Damian Kulash

Mr. OK Go.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to The Bob left Set's podcast.
My guest today is Damian Kulash. Okay, go Damien, how
do you feel about your BM being more famous for
its videos than its music.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I think it's just a it's crazy, Like I my
feeling is, it's what it is. Like, I'm just I
feel very lucky that I get to keep making art.
You know.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Okay, but you know you look on Spotify and some
of your early material has been streamed more. What do
you think it can do to get people to listen
and pay attention more to the music than the videos.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Let's keep making it. I mean, there's there We get
this question all the time, and that as if the
videos are somehow cannibalizing the music, like it's the other
way around, Like I you know, we make great songs.
We make really great songs. Lots of bands make really
great songs. We also make really great videos. Not lots

(01:12):
of bands make really great video you know, So we'll
sort of like in a category of one with respective
the videos, whereas we're in a category of lots when
it comes to the songs. And I'm glad that that
the videos bring more listeners I'm glad that we keep
get to keep making the stuff we get to keep making.
I mean, do I understand the difference between my eyes
and my ears. Absolutely, But from my perspective, like what

(01:34):
I want to spend my days doing is chasing art ideas,
you know, chasing chasing the muse, and I get to
keep doing it. That's what matters to me.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Okay, let's talk about the upcoming year, twenty twenty six.
I look at your website and I see one gig
listed in February. So what are the plans for twenty
twenty six?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
We have We have some during plans that have yet
to we haven't announced them yet where we have a uh,
we're looking at some summer festivals right now and possibly
a tour of the summer. We're starting up some work
on new videos right now. You know, we had our
first album in years come out last you know, last April.
So this has been a big year of shows and

(02:15):
promo and videos and we're happy to be back at it.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Other than video, how do you promote the new album?

Speaker 2 (02:25):
I mean, we do all those standards stuff like there,
you know, we've we have indie radio promoters and we
do we you know, we we are active on social media,
and you know, we have we're we're we're published through
Warner Chapel, and we are We're distributed through Symphonics, so
we have like and both of those have their own

(02:45):
promotional arms as well. So like, I think we do
all the standard stuff, but to be honest, I don't.
I don't really know what the music industry standards are anymore,
and and I'm not you know, a big part of
it for us just keeping it keeping in direct contact
with our existing fan base, you know, Like since the
earliest days of our band, we would go out after

(03:06):
shows with a with a spiral notebook and just get
people to you know, give us their email addresses because
we didn't want to be you know, we didn't we
didn't want the label to be stuck in between us
and our fans. We would, of course loved the label
to help us find more fans and connecting more people
out there in the world. But the the you know what,

(03:27):
the real sort of transaction for us is make the
stuff find the people. You know, Like, we make the
stuff and we want to give it right to the people.
That's sort of the whole game.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
To what degree are you personally active on social media
promoting both yourself and the band?

Speaker 2 (03:45):
It kind of comes and goes. I I personally hate
social media, like just because I'm a father. I see
what it can do to young kids. I'm a human.
I see what it does to my own brain, like
that sort of like that suck of that attention suck
where you go down the rabbit hole and you can't
get out. It's just a gross feeling. But I also

(04:08):
know it's how culture moves these days. So especially with
a record coming out, I'd made an effort to be present,
to to like pay attention to my own social media
and to the band social media it is a hard
thing for me to do without losing myself in it.
So I am kind of always walking a balance, you know.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
So if one were to subscribe to your feeds, what
would they see?

Speaker 2 (04:37):
My personal feed is mostly like stuff I'm interested in personally,
and I try I try to I when I do podcasts,
I try to, like, you know, I try to put
a link on there. The band's feed is the band's feed.
We try to be more regular with the band's feed,
make sure that we have something every couple of days,
and make sure you know, we have things specif the

(05:00):
shows we've just done, specific to the awards that were
up for, specific to the the things we think the
fans would care about. We do our best to try
to make material that fits the the format, which is
an ever evolving thing. You know, It's like it. I
think there are people who grew up more native to it,
who actually want to take out a phone and film

(05:22):
themselves doing their daily routines. That just doesn't interest me.
I'm sure if that were native to me, we would
be better at it.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
But you know, okay, so there's a line between your
art and your personal life. You don't have a need
or don't want to get your personal life out to
many people.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Oh god, no, I mean I remember early on in
our career a person at a major label telling me, like,
you really should just like, you know, live stream your life.
You know, you should have a blog going all the time,
you should have all this stuff. And I remember thinking,
because I remember that the example in my head was

(06:03):
the Pixies, that I grew up a massive Pixies fan,
and if I had actually like part of what I
loved was that they were godlike to me, and and
imagining who and what that person was, and that if
I actually had to watch, you know, Frank Black eat
breakfast cereal in the morning, I probably would feel pretty

(06:23):
differently about him. And I was just wrong, you know,
like I was wrong in terms of the way culture moved.
I'm I'm not wrong for me, like I just that's
not I want my private life. I want my time
with my kids to be my time with my kids.
I don't want them online, you know. I want my
time with my family to be my time with my family.
I want my time sitting alone in a studio trying

(06:45):
to figure out what cords should come next. That's like
a nearly religious experience for me that I don't The
last thing I want to be thinking about at that
time is like the camera angle, you know, or or
letting somebody into the process. I know, it's I know,
that's how marketing has done. I know that's like that
people half my age feel differently about that than I do.

(07:06):
But I it's just that's me. You know.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Have you met Frank Black Black Francis, Yeah, yeah, I have.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Actually, our mutual friend Jamie Kitman introduced me to him
early on, and he gave me some very great advice
about my career. I'm still I'm still a mega fan,
but you know, still at a distance.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Well, I guess what I'm asking is, you had an
illusion of the man after meeting him. How did you feel?

Speaker 2 (07:36):
I have a different illusion to the man. It's still
a good one. I it's you know, we're not We're
not like best friends. But I I, I was already
an adult with enough with and what I was asking was,
you know, I mean, the big question I had for
him when I was a twenty two year old with
just getting my first major label deal, was I want

(07:56):
to learn to sing better. And he gave me. He
gave me his vocal coach, you know, like and I
still do that. I still do the warm up his
vocal coach gave me every day, you know, And I remember,
I remember his His publishing advice was very very draconian,
don't don't give a cent to anyone kind of thing.
And I mean, I just he it was already an

(08:18):
adult getting an advice from getting advice from another adult,
Very different from a fourteen year old getting get you know,
getting your way in the world by hearing raw rage
on vinyl.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
You know, Okay, but the privilege of stardom, if we
want to call it a privilege, is that you get
to meet a lot of household names, and needless to say,
they're very different from one's impression in most cases not all.
So what has been your experience meeting the famous people?

