor. She didn't specify. Dear Rob and crew, I have recently succumbed to making a grave mistake reading the comments.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Don't do it. I'm always surprised when a version of, quote, this song doesn't explain the 2000s is made. It happens frequently. At this point, deep into this glorious podcast concept, how do you understand, quote, songs that explain? And what do you make of folks who seem to be missing the point anytime a song doesn't fit their experience? Thank you for all that you share with us. And thanks to the whole crew for bringing this show to life. It's been an excellent companion in a hard season.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  There's also a PS that says you cannot have Hanif Abdurrahim on enough. He's the best. And that is

• 11:53Speaker 00

  He is the best.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  evergreen statement of all time. We would all love Hanif to come on every episode of our program. Every time.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  We ask him frequently and he always, he always comes. He is the mayor of Columbus. Absolutely. Absolutely.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  So Rob, you read the comments? You read every single comment every day?

• 12:11Speaker 00

  No.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  That's your part of your morning practice is to read the comments?

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Okay, yes. In lieu of morning pages, yes, I just, I just read the comments and then reflect on them for 15 minutes. I do not, I told you to stay off Reddit and I stay off Reddit. I do not ordinarily read the comments, but I had, there was a blip there for three or four episodes where I did sort of realize that Spotify has comments now. And I was looking at it and I was observing that. I think there's something interesting about the 2000s when culture sort of atomizes a little bit. Like I, I've gone back and forth and I think you have as well, like whether the monoculture ever existed, you know, in the eighties and the nineties. But I, I do think

• 12:55Speaker 00

  there's something about the 2000s where there are more likely to be songs that are very important to me and very important to a lot of people that other people had no experience of. Like if you didn't go the pitchfork route as like a rock enthusiast in the 2000s, then even someone like TV on the radio or Wolf Parade, you know, these bands are very, very important and very fantastic. Like they, you, they don't resonate the way like Smashing Pumpkins, you know, did in the nineties. I, I don't mean to single her out, but I, Joanna Newsom was quite vexing to some people. Like I've never heard of this person. How does this person explain the 2000s?

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Like et cetera, et cetera. And so I, I am not purposely trying to antagonize people. And I, I did start the show with the idea of not being like super inside baseball rock critic. You know what I'm saying? Like, I like that the show ideally has sort of a universal feel, but I do think the 2000s is interesting in that you get these songs that are very, very, very, very important to a smaller, but still very important group of people that are completely unknown, you know, to a wider audience. There's more of a silo thing. Like, and I always just assume this is the internet, right? Like working as intended, like where we're starting to go off on our own

• 14:24Speaker 00

  journeys, you know, and there, there's always going to be, you know, like the Taylor Swift's of the world, you know, the big pop songs, but I, especially with rock, it feels like once you get beyond, you know, the Strokes, White Stripes of it all, you know, that there aren't a lot of rock bands that everyone agrees on, you know, or that everyone is 100% aware of. And I, I don't want to antagonize people and like, if I'm doing too much indie, like I will keep that in mind. I do kind of reserve the right to do whatever I want to some degree. Like, I'm really glad I did Joanna Newsom. And I do, to get to the actual question, like 60

• 15:04Speaker 00

  songs that explain the nineties is now an inaccurate title in like two or three ways. And I, I don't want to be the guy whose title, whose podcast title is just a lie, but I am that person. And, and explain is doing a whole lot of work and is not maybe meant to be taken like as a dictionary definition, literal type thing. I, I, what's, what interests me about the 2000s is that everyone is starting to have their own very specific experience of the decade.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Can I just say like, you're such a nice person?

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Thank you. I, I, I did one, I, one of the ways that I think you and I work well together in this format is that you are free to be less of a nice person if you want to be. I, I get it. Like, I understand.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  I do. I do look to antagonize people.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Who's, who's podcast is this? Is it yours? No, go make one then. I don't know. Do you know what I mean? Several things.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  I know what you mean.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  You're not legally mandated to listen. This is not a government provided service.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  It's not the post office.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  There are other podcasts.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  No.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Keep it moving.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  As opposed to, there are. Yes, yes.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  How I feel. And leave, leave Rob, leave my Rob alone. He can do whatever he wants.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Valid perspectives.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Okay. Next question.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Well, I guess you already kind of addressed this, but from Ben said, any response for the haters?

• 16:46Speaker 00

  That's a, that's a callback to a previous episode. That's a Zach Baron quote, actually. That is the last question from a Zach Baron interview conducted in The Village Voice.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Am I now on a third wrong document? Or is this still?

• 17:00Speaker 00

  No, that's it. That, no, you are on, you are now, there were only two documents to prevent exactly that occurrence. You are now in the correct document.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  We love Zach Baron on this.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  We do love Zach Baron. He just interviewed Tom Cruise and I hope that he asked Tom Cruise, do you have any message for the haters? Cause I'm imagining that Tom does.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would hope so. You know what I think?

• 17:24Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  The haters, the haters are great. The haters are part of the ecosystem. The haters are actually unpaid employees working overtime to make us more famous. And if that's what they would love to do with their time.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  As, as you can tell, both Rob and I set out from a very young age to become famous. At the very least, they're raising our profiles. So

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  go off haters. Enjoy your, enjoy your unpaid labor.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  Is it Eric Adams, the disgraced mayor of New York City who was like, the haters are your waiters at the buffet of success? Am I, I'm doing that from memory, but I'm pretty sure.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  I'm really sorry, but period.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  That's gold.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  The haters are the waiters at your buffet of success. Here's a, there's a small issue with that because by, by definition, a buffet doesn't have waiters because you serve yourself, but we don't need to like

• 18:24Speaker 00

  That's, they bring drinks. I know they bring drinks and they take away your plates. Yeah. The metaphor.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  It's a little wonky, but okay. This question

• 18:33Speaker 00

  Close enough.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  This question is from Colin. You've talked about the monoculture a bit over the years, more so in the nineties episodes. Obviously, the rise of the internet and digital music and the blogosphere led to the monoculture's fracture, at least when it comes to music. As we near the 60th song that explains the nineties, colon the 2000s, do you think it's even possible to do 60 songs that explain the tens or even the twenties? To me, it seems like genres have become so hyper-specific and outside of the Taylor Swift of the world, there are not a lot of songs which really define either decade. As you get into the twenties, there are a lot of songs that maybe explain the culture. They seem to arise via TikTok, Instagram algorithms and are often decades old. See Running Up That Hill. Do those songs, even decades old by the time they're trending,

• 19:19Speaker 01

  quote, explain the twenties? Do they explain the twenties more than music that is actually being released in the twenties? So like 12 questions in there.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  That was a lot of questions. This is a great question though, because yes, I, I do think that as, as we progress, as the, as our whole lives become internet, I, I do think that we get more and more siloed, you know, there are fewer and fewer songs. There are still, but there are fewer and fewer songs, artists, whatever, that we all agree on are all Exposed to constantly, we are all continually siloed. And so explained, quote unquote, comes to mean very different things to very different people. Like it comes to only mean something to you. Like if I'm thinking about the 2020s, then the Phoebe Bridger song, I Know The End, I think is the single song that explains the 2020s for me, just because that,

• 20:14Speaker 00

  but both because of her and because like that is COVID to me. Like that song is very, very explicitly, you know, the feeling of, of being alone, but like together with everybody alone in this sort of terrifying situation like I, but that's, you know, I'm gonna go see her at a, at a hockey arena tomorrow night, but still she is not someone as famous as ubiquitous as like Pearl Jam was in the 90s or whatever, you know what I mean? Like it is really interesting to me how the made up word explains, you know, means a very different thing from the 90s to 2000s. But even, you know, a huge difference between the 2000s and the 2020s.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I wonder how much in the 2020s you, you have to really get into pop music. I mean, I got, the person kind of hinted at it, but like, you know, Charli XCX, Brat is very explanatory of at least a certain part of the 2020s. You know, there's a lot of pop music that I think is pretty defining and also hip hop.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah, of course.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  You know, shifted.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  When all those celebrities sang Imagine All The People together on, on the,

• 21:31Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Zoom call during COVID.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Gal Gadot, right.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  That's probably the peak song that explains the 20s to me personally.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  I think you're right. And there we go. That's a, that's an old song that explains the 2020s better than any song from you. You, you see, that's why you're here.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Okay. Next question is from Nicholas Earl. Huge fan. Quick question. Gorgeous, gorgeous set of words. I love your descriptions of physical media from back in the day and was curious, back in the day is so like heart wrenching to me in that sentence. Do you know?

• 22:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, it's tough.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Knife in my heart.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  And was curious what modern albums of the streaming era would be most satisfying to have purchased on CD after hearing the singles? And what would be the most disappointing? Thanks.