Speaker 2 (08:49):
They're humans, They're all humans, you know, like it. It
is remarkable how how pedestrian and human every human is,
and and there there are. I mean, I've gotten the
chance to meet some extraordinarily talented famous and and uh
well healed ones and it doesn't you know that it's

(09:14):
it's always the same human stuff. I mean, I find
that very reassuring in some way that it's not there
isn't an us and in them there isn't a way
that the other half lived that's different. You know, they
might have a lot more money or more access, but
there's the.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
The people I know who are really really big celebrity
have a really big celebrity face are are unfailingly nothing
like it.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
On the other side, it's just there's no we as
as consumers of the world around us. I think we
just need things to be more black and white, broad
stroke stories than is real. So we so we decide
that a certain celebrity is vapid or another one is
incredibly you know, dark and mysterious or whatever it is.

(10:06):
We write the stories about these people and they sort
of snowball, but the people themselves just aren't. Like there
are always multidimensional humans with everything going on, They're not
anything like that, you know.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Okay, to what degree do you personally know your hardcore.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Fans depends which ones. There's a few of them I
know really well. I mean like, we literally have a
fan who we just played some shows last week and
she went to her seventy third show. I think this
on this last run. She's seen every show we played

(10:42):
this year, including ones that weren't announced. You know, like,
I know her really well, and she's great, She's awesome.
And there's a handful of fans who come to so
many shows that I do know them really well. I
suspect they actually distort my opinion, my perspect on what
the rest of the sort of megafandom is like. Because

(11:05):
no matter how insanely into a band you are, what
are the chances you're going to travel to see you know,
twenty twenty five shows in a year Like that's puts
you in a very very very small category, and the
people who really keep our career alive are much broader
set than that and yet still really really engage. So
and I think I know I know them by again

(11:26):
in broad strokes, you know, like I can promise you
like I do a lot of questions and answer at
our shows. I asked that the audience just I'm like,
who's got a question? And we just do. We just
have discussions at the shows, and you get a pretty
good sense of how engaged and nerdy and arty our
fans are, you know, and that I just that I

(11:47):
love that, Like, couldn't be more thank Back to your
question about the videos, it's sort of like they they
filter for a self selecting group of very curious and
very sort of prone to wonder nerds, and those are
people I like hanging out like it's a it's a
good feeling.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Well, have you had any bad experiences with fans? I
was talking trying to get too close.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Uh, that has happened. It's been a while, but there
was there was a there was a time in Florida
when there was a there was some sort of scary
moments with it with somebody who had who had not
taken her meds and was out of the institution she
was supposed to be in and so forth.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
So how did you handle that?

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Uh? Distance, Like you just be really when you're in
that city, you're just really careful to watch keep your
wits about you. I don't know that there's much you
can do without without letting it affect your entire life,
you know. And I don't know, maybe I'm maybe maybe

(12:55):
this is naive, but it feels to me like we're
a pretty small like we're a big deal to a
few people, but it's a it's a small category, you know,
Like I would, I think there are much bigger, bigger
fish out there for the craziest to go for.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Okay, but just talking about this woman in Florida, did
you have to get the authorities involved?

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Came close? It didn't. I think this one did not.
I think we had. I can't remember. It was like
fifteen years ago now, but I do remember having to
like alert everybody at the at the show, and you know,
our tour manager had to be the hotel had to
be notified and all that kind of stuff. Because there
was there were some close calls and some threatening emails.

(13:39):
I guess it was at that point as opposed to
Dam's or whatever. But I honestly don't remember the specifics
I remember it being. I remember what I needed to
do was like, stay calm.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Are you recognized out in public?

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Generally not much, or at least not You know, it
happens every every once in a while, but it's not
like a certainly not a constant thing. Sometimes my kids
will be wearing okay go T shirts and and and
like somebody will be like, oh you like that dand
and not realize that I'm standing right there with them.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Okay, how old are your kids?

Speaker 2 (14:14):
I have seven year old twins.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Okay, usually maybe they're a little young. The kids have
contempt for the father's work or the mother.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
It could it may I'm sure we're headed there eventually.
We'll get there. Right now. My daughter says her plan
is to join my men and and perhaps replace me,
which I'm excited about.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
So what have you learned having kids?

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Everything?

Speaker 1 (14:40):
I mean?

Speaker 2 (14:40):
I I I love being the father, and I love
the the way that it has opened up my heart,
and I think I think a lot of people. The
thing I had always heard is that like you see
the world anew through the eyes of your kids, and

(15:01):
I had some of that experience, but it's more that
I like parts of myself that had ossified or I
hadn't that I thought I understood already, even my relationship
to love, like I'm a romantic who has chased love
my whole life long and thought I knew all my
relationships to it, And all of a sudden, you have
a kid, and it's just like God, there's a whole

(15:23):
new wing. There's a whole new wing to this castle,
and it's it's bigger and more amazing than anything I've
been in before. I love it.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
To what degree you talked about not being enamored of
social media? To what degree do you direct and restrict
your children.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
I'm very our kids. I mean, at this age they
have they don't have devices, will keep that that way
for a long time, and they have very limited screen
time on any you know, for anything. And I I mean,
I hope social media is a different universe by the

(16:10):
time that they're you know, I don't know, but thirteen
fourteen years old, it's changed so much in the last
five years that I hope, I hope, I hope it
can change again. I just think about what I was
like as a teenager, and whether or not social media
would have like it would have ruined. It would have
been terrible for me. I would have been got out

(16:31):
and awful. And from everything I understand, it is basically
really horrible for teens now, so I will keep my
kids as far from it as I can.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Why would it have been awful for you?

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Because I was experimenting with personalities? You know, because I
was like, because I think at that age, you're trying
to figure out who you are and taking you know,
big swings, and it's and I'm just glad that's not
that's not all on record somewhere, know, But also because
like the number when when I got home from high
school to what I thought about all night was that

(17:07):
girl right like if I if? And and what she
thought of me? And vice versa and what and that
other guy who liked that? And what are all the
stuff that you that goes through your head as a kid.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (17:19):
If that if I could still be gaming that all
night long? I mean, you know, like I already spent
hours on the on the phone as a teenager. I
think if if that could have been a sort of
gamified and broadcast system of social hierarchy. Got it was
been off for me.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
So what kind of kid were you?