• 22:19Speaker 00

  I was trying to think of somebody, like if we're defining streaming era as Spotify coming to America, which I think is 2011. Like I was trying to find somebody who's a 2000s artist technically, but still fits into this. I think Lady Gaga is really interesting, like arguably on both sides. Like The Fame and The Fame Monster, like that, that record is incredible, right? From front to back. Like I was thinking like, one of my favorite Gaga songs is that boy is a monster.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Which is like the 10th most famous song of like whatever, the 15 Gaga songs that comprise The Fame slash The Fame Monster. Like I, I, I think that is a, an example of like you get, you are drawn to that by Just Dance or Paparazzi or whatever. And that's like wall to wall versus I, Born This Way is maybe kind of not the exact reverse, but like the drop off for me from like Born This Way and like You And I, like the fake Mutt Lang song, like I, it's, I think her albums get very, very long and, and maybe like even like May, and like Mayhem,

• 23:33Speaker 00

  like the most recent one, like I'm blanking on what the single is, but my daughter loved the single to mayhem. But like my favorite song on that record is the fake Taylor Swift song, How Bad Do You Want Me? Like there's, there are some cases where you put on a Lady Gaga album and you're sort of reaching for the singles and like everything else starts to blur because this record is an hour and a half or whatever. But there are other cases where like the deep cuts are, are really, you know, the real meal where she's concerned. And so I think Lady Gaga sort of weirdly occupies both sides of that. If you're just coming for the singles, like it's, it could be glorious or it could be a little weird, but it'll probably be worth it in either case.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  I started laughing because you immediately evoked one of the best tweets of all time by Britney Spears. Do you remember this tweet from 2011?

• 24:26Speaker 00

  I have it.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Does anyone think global warming is a good thing? I, I love Lady Gaga. I think she's a really interesting artist. That's one tweet. Does anyone think global warming is a good thing? Question mark. I love Lady Gaga. I think she's a really interesting artist. Nope. All one.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  Two quick questions. Yeah. Was there a space? Was it one, was there like a line break?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Does anyone think global warming is a good thing? Question mark. Space, like a one space. I love Lady Gaga, period. I think she's a really interesting artist, period.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  Is she implying that Lady Gaga maybe thinks global warming is a good thing? I don't know.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  I think she just went ahead and put two, two thoughts into one package and sent it off and never thought about it again.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  There we go. That's the way to do it. That's, that's, she'd be a great podcaster in that sense, I suppose.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  I think so. I think so. Yeah.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Okay. Next question is from Jenny. Hiya. Will you be covering any of the adult contemporary-ish songwriters? Your Jack Johnsons, Jason Mraz's, or other non-threatening men who made it into so many mixtapes given to be my well-meaning gentleman callers? I married the guy who made me the one with Portishead and Aesop Rock. So it didn't work for me. That's really smart, Jenny. Good job. But probably worked for some other Jennies, Kaidies and Laurens.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  I really enjoyed the phrasing of this question very much.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  I.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Flake by Jack Johnson, episode one.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Flake.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  You don't know Flake?

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Jack Johnson has a song called Flake.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Oh my God. Rob, where have you been, honey? Come on.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  I don't know. Ohio, I guess. I, it's, it's, is it like a hit? Is it like a hit single?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  She said it's alright, but you can make it up next time. No?

• 26:20Speaker 00

  That song is called Flake? Okay. Yeah, sure. Sure. I need to bone up on Jack Johnson is what.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  I, I did a thing at some point. It wasn't immediate, which is funny, but eventually I thought to just look up like streaming numbers of songs from 2000 to 2009. You know, it's just to see like what are actually the most played songs of this decade? And like Jason Mraz's I'm Yours was indeed much higher than I anticipated. And like, if anybody had like the first wedding song data, I would love to see that. First of all, like what is the most first wedding dance song of the 2000s? I'm going to head, I'm going to go ahead and assume the Ed Sheeran song. Sorry to bring him up now, but the take me into your loving, whatever that one is.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  That's a big one. But like Jason Mraz, Jack Johnson, bigger deals than they appear. You're beautiful. Like the James blunt of it all.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  That one?

• 27:20Speaker 00

  There we go. There we go. I knew that one. And so it's, we are, we are delinquent on the inoffensive superstar white guys. And we will do justice to both them and the Jennies of the world. Absolutely.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  When are we doing Hemorrhage In My Hands by Fuel?

• 27:41Speaker 00

  This, this, you're still on this. Isn't that 90s? Is that a 90s song or is that?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  The year 2000 is when Hemorrhage In My Hands by Fuel.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Don't fall away.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  Yes. What is it about this song? Do you, do you lift weights to fuel?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  I wish. It's not really, it's honestly not up. It's not up to me. I wish, I don't control the music. I wish I did. Today, however, this is a funny story for you. I, I brought, I brought this to one of the trainers' attention before and they sort of waved me off like I was some like absolute like virginal prude for saying this, which again, I don't care, but they play in some classes, the complete unedited version of Nine Inch Nails, I Wanna Fuck You Like An Animal, full, zero bleeps, all. And I'm like, I, this is a group, there are people in their 60s here. Do you know what I'm saying? And I'm like, is this, should we be doing this?

• 28:49Speaker 01

  It's not even that I particularly care. It's just perhaps a bridge too far. And then today it came on and I was like, well, here we go again. And then a woman did.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  Did they notice?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  No, the, I think the trainers are probably just like, you know, they, they hear the same shit all over again, every day of their lives. But a woman flagged the trainer over and was like, can you change this song?

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I don't want to hear Trent Reznor saying, I want to feel you from the inside. Well, I'm just like.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  While you're doing military press.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Well, I'm doing military press around a bunch of strange people. Anyways.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Do they know what you do for a living?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  One of the trainers is a Ringer fan, so he does know what I do for a living. But the rest of the people, no, we just, I'm just a, I'm just a common citizen.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  You just vibe.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Next question from BG. Which episode do you wish you could have a do-over on? And when can we expect that? Wow, the second clause is like really accusatory.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  When can we expect that is very.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  He knows the answer, by the way, like he knows what the answer is. And he's like, and when is that one coming?

• 30:05Speaker 00

  I don't know that he does. I, I, I'm going to guess if he knows the answer.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  What do you think it is?

• 30:12Speaker 00

  The R E M, the R E M Night Swimming episode. That guy now, Jay Caspian Kang, like, at me on Twitter while people are yelling at him about that episode, which I looked it up, it was like from 2021.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  We gotta get past this.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  I do.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  Not everybody likes Night Swimming.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  You made a grave error there, Rob, I'll say it.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Did I?

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, just kind, I do feel that you and I share a similar philosophy in which we don't come to this place, which this place being podcasting, to tear people down. We come to this place.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Let people like things.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  To celebrate and to celebrate fandom and to celebrate why people love things that they love. And it's just kind of, it goes against, look, sometimes I have to be a little negativo, stevo about like.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  The Fish, the Fish episode of Bandplain is one of my favorite because Robert Mitchum, God bless him, is just like, it's so cool. Like he plays a vacuum cleaner and you're like, oh, oh, like it's, I love that episode so much.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but by and large, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to backseat drive your job, babe, you should do whatever you want, but.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  No, that's all right.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Well, what would your, what song would you, irrespective, I don't know if that's a word, of the angry night swimming people? What would, what would you wish to do a do-over on?

• 31:42Speaker 00

  If it were up to me, I would have simply chosen not to publish an episode on I'll Be Missing You by P. Diddy, literally 24 hours before the Cassie lawsuit was made public. I believe that was November of 2024, and I know that because my fucking book came out then. It was the week my book, it was like two or three days, or maybe one or two days before you and I did the thing in LA. That was the episode that was up the week that my book came out and the week that you and I did the thing in LA. It was fucking P. Diddy.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  And I had to put like a little disclaimer in front of that episode, which I assume is still there, being like, oh, this, this, we'll see what's happening, but this looks really bad. And like I had, I knew it was going to be bad and it was substantially worse than I thought it would. It's like, I simply would not have done that. The do-over, I like, I talked about my friend who died in high school. Like I got like semi emo in that episode and that episode is now like just, like just a Death Star sort of void, you know, that I hope that no one ever listens to again. And I assume nobody has like it's, I would simply have not done that in retrospect, but.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  That's showbiz.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  That is, that's showbiz, baby, as I like to say. And you know what? How could, how could any of us have known? How could we have known such a thing was to transpire? Okay, next question from Alyssa. You may not have the answer to this and that's fine, but my question is, will the 2000s series have the same amount of episodes as the 90s series? Again, if you don't know, no worries, just curious. It's very nice.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  It's very kindly phrased. I can confirm that the 2000s edition of this show will have more than 60 episodes. Exactly how many I am not certain, but we're gonna keep going for now. We're gonna do every indie rock song that no one has heard of, that we can think of.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  That you can.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  More than 60.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, like.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  More than 60, probably not more than 120. There you go.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Like when you start doing like thievery corporation or like handsome boy modeling school, that's when we're really fucking cooking with gas, you know what I mean?