Speaker 2 (17:38):
I was a nerdy art kid. I I went, you know, like,
I spent all my time painting and with my headphones
on listening to rock and roll like it. I I
went to a school where there was like really heavy
on jocks, and and I got along well with him.
I wasn't like, I wasn't in the sort of classic

(18:00):
battle of the arty kids against the jocks. I just
like they liked different things than I did. We didn't.
We didn't even like the same girl. So it was fine.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Okay, let's start from the beginning. Where did you grow up?

Speaker 2 (18:10):
I grew up in Washington, DC.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
And were your parents involved with the government.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
They were not. My dad is a well so sort
of tangentiy, I should say. My dad is a civil
engineer whose work was not funded by the government but
was used by the government law and my uh my
mom is a was in uh basically worked for a
consulting firm interpreting what the government's rules were at any

(18:39):
given time for pensions and benefits. So they both they
both had a lot of government overlap, but were not
employed by the government.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Okay, it would sound like to do her job, your
mother would be somewhat of a news junkie. Are you
a news junkie?

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Not currently, I am susceptible to it, but I a
special I found during the first Trump administration that I
I there's a certain chadenfreuda I was looking for in
the news every night, and and I just would go
diving deep down these holes looking for that, you know,

(19:19):
trying to find the moment that this that this would
all crack and and and sanity would would come bubbling
up through the the truth somewhere, and seeing one piece
of news after another, going God, this is ridiculous, Oh
my god, oh God, And like that that I realized
after a while it was I was not staying informed.

(19:40):
I was just I was. It was just rage scrolling,
you know.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
Well, needless to say, we're in the second Trump administration.
What's your outlook today?

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Not good? I you know, I'm I'm I'm obviously left
of center politically, and and and I I I can
say just the same. I don't. I don't. I think
it's very hard to look at what's happening right now
and think there's any sanity to it. And I am
worried that that I'm just another one of the sort

(20:12):
of head in the sand, Like it's so that the
flood the zone offense of of the of the Trump
administration and MAGA in general. The sort of like let's
just pour, you know, just just sort of set everything
on fire, and and if it's all burning at the
same time, nobody will know what to do has been

(20:34):
relatively effective with me because I'm just I'm overwhelmed. I'm
sort of like God, I don't know what to do
about any of it. It doesn't leave a great doesn't
leave me with a very positive outlook. So how do
you think it's going to play out? Well, I'm a

(20:55):
I'm I I am a cynic and also like this
sort of a sort of hopeful, optimistic, romantic on the
to sort of counterbalance that I I guess my rational
side thinks it's only going to get worse. My the

(21:16):
other side of me is sort of like it just can't.
There has to be a breaking point. And I'm and
I don't know, I mean, like I I I wish
I could give. I wish I had anything other than
than songs to give, you know what I mean, Like
we have a song on her most recent album called
A Stone Only Rolls Downhill and the whole it's I

(21:39):
wish I could say this that I'll be all right,
Like if that's the song written specifically to my kids,
like I don't have any you can't lie to them,
But you also can't raise your kids going like, well,
the world is going to hell in a hand basket
and you're going with it, you know, I don't know,
what do you think?

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Oh wow, Well, let me ask your question first. In
the sixties they fought or said both actually that music
could change the world. What power does music have in
today's world?

Speaker 2 (22:14):
I think you would be able to answer that way
better than I, because I think you look at music
across like in its in its aggregate form. I look
at music one song at a time, you know. But
like I will say that my life has been changed
by songs, and my relationship to the world changes dramatically
when those songs are on, when something changes my soul.

(22:36):
And I know that our fan like I get letters
all the time from you know. The most recent one
that really moved me was a a an activist, an
Israeli activist in Palestine trying to bring the war to
an end, saying that she just needed like that that
after a day of hell all around her, she needed

(22:59):
something to escape too, and our songs we're doing that
for her, and like that that those are the types
of things that booy my soul. Because I'm I. I
can feel very navel gazing and and sort of self
serving to sit in my in my safe bubble writing songs.

(23:20):
But you know when we hear from people all the
time for whom our songs are getting them through the
death of a parent or the death of a child,
or uh, you know, the realization that the world around
them is going to ship like them. I know these
individual stories are I don't know if they're if they

(23:41):
have any if they move any globe, you know, huge
cosmic needle. All I can do is do do do
my part in my little world, and and I I
know it has been done for me. I know it.
You know I know that that music keeps me alive,
and I hope, I hope it's doing that for us.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Let's say that I said financial considerations were taken off
the table, but no one would ever hear your music.
You could make it, but no one could hear it.
Would you still make.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
It, probably not. I don't know. I mean I would,
what I would make would change a lot like I
think I would be. I would I'd spend a lot
more time practicing piano just to play it, and a
lot less time trying to figure out but how does
this become a song? And I don't know, And my

(24:35):
answer to that would have changed dramatically over the years,
because I like as a as a kid. When I
first started making music, it was a compulsion to be
able to like the thing. When I heard Rocket by
Herbie Hancott, a certain scratch itch in my brain was
scratched deep inside my skull in a place that nothing

(24:56):
else had ever gotten to it. And I don't know.
Ten years later than that, the first time I had
a four track sitting in front of me and I
could start layering things up and go, oh my god,
I think I just wrote a song that did something
in my brain in a whole different way too. They're
related but not the same, you know. And I spent
I spent years just trying to find that thing, either

(25:19):
with other musicians in the room or multi tracking something
in a studio, whatever, trying to it. It's this other
itch in my brain. I think I would have done
that regardless of who was listening at this point in
my life. I I make the songs for like I
am the audio. I'm the only test audience. Like, if

(25:39):
it's not moving me, there's no point in making it.
But if there were, if there were no if there
were no audience outside of that. Ever, again, I'm not
sure it ever finished them. I'd probably be playing with
them all the time, but I would I don't think
it would ever goes to the part of where I
go like, no, these lyrics aren't good enough. Try again.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Okay, you have a band, long tenure, you have an audience.
How important is it for you to have more people
hear your music?

Speaker 2 (26:13):
It's a it's a it's a totally like what is it?
What's the name of the thing? Or OBErs, it's a
it's a snake eating its tail question? You know, like
I it. I watch my kids, for instance, want to
get stuff for uh the holidays, right, They're like, I
want to get this, and I want to get that.
I know, I know the things that will be fun

(26:34):
for them to open versus the things that will be
fun for them to have. I know how little each
individual toil will matter in the course of a year
or in the course of their lives. And it's I
think that people look at when I look at my
own career and when I look around the musicians I
know an artist that I know in their careers, it's
the same basic thing. There's this sort of compulsion towards

(26:57):
towards UH can act with more people, you know, towards
feedback from those people out there that it's like, oh, yes,
this thing landed. You know that the thing I made
mattered to somebody. But it's all relative, like ten more
tomorrow is better than ten less tomorrow. But I don't

(27:18):
But does it really matter? Like I don't actually know.
I'm not there for these interactions. When somebody puts our
song on somewhere, I'm not there to feel it. And
I wouldn't know if ten more people did it tomorrow
or less? Is this too abstract? Like I don't. I
like the idea of continuing to do this. I like
the feeling of continuing to do this, and and I

(27:40):
need people to keep showing up at shows and keep
streaming our songs and keep watching our videos and stuff
for me for that to be an operational career. But
it's not the abstraction of more and more and more
is I'm aware of that as an abstraction. Does that
answer the question absolutely? How are the economics fine? I mean,

(28:02):
it's we entered the music industry right at the end,
like just as CDs were dying, and we never had
a time where where we got you know, got fat
off of off of master side sales. You know, we

(28:23):
we we didn't live in there of of of big,
big hits. You know. There there was there was a
lot more licensing. Like I I think that it was
a lot easier to to to get from album to
album without worrying about people paying their rent or their

(28:44):
mortgage or whatever. When when licenses from TV shows and
movies and stuff were significantly bigger than they are now
and more frequent than they are now. And I gather
that's not just our band aging, that's that's the industry
as a whole. I mean, we we have this weird
thing where we get to make these expensive videos because
we find sponsors for them generally, and those that is

(29:06):
this is such a weird little cul de sac off
of the rest of the music industry and affects our
finances so much that it's a little bit hard to
know what are what are what our bottom line would
look like without that. But you know, we tour profitably,
We make a lot on merch Things are pretty good
in general.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
So how was it financially during COVID during the shutdown?

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Uh, it we happened to be between albums. Then it
was like a pretty good time for it to happen.
My kids were eighteen months old when it started. I
was not going to go touring with toddlers at home anyways.
And uh, and my wife and I directed a film together.
We directed a movie for Apple, and so I had

(29:54):
sort of briefly pivoted out of out of the music industry.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Right then, how did you get a deal to make
it movie for Apple?

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Well, my band makes these videos. You might have heard
it where so yeah, so for your for any listeners
who don't already know this about our band, we're the
band with the ridiculous videos and they were they are
well respected in the film and ad communities. And so
when we pitched a movie to Apple to co direct,

(30:23):
my wife is a screenwriter and she's written some very wait.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait, let's start
at a base level. You're at home, your wife says,
I have an idea. There's a long process between creation
and actually having a deal in making the movie was
like a big plan. I mean, how did you get
did you get an age? And how did this all

(30:47):
come to be?

Speaker 2 (30:48):
When when my wife and I knew each other in
high school years and years and years ago, and we
didn't see each other for twenty years after that we
both had totally separate lives and then ran into each
other on Staten Island of all one of the places,
and uh, and we're friends again. And when when it
when it first got romantic? We I remember us, I

(31:08):
mean we It was sort of a specific thing. It
was like, you're in film and I'm in music. The
more successful I am, especially these days, that the more
the more that means being away from home. The more
successful you are means being off on sets being away
from home too. So it doesn't really seem like the
type of relationship we want to build. Why don't we
make stuff together? And we so we, Yeah, we decided

(31:30):
we would we would try directing directing stuff together. Because
I'm we that was sort of an obvious next stept
for both of us, she as a as a narrative
film writer and me as a video director, and so yeah,
we we knew it would be a long game type
of thing, because you don't get that that opportunity very often.

(31:51):
And we started to develop some ideas just you know,
when we'd be out on a hike or something like that.
We just passed back and forth ideas. This one came
up because of a she got the opportunity to to
write a book about I'm sorry to write the script
based on a book about the economics of the beanie

(32:13):
baby bubble. And we were both teenagers when that happened
and completely immune to its charms, Like we had that
it was the type of thing that we were both like,
who fucking want a small stuffed animal and think it
was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, And so we
had like exactly the right distance from it to sort
of look as scans at it and it and it

(32:35):
turns out to be such a weird story of sort
of what America is about that we just both kind
of fell in love with it. She had written she
had written one draft of the script already, and we
just sort of we thought, okay, if this were an
okay Go video. If this narrative were a video, how
would we how would we do it wrong? And the
way that okay Go always gets the music industry wrong,

(32:56):
how would we do this movie wrong? And we pitched
it to Zach Gallifacus, who is who would make the
perfect tie Warner?

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Oh wait wait wait wait wait how did you know?
How did you connect with Zach galifanaka?

Speaker 2 (33:08):
He was our he was our landlord. We were he
we he We were renting an apartment that he owns
in in uh in Venice, California.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Just for the record, sideways, where do you live now?

Speaker 2 (33:20):
I live in Santa Barbara? Now?

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Okay, So you pitch it to Zach?

Speaker 2 (33:25):
He was into it and uh and so we took
it to we we uh, we took it to various
different I mean, Imagine Entertainment signed on pretty early to
produce it. And and at that point.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Wait wait wait wait who connected you with Imagine?

Speaker 2 (33:45):
My wife she'd written several scripts for Imagine at that point. Okay,
she already know and uh And it was at Amazon
for almost two years and eventually they were just on
the fence about it for too long. And actually, I
hope it's legal to say. At this point, Zach Zach
got so upset about the business practices of Amazon that

(34:09):
he was like, I'm not making this if it's an
Amazon anymore. And that pushed them off the fence and
we get it. And Apple was just starting their film
division and we got to be one of the things
they made.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
So are you happy with the result?