• 34:14Speaker 00

  I'm saying, yes, I handsome boy modeling school, oh man.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Although I think that was 99, I'm terrible at this game.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Holy calamity, it was late, it was late 90s, I played that on college radio. I'll do a bonus 90s episode on Holy Calamity by handsome boy modeling school.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Screaming insanity, when did Lovage come out? Lovage was such a good album, the Dan the Automator and, and Mike Patton album.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's right on the, it's right on the late 90s, early 2000s divide, yes.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  It's 2000.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Paul.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  You could do it, music to make love to your old lady by, just saying, if you really wanted to alienate the people. Get into like.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  Of course it is.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  That bizarre corner of like sort of American trip hop or whatever it would be called. Really good stuff.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  Isn't Deltron 3030 touring with Gorillaz? Like I think Deltron 3030 is playing Cleveland like in a month and I like, I wanna go see that.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Because wasn't Deltron 30, wasn't Del on that first Big Gorilla song?

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Of cour, yes, he was on SNL with Gorillaz.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  A while ago, yes.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  The, by the album that Dan the Automator produced. We've strayed, we've strayed really far from Jason Mraz, Jason Mraz's light here. Okay, that's right, next question. Johann Markgrin, thank you for a great show. Finally, a mailbag episode, of course I have questions. Number one, Beastie Boys or Grateful Dead?

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Of course, inside you, there are two wolves.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  I love.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  The classic dichotomy.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  I'm saying, I, I have so many follow-up questions. I guess I will take that offline. I'm gonna email this dude and be like.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Nirvana, Beastie Boys or the Grateful Dead?

• 35:54Speaker 00

  Precisely what are you trying to figure out? Yeah, do, do all three of them, okay?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Number two, best Neil Young album? And number three, better music 1990 to 1994? Or 1995 to 1999? I mean, I feel like that one really answers itself, but I don't want to get involved. Okay, go ahead, Rob. Take it from the top, Beastie Boys or Grateful Dead?

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Beastie Boys, Tonight's the Night, 1990 to 1994.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Damn, you knocked it out of the park right there. It's almost like you had time to look at it and weren't sent this talking about it two hours prior to recording. Okay, this next question is from Ben Joseph. I was hoping you would cap off the 90s run with a Weird Al episode, but in hindsight, closing time did make more sense. That was very clever. Weird Al's only top 10 hit was White and Nerdy in 2006. However, I don't think of him as a 2000s artist. What do you think was his biggest decade? The 80s, 90s or 2000s? Or does it just depend on the individual and how old you were when a Weird Al album came out? Also, if you did do a Weird Al episode, I bet you could get him as a guest.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  My wife really wants me to get Weird Al as a guest if we ever do Weird Al.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Aren't we supposed to do Weird Al for Bandplain?

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Oh, no, that's right, we had talked about that.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Not that that precludes you doing it here as well.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  No, it doesn't.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  A whole Weird Al week.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  My brother-in-law drove to Minnesota to see the greatest ball of twine in Minnesota, which is the title of, I think it's either an 80s or a 90s Weird Al song, but they made a documentary about it, it's a whole thing. I'm sort of, I think that Weird Al, I do think that it's what age you were and what's, you know, your pop glory years, when whatever Weird Al was parodying when you were biggest into music, which is probably when you were a teenager, that's when Weird Al was biggest. Like I, I do think he benefits from monoculture, right? Like you sort of reach for fats, Edits, like the Michael Jackson of it all, right?

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Like the 80s, you know, was very, very good to him and the 90s as well. But like White and Nerdy is very interesting and being, I just, that is only top 10 hit. Like even, I bet Amish Paradise was like close, but not top 10. Like Weird Al, it's, it's so heartwarming that he seems, again, like something about him in the 80s still resonates for me, maybe because I was a little kid, but like that he is ubiquitous even now. Like the experience that you had at The Cure, I had taking our kids to see Weird Al like last year. And just, they were not goths per se, but like 50 years of like weirdos,

• 38:43Speaker 00

  like complimentary, gathered, you know, at Blossom Music Center in Cleveland, you know, to hear everything from Edits to like the Star Wars, the saga begin song to White and Nerdy. You know, like Weird Al as the real unifier of all genres and generations is such a lovely and surprising, pleasantly so thing to me. So it's whatever, whatever, you, you can have your own favorite and biggest Weird Al era.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  I think, I think that's, that's really beautiful and I totally agree. Edi, it's really good stuff that he was, he was pumping out back then.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  I'll read Alejandro's question. Big fan of the show, this has been a journey through commonplaces, cake, Peter Bjorn and John, and also of learning. MF Doom, De La Soul. I've been curious about your relationship with these songs. Taking into account your aging, rude, you were a teen slash young adult in the 90s and an adult in the 2000s. Do you ever catch yourself talking about 90s music like a teenager who thought every genre was a life or death identity crisis? And then talking about 2000s music like the smug adult who suddenly curates tastes and pretenses above all that? Basically, does the fact that you lived those decades with two completely different brains mess with how you perceive and narrate them on the show? That's a really good question, honestly.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  It's a good question. It's like just a click router when you read it versus when I read it on the page. Yeah. Which is fine.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  It was, it's just like some of the diction was a little surprising. That's all.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  You hit the word smug with like a real relish.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  I just don't, I don't think of you as smug at all. I was just surprised to read the word. So I was like, oh, okay.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  That's, that's a relief.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  I, I, this, this interests me and I try to figure out the degree to which it only interests me, but like absolute, like you and I have taught, like when we did the Smashing Pumpkins, right? Like I probably, on Bandplain, I probably talked about how like, I was a teenager, like this was my favorite band in the world. Like I can't talk about this objectively. Like I can't, you know, I can't use my rock critic brain or whatever. And I'm like, I'm curious, like, like just Interpol popped into my head, right? Like that record comes out and I love it, you know, and I've been a rock critic professionally, quote unquote, for like two months or whatever. And I'm trying to assess like, you know, like, why are they wearing suits? Why do they sound like Joy Division? Like, like just the four or five things everyone

• 41:20Speaker 00

  said about that band.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  When they wrote about them in alt weeklies, like when that record came out. Like there's a total difference in how I approached this music, you know, and I, you know, the, the way that I think about Pearl Jam, who I loved in the nineties is entirely different from the way I think about like Queens of the Stone Age, who I loved in the 2000s. Like I, you know, what I, what this iteration of the podcast is, is me trying to think less with smug critic brain and more with like teenage brain and just sort of reveling in the fact that I was barely more mature in the 2000s than I was in the 90s, despite being, you know, technically an adult in the 2000s.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  That makes a lot of sense. Um, yeah, I feel like, I mean, just from an outsider perspective, that your show doesn't really deal in smug rock critic or any kind of, not that you don't do criticism, but it's not really criticism, right? I mean, you're kind of doing something a little different.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  It's a different thing.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:26Speaker 00

  Well, like you said, like I, I think for both of us, you know, night swimming accepted, like it's, it's celebratory, right? Like I'm not going to trash something. I'm not going to tell you, you know, your favorite song when you were a teenager, like sucks, right? Like just, you know, that's what I've always said about like finding the joy in like the Macarena, you know, now that it's not ubiquitous and it's not in your face. It's a great song. It's a great song and it's a very strange story. And like now that these are not viral and overexposed anymore, like we can appreciate them more for what they were at the time, now that they're not in our faces all the time.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Totally. Um, okay. Next question is from David Margolis. Do you remember an MTV News segment in 1992 or so that speculated about which city was going to be the quote next Seattle? And then profiled basically every city that was in LA or New York or Chicago, but had at least sometimes only two prominent underground bands. I remember Chapel Hill getting a mention for Superchunk and Archers of Loaf, and Cincinnati getting mentioned for the Ass Ponies and the Afghan Wigs. Were there others? Was I as a Cincinnatian in, I don't know how to say that. At the time, at the time, who was too young to know those bands, taken in by an unreasonable hope that my town, which was half the size

• 43:45Speaker 01

  of Seattle and 0% of its cultural relevance, could take over the national creative imagination? Was this a real thing? Did I hallucinate?

• 43:54Speaker 00

  I don't remember that specifically, but I, this person did not hallucinate that because I, Columbus was also going to be the next Seattle. And I wasn't living, I don't think Cleveland was. When I was a teenager in the Cleveland suburbs, I don't think, like Trent Reznor had left, right? Like Cleveland had some residual like coolness for that reason, but like we could not claim Nine Inch Nails anymore. But I remember Columbus in the mid 90s, like Gaunt, Howlin' Maggie, you know, the Thomas Jefferson slave apartments, like I, every, I agree completely with this person's premise that every place was touted as the next Seattle. The Ass Ponies are great, by the way. I, so you definitely did not

• 44:39Speaker 00

  hallucinate that. And it's very funny that that happened. And it's very funny, of course, that, that no next Seattle ever emerged.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  It was New York.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Sure. Right. It was Brooklyn.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  They ignored New York, but then it was The Strokes and the IAs and Interpol. I know I'm a little biased because I'm currently doing Indie Sleaze, but that kind of is what happened.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  You're promoting your Indie Sleaze.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  I only came here.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Which I respect.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  I only agreed to come here in order to do self-promotion.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  We did contractually say you could tout your podcast three to five times, I believe. So that's two.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  The next question is from Hannah. It's me Hannah, the Toadies fan. So cool. Toadies rock. I'm still pumped that they were finally mentioned. Here are my questions. What is the most aggressively confident opinion you've ever had about a song that you later discovered was completely wrong? We have kids around the same age and I'm constantly amazed by their completely unpredictable opinions about the music I grew up with. What songs did you assume your kids would love that they totally dismiss? And what songs have they unexpectedly fallen in love with?

• 45:40Speaker 00

  It's two, two separate. What I've always said about my kids, it's two separate questions. The second quite like, what I always say is They Might Be Giants is by far the band that I love that has imprinted on my children the most. I think that's in part because of the kids albums that we played them when we were little kids. Like I, I would have assumed by now that I would have played my kids a ton of The Beatles and they'd be Beatles fans, at least sort of passively. But like, I don't really think that they are. Like for all the music, there's a big difference I'm finding between like just playing music around the house versus like sitting them down and being like, you're going to listen to this now. This

• 46:22Speaker 00

  band is called Fuel. This song is called Hemorrhage in My Head. This is this real shit. Hemorrhage in my head. Why is, is there a parentheses in that? Are you serious?

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Parenthesis. You know what? You, listen, colon, the 2000s. I don't really think you have a leg to stand on here when you're talking about bad punctuation.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  No, I, that's a, that's a plus. That's, I know, I, I will never speak against parentheses in songs. That's our podcasts. I, I, that, that makes me more intrigued by Fuel. I, my kids, like Weird Al again, like I told him to see Weird Al.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  They got into that band AJR, who are sort of like a younger, like Weezer adjacent, like fun songs, fun bouncy songs about like mental health that seem like genuinely sort of stirring and supportive. Like I, I dig those guys a lot, but there are, I guess I'm surprised, having done a nineties podcast for five years, that with the exception of They Might Be Giants, I don't know, like they have a vague awareness of like Nirvana, but like nothing akin to like active fandom. And I guess that's my fault. I guess that is a way that I have failed them. But, but other, I, if, if there was going to be one,

• 47:43Speaker 00

  then I'm glad it's They Might Be Giants, but there is kind of only one.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  You haven't played The Morphine yet?

• 47:51Speaker 00

  I've played Morphine around them, but I, they, I think they've really gotten good at tuning me out.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  Slash tuning out my music, you know?

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  What was the first question from this person again? Because that was good too.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  What is the most aggressively confident opinion you've ever had about a song that you later discovered was completely wrong? This reminded me of when we did the grunge draft many years ago, and I think it was Sean Benessy and Chris Ryan, both like sort of very aggressively telling me that actually it was Insecticide and I was wrong about the Nirvana album title.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  That was me. It was me and Chris Ryan. It was me and Chris Ryan. We attempted to mansplain Nirvana.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Insecticide.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  To a famous.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  No, that's fine. It's not Insecticide is the problem.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  It's, it, it for sure is not. That's, that is one of the little moments of my professional career. Absolutely. I built an entire Linkin Park episode out of reading the really pissy alternative press review of the first Linkin Park record where I said that they were like Britney Spears or whatever. Like I, it's that, that's, that's, that's the first thing I always reached for in terms of like a very, I've never been, you know, even in my young, smug years, like a very good, like savage takedown artist. I admire people who do it really well, but I just, I'm, I'm too thoroughly Midwestern and meek to do it. But I did, I

• 49:21Speaker 00

  did make fun of Linkin Park in Alternative Press, a magazine to whom Linkin Park were objectively very important and formative. And so that was probably, mistakes were probably made there in retrospect.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  At least you've, at least you, you know, apologized for it. At least you've taken responsibility. Um, next question is from Emma Forrest. Longtime listener here since 2020. Not to brag, but I'm pretty sure I listened to the Alanis Morris that episode the week it came out. I love Rob's anecdotes about his youth and I always think about him and Todd, oh Todd, driving around Ohio, listening to Nine Inch Nails, before Todd's major betrayal, of course. Just curious, will we ever hear about Todd again? What was he up to in the 2000s? Whatever became of him. Love the show. Please never run out of decades to cover. Yeah. You can't really introduce a main character like that and

• 50:17Speaker 01

  then just erase him from the storyline. This woman is right. What's, where's Todd?

• 50:22Speaker 00

  Okay. First of all, just to clarify, for those of you not unfamiliar with Todd, Todd was my high school friend. I drove around in his Saturn and we listened to his CDs, which consisted almost entirely of Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Marilyn Manson was a big one, Candlebox, When There Were Girls in the Car, Lords of Acid at the sort of outside edge of, of another genre, et cetera. And then Todd ended up, uh, with my girlfriend at the time. And so, and that was the end of that.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Do you think Todd is now a member of the Manosphere?

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Do you think Todd is on some questionable Reddit forums?

• 51:09Speaker 00

  It's Todd. Todd is on reddits all the time. Todd is on 4chan. Todd and I are Facebook friends. He seems to be doing very well. He is married. He and his kids go for hikes and do like just outdoor type activities, you know, skiing, things of that nature. Like he builds shit on his property. I think he's got like a very nice like, like back porch situation. I could have seen Todd in person over the summer at my 30 year high school reunion, which happened at a bar in my adopted hometown. And I did not go, not for any like pissy reason, but I was just like, this is terrifying to me. But like,

• 51:51Speaker 00

  I saw the Facebook photos afterward of a smiling Todd, you know, surrounded by other classmates who I sort of vaguely remember. But Todd is alive and well and, and we are, we are Facebook friends. We, we, we saw each other at bars a couple of times in the intervening decades and like hugged it out or whatever. Todd's doing great. Todd will probably come up again in some context that I can't, I don't know what it is now, but like, I did not erase Todd from the public record on purpose. He'll be back somehow.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  So no one has

• 52:31Speaker 00

  He is flourishing.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  No one has come to Todd and been like, this man keeps talking about you on this very popular podcast?

• 52:39Speaker 00

  I believe this is the second Todd mentioned on this podcast. I sort of half wondered if he would ever be aware of this. And if he were aware of this, would he gravitate the podcast and would he gravitate toward the Nine Inch Nails episode? And would he? Like, I don't, I don't believe that he is aware of this at all. And that is probably for the best.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  I know. I'm kind of jealous. What a full wife Todd must have.

• 53:07Speaker 00

  My DMs are open, regrettably.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  The next question is from Not Chester Lemon. Email subject line, your mom. Uncle Rob, how's your mom doing? We miss her. Will she hit one of U2's farewell concerts? Yeah, honestly, that's a great question. What's Barb gonna be doing around these U2 farewell concerts? Is U2 singing farewell? I didn't know about that.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  I, that was my first reaction. And I looked it up and like, they're like planning a tour. And like, there's a vague sense that maybe it's a farewell thing. Like, is Larry playing with them?

• 53:46Speaker 01

  He didn't when I saw them at the Sphere, which was, I guess, that was a couple of years ago now, but he wasn't this, this sort of muscular, potentially Danish guy was. I just can't remember if he's Dutch or Danish. I always get those two mixed up. I'm sorry.

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Sure. It's all right. Either, you know, that's, they're interchangeable, pretty much. So yeah, that was, I, the email subject line of this really was your mom, which is never not alarming, right? And I was like, oh, like that I read that Barb is doing well. I don't think, she is not aware if U2 is doing a farewell tour. If they do indeed announce such a thing, she will definitely go and I will hopefully accompany her, even if we have to drive to like Chicago, I would assume. She went to the Sphere. She and my dad went to the Sphere and they tried to sneak backstage.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 54:37Speaker 00

  Like they, they had, they had tickets for some like kind of backstage pre-show thing, but there were clearly tiers of backstage that they were not privy to. And she tried, she kept trying to sneak past one security guard who was totally aware of what my mom was trying to do and was sort of amused slash impressed by my mom's rigor and like trying to like, like a group would go in who had like better access and she would, my mom would try and like sneak into that group.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  Like, I'm part of these people too. And like, the security guard would be have to like, you, you can't do this. And then my dad told me that at some point while my mom is doing this, Adam Clayton just walks by both of them and my mother does not notice at all. And that's very funny.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Because she was so laser focused on her goals.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  So locked in.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  On, on trying to sneak in with like the Edge's actual family members. Mom's doing great. Mom still is very angry about the Mr. Brightside episode where I said phantom dick like 200 times. She was really not psyched about that at all. I don't think you were either, actually.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  I didn't like it either. I didn't care for it.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  She's doing great. And she, Yasi, she asks about you a lot. She's like, how's Yasi doing? She, is the house okay? Like, it's everything, everything is great. She loves you very much.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Love Barb.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  She's doing great.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  I'm so glad to hear it. This is my love.