Speaker 2 (34:20):
I love that. Yeah, the film is great. Film is great.
The process of making the film is less fun than
I had hoped. It is deeply creative, but also more
more management than it is. Uh muse chasing that makes sense.
I longed to get back to, like the the chasing

(34:45):
of the of the emotional part of it, that sitting
down in a piano or a guitar. Uh and and
and finding that moment where one plus one equals five hundred.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
You know, film is a collaborative art, which music is
more about the individual. Was that where you notice a difference.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yes, But you know our videos are incredibly collaborative. We
obviously the Okay Go videos are very you know, they
can have giant crews sometimes that there's I think the
love video, the one that is Grammy nominated right now
is up. It was one hundred and thirty six people
on the crew, and you know that's that's almost narrative

(35:36):
film size, but it is a very different You're basically
it's a sprint up to one three minute shot. A
film is a you know, a forty day shoot, fifty
day shoot. It's a you're it's your all your pre
production sits in an office for several months, and and
yes it is. It is a collaboration on a grant

(35:58):
much bigger scale. I think more of it. I mean,
it was a steep learning curve for me. I really
enjoyed it, but there was a lot of it that
it was that you're what you're doing is you're describing
a vision, and people with even more experience than you
will go make that vision. You know, like your your
art department will now go produce the thing you have described.

(36:20):
I'm used to actually describing the vision and then going
and producing it myself.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Okay, let's go back to the music side of it. Okay,
go as a band. To what the degree is the
creation collaborative. I'm not talking about the recording, I'm talking
about the writing. To what degree is it really just you?
Or to what degree is it collaborative.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
It's very collaborative. Tim the Basis and I have known
each other since we were eleven years old, and I
would say, I mean we both sort of write demos
ourselves and then bring them to the other, but they
invariably change a lot after that. I tend to be
the pretty soul lyricist. The other guys will definitely weigh
in on the lyrics, and I value their feedback a lot.

(37:06):
I'm sure you've dealt with this with other musicians before,
but it's a very like It's unlike any other business
or or art form that I know of in terms
of it's the balance of of sort of democratic decision
making and and you know, autocratic decision making. Because there's

(37:30):
this there's an illusion and sometimes it's the truth that
it that it's more a family than it is a business. You're, you're, you're,
you've got one foot in each camp, and so having
everybody's blessing on something is not just a matter of
decision making, it's also a matter of your own self
feeling okay, Like it's it's steamrolling the people you've been

(37:56):
in a band with for thirty years because you feel
like you're right about something. Doesn't feel good. You would
eat like it's not operable to be like I won
this one good, you know what I mean? Like you
eat it. So we've you we've sort of spent decades
doing this in a way where we need each other's
approval on things, but we also need to have you

(38:16):
also need someone who's where, you know, like I'm where
the buck stops generally, and so there are lots of
times when I just have to make a decision and
I don't feel like making it, but I just have to,
you know.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
And how do you split up the publishing we have?

Speaker 2 (38:31):
We split up the publishing half goes to the people
who wrote the song, and we try to break that
down fairly, and the other half goes to the band,
anyone who has participated in the entire promotion cycle for
the album, because we figured that there's no value to
those songs if they are if they haven't gotten a

(38:52):
good lift off into the world.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Okay, so what is your process? Are you writing when
you know you have to record or want to record
an album? Are you coming up with songs all the time?
Are you waiting for inspiration? How does it work for you?

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Closest to the first one You've said, like, mostly I
go into long periods of writing when it's like I,
when I've checked off all the other stuff that has
to be done. I like. The thing I love doing
the most is sitting here, playing with sounds and trying
to discover moments where you put two sounds together and

(39:30):
out the other side comes in emotion, and that's that
has never stopped being magical to me. I'm also so
thrilled by the opportunity to go make this ridiculous film,
right like, can we make this art project? Do I
get to go play with robots in a train station
in Budapest? That is like, I'll never say no to that,
and I want that opportunity, So I will face that

(39:55):
video until we get it made. And as long as
we have things we sort of need to be doing,
that's generally what I'm doing. And when we run out
of those things, I'm like, good, now I get to
write another album. And by then I'm generally so exhausted
of working in large groups of people and and and
chasing down these big logistics that I'm really excited to
just sit home and write for months straight. When I

(40:19):
was younger, I remember feeling a lot of pressure to
write while we were on the road, to get to
write faster than I do, or to always be writing.
And I honestly I'm jealous of the of the musicians
I know who keep themselves to a really militaristic schedule,
who just like every day put in five or six
hours or whatever it is. And every every year, I

(40:42):
promise myself, I'm gonna I'm gonna develop that kind of
habit that I have yet too, so we'll see.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Okay, do you know when you write an eleven now,
so you working, you know you've been doing it so
long you're not going to write something that's complete shit.
But every once in a while and you can't do
it that off, you go, wait a second, this is great.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Well to me, they all start with a hint of that,
and it's more about not losing it right, Like, this
is the model that operates in my brain, and I
think it's true.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Ish.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
I'm just like playing around with sounds, and for the
most part, when you put two sounds together, you get
another sound on the other side. Every once in a
while you get an emotion like something happens, and that's
unbelievable to get that to flow into another set of
sounds that also have an emotion that and those two
emotions counterbalance each other in such a way that there's

(41:48):
some actual arc and feeling and spread and journey to
it all that's even more rare. So you can get
a wildly hooky or a wildly punchy or wildly evocative
single chord progression or groove or whatever, and it just
doesn't go anywhere. Like you can get thousands of those

(42:09):
and they still don't turn into a song. And even
once you have that arc of a song, how not
to kill it by describing it lyrically? Like what are
the actual things you're saying now? Now you're crossing over
from the sort of murky space of magical emotions into

(42:32):
the specific space of things you've actually said a poem,
you're actually singing along with this, How not to get
that to flatten it into just a description of the
sad song you've just written, or of the enthusiastic song written,
whatever it is. And so it's more like it's whittling
down the whole time. You're going from this thing that
is full of promise, and at every stage it has

(42:54):
the opportunity to just turn back into a bunch of sounds,
and it's so rare that everyone's every once in a
while you get all the way to the end of
it and it's stayed full of promise.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Okay, there are some people have a bolt of inspiration
write a song in fifteen minutes. It sounds like you
build a song over a long period of time.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
Usually, Yeah, every once in a while, something will start
lyrics first, and then maybe that'll like sort of drag
along the song behind it, and that does happen faster
and they're more succinct, and sometimes they're really good, But
there's not usually how they write.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Let's go back to the videos. You have a concept,
you nail it down as much as possible, You get sponsors,
You have a shoot those who are uninitiated. There's a
lot of money involved. There's a lot of people and
equipment involved. You have a set period of time to

(43:52):
film the video. The nature of making a film is
even with the best intentions, the best script, the best actors,
the best directors, it can go sideways. It doesn't necessarily
end up what you wanted to be. So have you
had that experience with these videos where you're looking at

(44:13):
the footage you have and say it's just not there,
and what do you do when you have that feeling?