• 56:07Speaker 02

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• 56:38Speaker 00

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• 57:03Speaker 03

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• 57:31Speaker 04

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• 57:55Speaker 01

  Okay. Next question is from Andrew Shields in Minneapolis. Number one, if you had to pick a 20 year period of music to listen to for the rest of your life, what 20 year period would you pick? Number two, assuming you're not a late in life tattoo person, if you were to get a tattoo now, what would it be and where on your body would you put it? Number three, are there any artists from the 90s that for one reason or another, you didn't listen to much then, but have grown to love since? Regarding my previous tattoo question, I realized that my assumption that you're not a tattoo guy was potentially disrespectful. I apologize, but you don't really give a tattoo vibes.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  Those were two separate emails. And it took me like a weird, I had to like search for tattoos. Like I had to find the previous email that this person was apologizing for in the subsequent emails. It's a very amusing and confusing process. To me, I do not have any tattoos. This is, this does not come as a shock to this person nor to any other people who have ever heard my voice. If I were to get a tattoo, it would be something wife or children related. Like, I don't know what that would be. Like, like, like my, my five year old, like some drawing of hers at some point, just on a bicep or something.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  Like, if I was gonna do that, that's what I would probably do. I do not have any plans at this time, because this person is correct about my mentality and just total overall vibe. But like, if I were to get a tattoo late in life, it would probably be just family related.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  I think we should get touches when I come to Columbus, but I get to pick yours.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  What should we get? Fuel? Yes. Hemorrhage.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  It's the lyrics to hemorrhage parentheses in my hands.

• 59:47Speaker 00

  Why is it called that? Like, what is, what is hemorrhage in my?

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Don't try to burden future podcast material here. Okay?

• 59:58Speaker 00

  That's right. Save it for the pod. Okay.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Save it for the pod.

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, you have to answer the 20 year period of music and any artists from the 90s that you didn't listen to then, but now you love them.

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm sort of contractually obligated to say the 90s and either the 80s or the 2000s, which is on the other side. Like, it's the 90s either forward or the 90s backward. And that's an interesting.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  I think you know the answer to that.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  Do I? I, it's, I think I would find it harder to give up the 80s than I think.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Same. I think I would be like, the 2000s can rot in hell. I mean,

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Some great songs from there, but like the Cure, Def Leppard, you can't be taking the 80s.

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  Approximately 60 plus. Yeah, right. Like, like Purple Rain, the minute, like, I remember that Purple Rain exists, it's like, uh.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  So many Madonna albums. I mean, the 2000s would be rough. There's plenty of things I love. Wait, have you done a Madonna 2000 song?

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  No. And I, I don't know if you just totally cleared, like your Madonna coverage was so comprehensive and definitive that there is no points. It would be like that thing where like they put out. Two Truman Capote movies in the same year and the second one got like totally wiped out by the Philip Seymour Hoffman one. Like, I don't, I, I, I'm worried about doing Madonna now, just because you nailed it.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  It's through your lens. I think people would love to hear you talk about Hung Up. Although Don't Tell Me is really the jam, I think, but Hung Up is maybe more interesting.

• 1:01:41Speaker 00

  Confessions on a Dance Floor, like, and not just because she just, like, that's a, not just because she just did the sequel to it, but like, that's the one that really spoke to me. Beautiful Stranger was pretty, yeah.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Beautiful Stranger is one of the best songs that's ever been made in the history of time.

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's pretty good.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  That's 1999 though, so you don't have to worry about it. Okay, next.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Que- next question. Oh, wait, sorry. There's still one more from this. This man really shoehorned in three here. Any artist in the 90s that you didn't listen to much then, but you have grown to love?

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  I mean, there's tons of them, right? Like, again, like, being like a very alt-rock minded kid in real time, like, I was not really listening to Selena at the time, like, country music, like Garth Brooks would be maybe a classic example of someone like I was aware of, but who I thought lived in an entirely different solar system than I did. And it is only in retrospect, you know, that I can connect him, you know, both to the 90s and to like the, the dad rock of the 80s, the Bob Seekers of the world, right? And so like Shania Twain, like same, same thing. So like any genre, kind of any genre that wasn't like alternative rock,

• 1:03:02Speaker 00

  you know, I, I, I was not as intensely into, or college rock, I guess, in the late 90s when I was in college. Like, it's, I, I definitely started from that base and have been like catching up on virtually everything else since then.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. It's called growth. Um, okay. This question from Dan. This week I learned that Peter Bjorn and John is three people. This is why what you do is important. Rob, honest to God, I always assumed it was a duo. A man named Peter Bjorn and a man named John, like the Captain and Tenille, not like Peter, Paul and Mary. Gonna blame it on the lack of comma. It's true, commas are important. Do you have any dramatic, long-held misunderstandings of a band name, song, or lyric?

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  Enough people, the first, I, like, half a dozen people were like, I thought Peter Bjorn and John were two people. And the first time I was like, is this a bit? But it's like, this is apparently a fairly widely held misconception that is indeed based, there should be a comma, there should totally be a comma. And I, you know, it's the each shoots and leaves thing, just with Swedish dudes. And like, I, I totally, I totally respect people who didn't know it was three people. I mean, the classic example that I talked about long ago at some point was Eddie Money's Take Me Home Tonight.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  When they, when Ronnie Spector, like, like Eddie Money is trying to get a girl to go home with him and then Ronnie Spector shows up and sings Be My Little Baby, but I thought she was singing Feed My Little Baby, F E E D, because I thought that the girl went home with Eddie Money, got pregnant, and then returned to Eddie Money nine months later with a newborn baby saying Feed My Little- Exactly. That is precisely what I thought when I was eight years old and attending Sacred Heart Elementary School in Eureka, Missouri. I, I had a different, a slightly different worldview at that time.

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  And Feed My Little Baby is probably the all-time misconception. More recently, I said it in the Feist episode, but I thought

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  in 1234, Feist sings, "Oh, teenage hoes with tears in their eyes." And I was like, that's a really weird image. And that is in fact not-

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  It's actually-

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  At all.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  Really poetic. I love that lyric.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  If, I'd, I'd like to think that it is. I agree with you completely that my embarrassing mishearing of Feist is actually really poetic and like cool and sophisticated. Thank you for saying that.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  What is she actually saying?

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  Teenage Hopes. Oh, teenage hope, like, yeah, H O P, yeah, yeah, it's, it's not, it's not hoes.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  It's a missed opportunity on Feist's part, to be honest.

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Okay. Billy from Cincy, Ohio, neighbors. I'm assuming that you read last year's New Yorker article, How Music Criticism Lost Its Edge. You know what my dad says? That when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and me. I think it's actually when you assume-

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  Your dad invented that phrase? Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know if he invented it because he's English as a second language, so probably couldn't have invented it, but he certainly, he certainly took it upon as his own to dole out to me as wisdom many times as a youth.

• 1:06:33Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Um, so regarding the main theme of that piece, I know in today's world, we need every tiny speck of goodness we can find. I do, I feel it. But can't you ever bring yourself to say, this artist's music absolutely sucks? You'll drop in the designation rude once in a while to be diplomatic, but you must have these feelings. Will you ever share them when critically appropriate? Because come on, Ben, they have been. Love the show. Damn, he's saying you're not mean enough.

• 1:07:00Speaker 00

  That's right. When your dad assumed that you needed to go to business school, I think he was making an ass out of, yeah, okay.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Me and him. And now, now, now I have, he made me take my degree the other day, finally. Now it's sitting in my car in the backseat. Yeah, if you wanna-

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  Oh, really? Are you gonna, are you gonna display that? Are you gonna hang that in your podcast, in your home podcast studio?

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  As part of your setup? No, okay. We're in the bathroom.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Okay, Rob, what's your-

• 1:07:30Speaker 00

  I'd like to know what this person, yeah, I'd, I'd like to know what, who specifically this person is thinking of when he's like, you know that they suck, right? Like, I, I do not, I don't know if that's wolf breed or what. Well, it's like you were saying, like, I, I do think the celebratory elements is very important. I don't think there's any point on shitting on any of this stuff now, but I do have to say, I don't know if this is because I am weak-willed, or I have mellowed, or I am no longer smug, or whatever, but I, I objectively actively do not dislike

• 1:08:08Speaker 00

  many songs. I'm trying to think, like, when people ask me, like, what's the worst song of the 90s? I just say Cotton Eye Joe, which is not untrue, right? Because it's like, it was like Swedish people clowning on cotton, like, it's- Yeah, it's, it's, I, I don't care for that song. That's, there was a song, it was like English dudes, I forget the name of the band, but it was like, "Once I was seven years old, my mama told me..."

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Vance Joy? Does that sound right?

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  That, I know, I don't think it's them.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  It's always playing in a Starbucks every time you go into the Starbucks. That song is like always on.

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  That song really upset me in real time, but I don't dislike much. And so I wouldn't say-

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  Lucas Graham, sorry, excuse me, Lucas Graham.

• 1:08:55Speaker 00

  Lucas Graham, yeah, you knew it was a name, right? No, you, yes.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Oh, Vance Joy has that really good song, Riptide. That song is really good.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  Oh, okay, okay. And I'm sorry, Lucas Graham, that's a, that's a band that sounds like a person situation, I think, but like,

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  There are very few songs that I actively, viscerally dislike. And I know that that, I know, I know that that makes me like a bad critic on some level. Like, you, you have to dislike things. And you have to say that you dislike things, like establishing the poles of your taste, you know, and your point of view. Like, I, again, like, I admire people and wish almost that I could sometime be like the, the takedown artists, like panning, you know, of Post Malone or whoever type thing, but it's just, it's not my mentality. And it's almost weird to me that I don't actively dislike things. And so I can't think of an example of when I have looked into this camera

• 1:09:54Speaker 00

  and like lied about liking or not disliking something. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  You're not a liar.

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  Does this happen to you?

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  No, like, I, I remember when you were doing the Primus episode.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, it's pretty obvious when I don't like something, like, as much as I try my darn tootiness to be neutral about it.

• 1:10:19Speaker 00

  I don't think that's unfortunate, though. Like, I think that, again, I think that's good. I think that's almost necessary. To some degree.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  I think there's a difference, though, between what this person is saying and what what we do sometimes. Like, this is why I always like feel like music criticism is a little like slippery for me, except for like some of the goats that do it. Like, if I don't like it, doesn't mean it's bad.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:10:48Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Like, and if.

• 1:10:49Speaker 00

  I love that for you is a totally valid perspective. Yeah.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Are there songs that objectively suck? I get like on what basis, you know, like? For example, I love that song by The Calling.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Wherever you may go. Do you know that song?

• 1:11:08Speaker 00

  The darn.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Then I would, I go with. And I tried to get my friend Blanche to cover it and she laughed in my face and said it was a garbage and terrible song. And the thing is.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  Oh, man, that'd be good, though. She would nail that. I can totally see that.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Thank you. And I think she could make it very cool. But anyways, that's neither here nor there.

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  The point is, I, her feelings are valid. I'm sure to many people that song sucks ass. But I love that song. I listen to it multiple times a week lately. I don't know what's going on. Perhaps I need a wellness check. But

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  to me, you are beautiful. The Calling, Wherever You Will Go. And also, do you, I mean, I don't know about you, I don't cover. If a song is so repellent to me, I mean, I don't do songs as much as you do songs. I do mostly artists.

• 1:11:54Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  But for example, an artist is absolutely repellent to me, except for maybe in the beginning when I didn't think I had a choice. I just kind of sidestep them because I'm like, I don't want, I don't want to spend three hours talking about some artists I don't like. Nobody benefits from that. Yeah, eight hours sometimes.

• 1:12:10Speaker 00

  Certainly not you.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Speaker 00

  And like the other part of this question is like that New Yorker.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  I didn't read it.

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  Article was about like, is is critic, is criticism sort of defanged now? Are critics too nice? Or whatever. And like, the problem with criticism right now, there's so few places to do it. Right? Like, it doesn't have the influence that it used to have because of the internet, et cetera, et cetera. But like, there are just dismayingly few full-time critic jobs right now. And so it doesn't matter. It's way less a question of like, critics are meaner now, or critics are not mean enough. It's like, critics are not able to get paid, you know, to be mean or not mean. Yeah.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, also, things have changed. I mean, Pitchfork used to be like, this song is what the Holocaust sounds like or whatever. Like, here's a picture of a monkey throwing shit and there's zero point.

• 1:13:05Speaker 00

  Peeing in its own mouth.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't do that anymore. So, and maybe that's a good thing. I don't know.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  I don't know. Okay, let's go to the next question. Thomas, this is from Thomas. Hello, Rob, maybe also, probably Yasi. Oh, my God, good job, Thomas. What chain fast casual restaurant best encapsulates this era of music? Ruby Tuesday's, Chili's, Outback Steakhouse? Listeners want to know.

• 1:13:38Speaker 00

  I'm gonna need your help with this. Like, what do I mean when I say I think of the Olive Garden? As the 2000s chain restaurant? Like, what? Like Chili's.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  Chili's is really 90s to me. Yeah.

• 1:13:53Speaker 00

  Is it 90s? Okay.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  You don't think?

• 1:13:56Speaker 00

  Doctor Jerry Taco loves Chili's.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  I feel like Cheesecake Factory is very 2000s.

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, that's, yes, yes.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:14:04Speaker 00

  Too big a menu.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  Too big a menu, too much going on. The Cheesecake Factory was like the death of a monocultural.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Speaker 00

  Oh, man, it's like, yeah, how do you even explain the decor? Like, it was sort of weirdly palatial.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  It looks like a rich Persian person's house.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

  There we go. I do. I know, in fact, exactly what you mean.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Yes. Tope and mauve and columns.

• 1:14:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  And some like actually really cool weird like art that I feel like someone messaged me that their aunt did it. And I was like, that's so cool. But yeah.

• 1:14:43Speaker 00

  That is very cool.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Cheesecake Factory feels very 2000s to me. And they are also kind of, if you listen closely enough, always playing that kind of music. Like, you will hear, wherever you may go, if I could, while you're eating your like avocado spring rolls or whatever.

• 1:15:03Speaker 00

  Chipotle also occurs to me, like, I think about the metal sculptures on the walls.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:15:10Speaker 00

  At Chipotle, like, I really, I associate that with early 2000s, you know, both rock is back. And also the Nickelback type rock.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  That rock was back to vanquish, you know, like, I think Chipotle really encapsulated both of those vibes at the same time. You know, as I ate my burrito.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  That's really good.

• 1:15:30Speaker 00

  Chipotle, the Cheesecake Factory is such the perfect answer for that. That's.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  The other Friday night, I really wanted Chipotle and I went, I had, the app was not working for delivery. So I went there because I'm a really brave person. And then I literally stood in, the line was so long. And I stood in line for potentially 30, Friday night, Rob, I was standing in line at a Chipotle.

• 1:15:55Speaker 00

  Chipotle is no joke.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  It was so.

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  In Los Angeles.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  It was so sad. I felt really sad. I was like, what roads did I go down? That have led me to spending my Friday night.

• 1:16:08Speaker 00

  Go wrong. My sadness bowl. Yes. Right. Were you recognized in Chipotle?

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  No, thank the fucking good sweet Jesus Lord. Imagine.

• 1:16:20Speaker 00

  Were you bummed about that or not bummed at all?

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  Sweatpants on a Friday night at the Chipotle in line, the 70th person in line to get my.

• 1:16:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Burrito bowl with a side of tortilla. Because I like the best of both worlds. Okay. Next question is from Patty. When I started listening to the podcast back in 2020, not long after I moved cities, I remember vividly that the first episode took me one and a half laps of my new local park to listen to. Today, the podcast is more of a walk across the city in duration. Features ads and more Spotify synergy, is visualized, has prompted a book, is a valuable anchor of many people's midweek around the world. Hello from Glasgow, BTW, to say nothing of the fact that it's still going strong six years later. So my question is this, just before you write, oh, just before your first episode went live,

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  what would have surprised you the most to hear from the future? That the podcast would triple in episode duration? The amount of synergy, the cameras, the spinoffs, the meaningfulness it has in people's lives and pop culture generally, or the longevity?

• 1:17:26Speaker 00

  That's a fantastic question. I, it's, I think all of that was pretty shocking. I think I would be obligated to start with, it's not tripled, it is quintupled. Man, I'm trying to, I always reference how long the You Oughta Know, like, episode number one, the script was like 2,000 words. So it's, it's fully five times longer now than it was. Amanda Dobbins was a guest, actually. The length is, is the most harrowing, is the most harrowing, shocking thing. The fact that I'm still doing this and the fact that people are still listening to me and that anybody digs this show at all, let alone in Glasgow, is amazing and delightful to me.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  And as, as stirring to me as the increased length is disturbing to me. All of it is pretty shocking and amazing. The book, like, yeah, it's.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  I think, don't you think you would have written a book regardless? You're a writer.

• 1:18:25Speaker 00

  You would think that, wouldn't you? But I was, like, I, I was not.