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Well, because our videos, like the reason we wound up
making videos like this is because ages ago we set
up a camera on a tripod in my backyard and
filmed us doing a rehearsal of a ridiculous dance. It

(44:40):
was sort of a thing we would do on stage
to fuck with the hipsters. You know. It's like it
was the era of the Strokes and everybody was shuffling
their feet and smoking and it was and we just
we wanted to we wanted we wanted to feel like
cheap trick. We wanted to feel like Jon Jet. We
wanted we wanted like, we wanted a smile in the room.
So we would do this ridiculous boy band dance, taking

(45:03):
the piss out of ourselves just to kind of to
because it was the punkest thing we could do at
the time. And a we taped us a rehearsal tape
of that in my backyard and it went sort of
proto viral before YouTube was ever a thing, right, And

(45:24):
that taught us something about just being like, wait, there
is this type of if we our instincts as a band.
We're not like, how do we make a film? It
was what do we do in front of a crowd
of people to get them to smile, to get them
to feel, to get them to emote, to get them
to connect with us? And so our filmmaking has always

(45:44):
been sort of a just a reflection of that, is
sort of like, what what thing can we do that
we can put a camera in front of and and
bring people to And more and more over the years,
I have found that it's basically that is the closest
facsimile I can digitally make to what a concert feels like.

(46:08):
Like when you're at a good show, there's just, you know,
as I'm sure you know, people's you know, physically align
with the singer, like you're actually your heartbeats actually line
up with other people in the audience with the singer,
and your saline levels all adjusted, and it's all this
like crazy stuff that's happening sort of under the surface,
and you feel it right like it's such It's why
we're all drawn to those experiences. And that's not something

(46:31):
that happens when you're looking at TikTok, you know what
I mean, That's not something that happens when you're looking
at this little screen, no matter how good the musical
performance is. But the videos that we make do have
this sort of sense of wonder to them, this kind
of like this discovery, this magical feeling that is about
the closest thing I can come to that that feeling

(46:53):
on stage. And we've gotten there not through the standard
process of filmmaking where you script something out and you
plan it all in advance and then try to put
together in the edit, but rather by coming up with
these performances that we the band actually do that we
can then film in basically one take usually like it's
usually one take thing. Sometimes we're doing multiple takes, but

(47:15):
it's still a single event or whatever it is. But
it means that at the end of the shoot, we
know we have it for the for the Love video
that the Grammy nominated one right now. It that I
didn't even I knew when we'd done the last take
that we had it, And I didn't even watch it
for several days after that because we didn't. We were
at we're out of money, there's we couldn't do another
take anyways. But I knew we'd gotten to the end,

(47:39):
and I knew what it felt like to perform it,
and so if the camera sees if like if it
didn't look quite the same through the camera, it wouldn't
really matter. The spirit was there.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
You know, how many takes were there and how many
days was the shoot?

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Thirty nine takes? The official shoot like the you know
in film world, the shoot starts when you when the lights,
when when the expensive lighting package gets turned on. Basically
that it was officially a three day shoot, but we
were on the ground in Budapest for three weeks prepping that,
and many months of prep you know, stateside before that.

(48:11):
So and that was and there was a Sunday off,
like I think our last day was a Monday or Tuesday,
and there was a Sunday off right before that that
we had to wasn't off anymore. We were running too
far behind schedule and we had to buy an extra
day on the ground. You know, like we we often
have sponsors. We usually have sponsors, but we also pay
for them. So like we're the clients so to speak.

(48:33):
So when when things aren't going well enough and we
know we need, like, well, just put in the extra
money if we have to. It's it's much more important,
Like a B plus video does nothing for us. You know,
if we if we spent this much money on something
that people didn't think was spectacular, it would be a
real waste of money. So you know, it also puts uh,

(48:53):
you did this is not quite the question you asked.
But when I'm working with film people in the film world,
it's a it's a real blessing to be doing such
an absurd art project as one of our videos is
because nobody gets into film because because they thought it
was like, eh, an okay way to make a living,

(49:14):
and they just wanted to put in the hours. Like
everybody is is in love with the art, but the
way you make a living is to make toothpaste commercials
and you know, bitcoin exchange commercials or whatever. Like you know, people,
most of the time, people are working on things they

(49:34):
don't love, and most of the time they're working on
a very strict schedule and never get to do never
get to be very creative. And like in our videos,
we don't usually have the same budgets as everyone else.
We don't usually like you're not gonna get paid quite
as much as you did on the Crest commercial, but
you're gonna be really proud of the thing you made, Andre,
and we really need you to be creative. And people

(49:56):
usually usually really for the fences on them and and
really want like it's the rare time on set when
you're getting to make something where like h ah, where
where the client so to speak, will go to the
mat to make it perfect, you know, and so and

(50:18):
and that is a that is an addictive feeling. It's
something that like every filmmaker I've worked with, whether it
is a grip or the guy cleaning off the dance
floor that we are dancing on, it's super infectious. Like
that feeling that this matters and you and then and
and that you're going to be proud of it. It
goes a long long way.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
So what was the budget for this clip.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
For the for the Love video? Yes, I am contractually
not allowed to say, but it is high six.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
Figures okay, So as originally planned? Was the amount of
money covered by sponsors? No? What percentage of the money
was sponsors in the end in the beginning.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Zero in the end ninety.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Okay, how do you get the sponsors?

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Uh? We we make it. We have a lot of
friends in the ad world. At the point we've been
doing it for years and years. You know, they used
to come to us all the time, right right, like
when when when being viral on YouTube was the thing
that was threatening terrestrial TV, we were a first call,

(51:44):
you know. And and it's still the case people in
the ad world when they when they have to pitch
their deck to the client the mood board, there's an
okay go video still on that mood board, you know,
twenty percent of the time, fifty percent of the time,
Like we're we are a touchstone for for those people

(52:06):
in terms of like we wanted to have this feeling.
We wanted to feel genuine we wanted to feel homemade,
we wanted to feel inventive, we wanted to feel resourceful.
And you know, I think what I to me, the
thing is like when you're watching something that that feeling
of a as a viewer, feeling the filmmakers on the

(52:30):
other side of it, going like, oh I get what
they put into this, and knowing having that relationshipstem It's
very very similar to me as it is to listen
to a singer, right Like, it's like that connection between
you and them. That's not the case generally and narrative film,
like when you're watching you know, the best of Scorsese's films.
Hopefully you are in the you're in the scene, you're