• 1:18:32Speaker 00

  I wasn't writing it, man. Like, I thought, like, I'm gonna write a book someday and then I would continue to not write it. Like, I, there is no guarantee that I would ever actually have published a book if not for this show. And so it's, despite thinking the whole time that a book would be like the apex of the whole thing, like, I was nowhere close to figuring out how to actually publish one before this show came along. So that would be another reason to be very grateful.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  Can I add a, can I add a follow-up question?

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  Please.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  Has this show given you more or taken more away from you?

• 1:19:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. That's a good. That one came from the heart, Yasi. I, I, I'm, I'm gonna ask you to answer that as well when I am done. Um, no, it is.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Hard to say, right?

• 1:19:27Speaker 00

  It is. It's hard to say. It takes too long to write these scripts now. They need to be shorter slash less arduous. But I, it's, I am genuinely shocked when I started.

• 1:19:43Speaker 00

  I don't think I thought I was actually gonna get to sixty. There is no planet on which I would have thought I would get to one hundred and twenty episodes, let alone like a spinoff, right? Like, it is, again, pleasantly shocking to me that I'm still doing this and still genuinely enjoying doing it.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Like, it's very, you know, it's very exhausting at times. But like, I, as I've said a billion times, like, to still have a job in rock criticism.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  One million.

• 1:20:10Speaker 00

  You know, in any capacity in twenty twenty six is, is amazing and delightful and humbling. And, and, yeah.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  Amen, brother.

• 1:20:19Speaker 00

  What about you, though?

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  I, I feel, I mean, I don't, I don't wanna minimize parenthood, but I kind of feel like maybe this is what people mean. When people mean, you know, about having children, where it is both like incredibly difficult in taxing, but also incredibly fulfilling. So.

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  No, there's some parallels there. You don't have to yell at your podcast to like, get off their phone.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  I do sometimes.

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  Et cetera, but like, yeah, yeah, there you go.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  I yell at myself to get off my phone and get to work.

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  I yell at you to get off, yes, to get off Reddit, but, uh, yes.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  You know, we are shaping minds and hearts, so.

• 1:21:00Speaker 00

  I would like to, I, I hope so.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Okay. This is from Frank. Hi, Rob. On a previous Mailbag episode, a listener asked, why do you live in Ohio? Which, given the dickish phrasing, did not earn a response. Good on you. But I'd like to reframe the question. As a music journalist, do you feel like you're at a disadvantage by not living in a major metro area where there are presumably more frequent and varied live performances? Or in twenty twenty six, the entire universe of recorded music at your fingertips, does it just not matter anymore? How would your current work be different, if at all, if you were living in New York, LA, or San Francisco? Thank you, as always.

• 1:21:39Speaker 00

  I'd have to politely disagree. Why do you live in Ohio is still the funniest question I have ever been asked in any context, personally or professional, ever in my life, and I love it. I thought I said something. I don't think I was like, I refused to answer. Like, I said something, but I don't remember what I said. It was a little dickish, but I loved it very much. Um. Here is where being a washed forty-eight-year-old father of three really pays off, because it doesn't fucking matter where I live, because I don't. If I lived in Los Angeles or New York City, I would not be able to go out with anywhere near the capacity to like, benefit from being in a cultural center, right?

• 1:22:21Speaker 00

  Like, as I sit here, I can, I can go see Phoebe Bridgers tomorrow and Hayley Williams the next day in Cincinnati, but like orchestrating that, like, like with my wife and like all the kids that we have to drive to various places, like, I don't think that's gonna happen purely for logistical reasons. So it's like, it's, the, the great thing about living in Ohio is that it doesn't matter that it's Ohio, because I am like a lame, washed dad.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  And so even if I was living in like Berlin, like, there would be no real difference to my life whatsoever, other than I don't know if they have like Targets in Berlin.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  I know, that's a good answer. Also, I mean, I don't know, the music journalist aspect, you know? I mean, you, do you not write about live music?

• 1:23:13Speaker 00

  Not very often at this point. Like, it's, yeah, it's, I, yeah, and that's fine. I don't wanna review concerts anymore.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:21Speaker 00

  And I'm very grateful to not be doing that.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  Okay. James says, Rob, first time, long time. If you were to do a song from the band live, what would you choose? And what do you feel their legacy is, if any? Love What You Do, in which I had thought of it first, had your musical knowledge, had your height, five foot nine, womp womp.

• 1:23:40Speaker 00

  Five nine is not bad, but the answer is. Lightning crashes.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  That's your.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess you kind of have to.

• 1:23:49Speaker 00

  That's it, isn't it?

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  I guess you have to, I guess you have to.

• 1:23:53Speaker 00

  I don't even know.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  A placenta falls to the floor.

• 1:23:58Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Speaker 00

  The placenta alone, I think. Like, what is the number two most culturally resonant lives? I know they have many fine hits that I enjoy.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Alone or, or all over you?

• 1:24:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  All over you.

• 1:24:13Speaker 00

  Right, but like, Lightning crashes.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, Lightning crashes is the goat. That's true.

• 1:24:19Speaker 00

  Lightning crashes.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  It's such a bizarre song, such a scary, scary and.

• 1:24:23Speaker 00

  Extremely weird.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Stressful song.

• 1:24:26Speaker 00

  But that's like a weird saga, right? Cause that's one of the deals where like, they're fighting.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's bad, it's Bad News Bear, Ed Kowalczek.

• 1:24:34Speaker 00

  It's Bad News Bears. Ed, thank you for pronouncing his name correctly. Like, the, the rest of the band is fighting with him, like, it's, they're sort of the Journey of the nineties in that respect. Like, isn't Journey like a ship of Theseus situation now, where like, how many original members of Journey are left? And like, who gets to say their Journey? There's all sorts of weird shit going on.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  Their singer like multiple times, like, right? Like, legal, within legal bounds, but I think Live just sort of, I'm not totally sure, but I feel like they sort of fell apart and hated each other. And then like, the remaining members of Live tried to go on tour with another singer, and Ed Kowalczek was like, absolutely the fuck not, you won't. I, I, I believe this is what happened. I'm not a scholar of the legal dramas of, uh, the selling the drama.

• 1:25:19Speaker 00

  It's Bad News Bears. And, and it's a use of the legal parlance. The Live situation is Bad News Bears, which of course only makes it more valid as a podcast subject.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I would love to hear you break down.

• 1:25:31Speaker 00

  Keep that in mind.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  Lightning crashes, TBQH.

• 1:25:34Speaker 00

  I would probably love to do that. And if I did that, it would, we would, I would be doing that with you, ideally.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Who else could talk about the placenta falling to the floor?

• 1:25:44Speaker 00

  Literally nobody.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  Okay. Ryan says, since you and Yasi frequently guest on each other's podcasts, I have a quick question if you were to switch roles. Number one, what is an artist Yasi hasn't covered yet that you would wanna cover? And number two, if Yasi is available to answer, what is a song from either the nineties or the nineties? Cole in the two thousands, oh, I got it, the nineties or nineties, the Cole two thousands, that you didn't cover, but she would?

• 1:26:12Speaker 00

  You fall away. Bar, bar, bar, bar, bar.

• 1:26:20Speaker 00

  I mean, when I bring up my dream band playing episode, and I mention it to you, and you're like, you're insane, we could never do that, and you're correct, is Guided by Voices, right? Like, that's sort of the white whale.

• 1:26:34Speaker 00

  Okay, I, I hope so, because I would love to do it. It's like impossible, like, it's hilariously.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  You will be part of it. I've said this before, I'll say it again, and I'll keep saying it until it happens.

• 1:26:45Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  We're doing a twenty-four-hour telethon style.

• 1:26:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Twitch-streamed podcast in which I am joined by multiple guests. Yeah.

• 1:26:58Speaker 00

  Obscure reference. Okay, I will be delighted to be part of that process. I'd like to be in like the isolate, isolation drills, do the collapse, like, semi-failed, sellout, early two thousands, late nineties era of Guided by Voices, but.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  That would probably land you at like, one in the morning, which is perfect.

• 1:27:18Speaker 00

  There we go. Is that prime time or like explicitly not prime time? That like, you're strategically, like, you're, you're saving like Steve Hayden, you know, for like the, the crucial nine o'clock hour or whatever.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  It reminds me of when Courtney Love did Twenty Four Hours of Love on MTV. That's kind of the vibe I'm going for.

• 1:27:38Speaker 00

  That's exactly, didn't Katy Perry do something similar? And it was like extremely bizarre and off-putting, yeah, like, sorry.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  I don't know about that. I don't know about that.

• 1:27:47Speaker 00

  That's fine. Stay not knowing about it.

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  I guess besides hemorrhage paren, well, I would have wanted to do Shimmer. If we're, if we're just like saying whatever we would have wanted or.

• 1:27:57Speaker 00

  That's right, that was the other Fuel song I was trying to think of.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  Shimmer is really the banger. I was just trying to kind of get in on the two thousands. What I really wanted to do, we already did, which was, um, Glycerin by Bush, because you didn't cover it the first time.

• 1:28:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  So I feel, I feel.

• 1:28:13Speaker 00

  Did you go see Fuel? And that's what caused your Fuel resurgence? No, okay.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  I've just always really liked those couple of songs.

• 1:28:23Speaker 00

  Okay, I thought there was, I, yeah, I thought there was some. Explicit catalysts that you were like Fuel are the greatest band ever, but you've always believed that.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  I'm not, I don't think you should really put words in my mouth like that, that I said that Fuel is the greatest band ever, because I didn't say that.

• 1:28:38Speaker 00

  All right.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  I didn't say that.

• 1:28:39Speaker 00

  Point taken.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  I didn't say that. Brett Scallions has left the band. No, I just like, as I do, just fell down a weird, you know, K-hole one night. Next thing you know, she was listening to Shimmer on repeat.

• 1:28:54Speaker 00

  Being able to name a member of Fuel is like an incredibly impressive professional.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  It happened because I fell in this K-hole and I was like, who the fuck is this man in the Spotify picture? I don't remember that man. Where's the blonde man with the hair and the earrings? And then I went Googled and found out his name was Brett Scallions and he left the band and he has a solo career now.

• 1:29:13Speaker 00

  Brett Scallions. Well, good for him.

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  Okay. John from Portland, loving the pod. The Spoon episode made me remember a time in 2009 or 10. I live in Portland and was working downtown. I occasionally would hit the Chipotle Mexican Grill, full government name, on Southwest Yam Hill for lunch for a carnitas burrito bowl. Don't judge me. As I sat down, having a carnitas burri-- this is not a judgment, I'm just simply saying that having a carnitas burrito bowl in the middle of a workday and then going back to work is so insane.

• 1:29:43Speaker 00

  You're not fucking doing jack shit at work.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like time to fire up.

• 1:29:48Speaker 00

  Under your desk.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  Minecraft. All this--

• 1:29:51Speaker 00

  There's no five hour energy gonna help you with that, yeah.

• 1:29:54Speaker 01

  All this might not be that odd or interesting, given he lived in Portland at the time. Oh, sorry, I skipped a thing. As I sat down, I noticed that right next to me was Britt Daniel, who was about a quarter done with his burrito. All this might not be that odd or interesting, given that he lived in Portland at the time. Rock stars also enjoy a fast, casual, economical meal. As I started eating, I noticed that Britt had been writing on a pad of paper and had three or four books on his table, one of them being a thesaurus. I know there is a rock and roll cliche of a songwriter at a piano tapping on a memorable hook and then scribbling lyrics on a bar napkin about a lover, but hearing the call of the road. But I love the image of Britt chewing on his burrito and reaching to the thesaurus, trying to think of rhymes for reverse, terse, nurse, curse, worse, purse.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  I think I might have witnessed a moment of artistry, the creation of written in reverse. The meaning of that song does take on a different vibe, if you think he is talking about his burrito instead of a relationship. What story behind the song do you like the most? That was a--

• 1:30:50Speaker 00

  That one.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  Very 60 songs that explain the 90s, cool in the 2000s structure, like a very big, heavy, uptop--

• 1:30:56Speaker 00

  It was.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  Thing.

• 1:30:58Speaker 00

  Let me tell you about my carnitas bowl. Yes, I just--

• 1:31:02Speaker 01

  There's a lot--

• 1:31:03Speaker 00

  I have to say I was--

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  Okay, number one, Britt Daniel could be standing in front of me right now and I wouldn't know about it. Do you know, like, he could be in, I couldn't pick him out of a lineup.

• 1:31:14Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  So, not, that's no disrespect to Britt Daniel, it's just Spoon weren't one of those, like, monoculture MTV bands.

• 1:31:23Speaker 00

  Not the Fuel. No, they weren't. Yes, that's true.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  Bringing a stack of books and a thesaurus to a Chipotle Mexican Grill is so insane.

• 1:31:35Speaker 00

  It matters very much to me whether they were stacked on the table or they were all open to a different page on the table. I just--

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Same.

• 1:31:45Speaker 00

  This tableau of Britt Daniel, who I would recognize, I'd like to think, with like a three-quarter remaining burrito, like, just like, and like, he's got a thesaurus here and he's got like a Shakespeare thing over here, like, I just, this, this image was very striking and amusing to me, I have to say.

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  What do you think happened that day?

• 1:32:06Speaker 00

  Somebody better call a hearse, is how I feel when I go to, after I eat Chipotle. And so I, I just respected this question.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  The cleaning lady was at his house? He had to vacate the premises? So he was like, I know, I'll go to Chipotle?

• 1:32:20Speaker 00

  I'm gonna go to the Chipotle on Yam Hill. Yeah.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  I'm really, I'm really hung up on this whole situation. Should I bring my laptop to Chipotle to research my, with my, all my books and open them up?

• 1:32:32Speaker 00

  You should make that your spot, like, that's, oh, that's Yasi's table.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, we saw, we saw Yasi Salek at the Chipotle with her Sonic Youth books spread across the table, hard at work. I guess you have--

• 1:32:46Speaker 00

  Great indie sleaze band, Sonic Youth, yeah.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  Do you have a story behind a song that you like the most? And what could top Britt Daniel--

• 1:32:54Speaker 00

  No, I have no stories behind songs. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's just, I bow down to Britt Daniel's three-quarters remaining burrito.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  This is the last question, you guys. Sylvia K., are, Rob, are you scared of Swifties? But seriously, does the presence of active online fanbases like Swifties or The Beehive change your approach to covering artists from the aughts versus the 90s? Famously, you're scared of a lot of things, which we've covered on Band Swing.

• 1:33:20Speaker 00

  I am.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:22Speaker 00

  Yes, that's true. I am afraid of horror movies, PJ Harvey songs--

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  Some album covers.

• 1:33:28Speaker 00

  And various other things.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:30Speaker 00

  Some album covers, for sure. Kiss album covers in particular, very frightening. When I was, when my job consisted more of reviewing new Taylor Swift records, like, at midnight--

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  You were more scared of that.

• 1:33:45Speaker 00

  Including midnights, if I recall correctly. I, I was, but like, the, I don't think that I was as prominent, I was not a prominent enough critic for anyone to give a shit, if I'm being totally honest, right? Like, and it's, I, I guess I was content with flying under the radar. Like, I don't want any part of the Nicki Minaj online community. Like, I think that's a pretty universal sentiment at this point. I don't think that, like, obviously, Taylor is a 2000s artist. Nicki is technically, I guess, very, very late, but like, you know, Drake, like, it's, it's interesting, the people who sneak in, in like, 2009, you know, who could technically

• 1:34:28Speaker 00

  work, but I, I can't say that I am particularly scared, because again, I am on record as apparently not disliking or talking shit. Like, nobody's gonna get mad at me because I called somebody rude, hopefully, and if that's the rudest that I am personally, then like, I, I hope that I am never targeted by the Bay Hive, but I think that I am within the bounds of, of civil discourse, you know, and I'm still under the radar enough where I don't think I'm gonna have to worry about that. But of course, I'm gonna regret saying that into a microphone.

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  What's your favorite Taylor Swift song?

• 1:35:05Speaker 00

  There you go. I have a false sense of security. The-- It's, somebody else's question was, what's a Metallica song that you would want Taylor Swift to cover? And was it a Taylor Swift song that you would want Metallica to cover? I thought, we don't have to do that question, but the answer is Dear John. I think that is both my favorite Taylor Swift song and the Taylor Swift song I'd have most liked to hear Metallica cover. I used to say All Too Well, but I think All Too Well is pretty overexposed. Like, that's, that's like a lame answer to favorite Taylor Swift song at this point.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:35:42Speaker 00

  Mirrorball is up there.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  Mirrorball is really good.

• 1:35:45Speaker 00

  Folklore. What about you? What's your favorite Taylor Swift song?

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  You know what? To be honest, I'm like, really a Fearless girly. It might be like--

• 1:35:53Speaker 00

  Enchanted.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  No, I don't think Enchanted is on Fearless. I think it's maybe like--

• 1:35:58Speaker 00

  No, that's on Speak Now.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  White Horse, or--

• 1:36:01Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Forever and Always.

• 1:36:05Speaker 00

  Forever and Always, of course, of course.

• 1:36:08Speaker 01

  Okay, Rob, thank you for having me.

• 1:36:11Speaker 00

  Thank you for doing this. Thank you so much. There's no one I would rather have done this with. I really appreciate your time very much. This was fantastic. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions. We did not get to all of them and we will ruminate on what to do about that. If we feel like there is any sort of clamor for a part two to this, then maybe we will do this. We will think about it, but I have all your questions and I will answer them somehow, someday, sooner than the last, however long years ago the last mailbag was. I think we'll do another one of these sooner than that now. But thank you.

• 1:36:50Speaker 04

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