(52:51):
watching the Gangsters. You're not watching the filmmaker, right, but
in an okay go video. The whole point is we
never you're where there's no suspension of disbelief. You're never
asked to leave, like we want you to see how
it was made, and we want you to have that
connection to us as we made it. And I think
that's that is something that that brands in particular are

(53:15):
really they want that they want you when you watch
this to go like, I love this. I love that
this was made for me by these people, and who
are these people? And I want to know about this
right like that that connection again to me, it feels
just like music. It's sort of like when I hear ROBERTA.
Flack singing do what you Gotta do, I'm like, I
want to have dinner, Like I need to know the
rest of the story. I want to I want to

(53:36):
know how her heart was broken like this, I need
to sing it to me again, like it's a personal
connection between me and her all of a sudden, And
that's how it feels with our videos, I hope, and
and so getting sponsors on board is generally a matter
of them. They're just looking for ways to connect with people,
and all we have to do is sort of prove
to them we're not here. We're not here to steal

(53:59):
your money. We're like, we're here because we want to
make this thing that connects with people. Do you want
to connect with people? And generally if they believe that
we will, they want to.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Okay, you have the idea, you know what cost X?
How do you find the sponsors?

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Literally, it has been different with every video we've done.
I mean we we we do a lot of outreach.
It almost never works like going going out to ad
agencies or you know, the chief marketing officer of some brand.

(54:36):
We have an almost zero percent hit rate of going
I've got this great idea and you make the thing right.
But they frequently come to me asking for me to
direct a direct a TV commercial for them, and then
I could go, well, I'd love to do that, or
you could make the next Okay go video and that
has often worked. There's there if if the if the

(55:00):
production company we're working with already has lots of clients
that they're making commercials. For as long as it comes
from somebody they trust in the marketing world that this
is a good marketing maneuver, then they might consider it.
And so for this last one, it was it was
the it was a combination of both of those Meta
was working with. Are the producers who are making the

(55:21):
video with us already worked with Meta on other projects
and they were like, would you consider working on this?
And that was a multi month process and they paid
for about half of it, and uh and the the
project Management Institute was had already worked with us on
a different video and we were let and we were like,

(55:43):
the next one's going to be bigger. We be interested
in working. So it was like two existing relationships.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Okay, what does a sponsor want for their money?

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Engagement attention? I mean they're like, and that's measured differently
every time, and there's I think think that it used
to be at least I remember it being much more
metrics driven five ten years ago, when it was sort
of like how many hits or how many shares or
how many of this? And I think people have started

(56:14):
to realize that it's so much more about a continuing
relationship that like the sort of zeitgeisty feeling of something
has more to do with being popping up on three
different platforms than it does with you know this many

(56:36):
YouTube hits that generally it is when we've gotten the
feedback from the brand partners at the end, it's all
about overall feeling they're getting and not look.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
At this number, look at this number, look at this number,
and you've made a number of these. What satisfies a
client a sponsor. They want to be able to be
seen in the video, they want to presents by credit what.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Yeah, ours generally have there's usually a thanks at the end,
like there's just like this, you know thanks at the end.
Sometimes there's something right at the beginning. A lot of
times there's behind the scenes pieces that are very focused
on on their relationship to it because it's all it's
like if when you click on one of our videos, we

(57:25):
hope you go down the rabbit hole, right like it's
like how do they do this? And then you're and
then you're in the universe of how it was all
made and that stuff is you know a lot of
ways more meaningful to the clients because they're like what
they want is a a a a value connection with
the people who are watching. It's not just a sort
of impression, you know.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
So what's your view on directing commercials?

Speaker 2 (57:51):
I you know, I have done it before, it and
it's a it can be a fun way to sort
of practice a technique or learn a filmmaking thing. I'm
less into it. I'd rather be writing in songs, you know.
And right now, like commercial directing is a horrible isn't it.
I mean it's just like, you know, the music industry,

(58:12):
as you know, turned into something like a service industry
in the last ten years, fifteen twenty years, and that
is that has happened much more to directors in the
last five ten years than they had thought was going
to happen. I think, you know, like I think a
lot was learned from the from the digital makeover of

(58:36):
music from the films. I'd learned a lot from watching
that happen, but there's a lot that was still a
big shock. And watching my friends who are commercial directors
struggle for work, it's like, I don't, you know, I
don't have any great desire to be fighting tooth and
nail to get to get a film job that I
don't really want to do. In the first place, you know.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
But it is lucrative if you do the work.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
It has been it was in the past, it is
getting less and less. So from what I understand, I mean,
I'm not Look, I'm not a a a student of
any of these industries like you are, so I don't
want to stick my foot in my mouth. But it
used to be that that, you know, multiple day shoots
with big budgets were pretty common for commercial shoots. That's

(59:22):
that is the margins have come way down and there's
and they know now that a lot of what they
have to produce is all this ancillary stuff for social media.
So so what you have to make is, you know,
there's ten times more stuff you have to make, and
the budgets have come out.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
So to what degree do you feel pressure to top
yourself with the next video?

Speaker 2 (59:48):
The The true answer to that is very complicated because
I'm aware that they're the like that it's an attention economy,
you know. But you would never write a song to
try to top the last song, you know, And it's
sort of the same with the videos. It's like, what
I want to do is make is make the thing

(01:00:10):
that best serves this idea. I want to make the
thing that's most evocative, that's most emotional, that is most
connected to me, and that I will be proudest of
for the longest, And those aren't always It's not a
I mean sort of back to your earlier question about
like always finding new fans, like you're not You're not

(01:00:32):
always trying to grow things. You just want to make
it the best you can, you know. So I don't know,
I feel like I've sort of dodged your question, but
that well, let me you know, I no, no.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
I don't think you are. But let me ask you this,
are you thinking of video ideas all the time or
after you write music?

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
I have a have a sort of running list of
things that I think would be fun to try, and
they line up with songs I have written generally. Sometimes
every once in a while, a song something lyrically will
actually inspire the video idea itself, but usually it's it
is a Venn diagram where it's sort of like I

(01:01:21):
remain surprised that these two things really line up so well,
but I shouldn't be. They just they both came from this,
like it's the same part of me. It's the same
reflection of what I think is exciting and full of
wonder in the world. Like of course they line up.
You know, let's go back to the beginning. You say
you grew up in Washington and DC. Most people don't

(01:01:42):
grow up in the district. They grew up in suburbs,
but some do. Where did you literally live the district
in the northwest side of the district. I grew up
just south of Chevy Chase Circle off of Connecticut Avenue,
and it was I really lucked out in terms of
the timing I was. I was born in seventy five

(01:02:02):
and so nineteen ninety I went into high school and
it was like Fugazi was just coming out with their
second album, and I was treated to the like one
of the greatest DIY indie punk scenes that has ever existed.
Like that the discord that heyday at the Discord of
Discord Records or what was did a lot for me.

(01:02:25):
Fugazi and Shudder to Think and Jawbox and all these
incredible bands and most of all the feeling that anybody
could just do this right. There was a record label
there called called Simple Machines, and they put out a
pamphlet I think it was a dollar fifty and it

(01:02:46):
was how to make your own seven inch and it
was like, here are the three pressing plants that still
exist in the United States. Here are their phone numbers.
Here's you asked for when you call, you know, here's
what here's here's what your budget will actually look like.
So you like, don't think you can do this for
a less And I think it was seven hundred fifty
bucks or something like that. It's like, for seven hundred
and fifty bucks, you can make a pressing of five

(01:03:06):
hundred records. And and that was and I and I
ordered that pamphlet for a dollar fifty and I started
a quote unquote record label for my you know, my
friend's bands. And that was normal. That was like, that's
what That's what the scene in d C said. Was
normal to a fifteen year you know. And honestly it's why, like,

(01:03:28):
you know, our other the other thing we're up for
a Grammy for this year is our the album cover.
The packaging for our album, which is this like it's
a three D sculpture that pops out of the album
when you open it up. And my love of that,
of the packaging and of the sort of the opportunities
around the art that you make all come from that era,

(01:03:48):
that DC era. That it was sort of like the
that making music was a community activity, right, like that
the shows were a community activity. That were pasting your
posters on the mailbox was a community activity. It was
sort of like joining this community to make the because
you get to make the stuff, you know. It was

(01:04:10):
like just it was like there were endless opportunities for
making things. And I love that that chase of the
of the muse.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Did you go to public school or private school?

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Private school?

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Was it one of the famous DC private schools?

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
Which one was Saint Albans is pretty famous. I mean
it's not I think these days did well as the
one everyone knows about pop. Yeah, it was a it
was a I had an incredible education, and it was
that I raged against the conservative culture of that school.

(01:04:48):
But but I but it was a great education.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
How many kids in the family.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
Two?

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Who's the other one?

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
My older sister and she h four years older than me.
She and she made several of our videos. She was
a professional ballroom dancer. Her name is Tricia and and
she after the Treadmill video which we filmed at her house,
she she switched into filmmaking herself, and she's now a
successful film director.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
How did she get into ballroom dancing?

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
She I think she's a lot like me. She just
it was the thing that made her, that made the
world around her more magical. She she was she was
studying it for fun in college and there was a
job open at the local teaching studio and she started
as a sort of intern there and the next thing,
you know, she was she was competing on the circuit

(01:05:39):
and she was. She she built. She managed to get
enough students that she could build a small ballroom in
her backyard in Florida, where she had moved. And it
was a that's some hell of a way to keep
your art alive, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Okay, So you go to school. Do you play sports
at all?

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
I did a little bit. I wasn't. I wasn't very
good at any of them. And I'm and but it
was a requirement, so I did.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
And what about friends? You have a lot of friends?
You're alone or what? What were you like?

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
I was a pretty social kid. I had a lot
of I mean, there was a small group of kids
at my school who were who were sort of the
punky outsiders. I mean, you know, you know, the band
of the Walkman. They were all the great ahead of
me and the singers a couple of guys behind me,
and I mean, and there were up there was a

(01:06:34):
there's a you know, five percent of each year was
what was kids like me and there but there was
that was enough kids to for it to be a scene.
And no, it was weird. It's like we didn't we
weren't at odds with the rest of the school. It
wasn't like the the combative cliche I see in movies

(01:06:56):
about about, you know, high school experiences. We were just
we had our own thing. We didn't care about those kids.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
Okay, what degree did you have pressure from your parents
to do well in school?

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
I self pressured. They my parents, I think we're smart
to let me rage against school when I wanted to
have blue hair. They're like not going to try to
stop me. You know, they let me. They let me
try to shock enrage my my conservative teachers instead of them.
So I was pretty much a straight a student. And

(01:07:37):
you know, I went to school at Brown after like
I went to you know, an ivy League school, and
I was always I was fairly pragmatic about this, Like
I knew I wanted to be that all I cared
about was art, but I also knew that that you don't.
Really it's not very very few people get to live
their life making art. And so when I got out
of school, like during high school, I thought of myself

(01:07:59):
more as a visual artist. During college it switched to
music more. You know, in high school, I was putting out,
like I said, records for my friend's bands, but that
was much more of a kind of like social hobby
than it was my my calling. And I went to
I got to college and the the academic art program
was going over stuff that I had already learned about.

(01:08:19):
It was it was sort of like abstract art and
was blowing the minds of my my peers. And I
felt like I didn't know this ship and and there
was a sort of pretense of I didn't like that
it was all about the the it was about the
essay that you write to go along with your piece,
not the piece itself, and what and and I fell

(01:08:41):
in whereas music that there, uh, there was an electronic
music studio there with incredible equipment, and I didn't know
how to use it. And I could go into this
place and the actual experiential uplift I got from like
I go in there and find magic, and that was incredible,
Like that was just addictive to me to go into.

(01:09:01):
I would spend hours and hours and hours, and by
by my sophomore year, I was the I had gotten
the role. I had gotten the position of the ta
who got to schedule the hours in the music studio.
So then any any all the two am to eight
am hours that weren't being used, I would block off
for myself and I would just go in there every
night and learn how to record music, learn how to

(01:09:22):
write music, learn how to make music. And by the
time I came out of college, that's what I cared.
I mean, that was my calling. And so my years
right after college I worked as a radio engineer at
NPR one day a week and the other four days
I was a photoshop retoucher for a for an ad agency.

(01:09:43):
All of this in Chicago, where I had moved to
rejoin my old friend Tim Basis of Okay Goo, who
I had met at summer camp ten years prior.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
Okay You talk about buying the pamphlip making the records,
When did you start playing an instr of it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
In high school. I mean I played violin as a kid.
I was terrible at it, and in high school I
played guitar a little bit. I was bad at it
then too. I didn't even when Okko started, I was
it was it was, man, I was. It took me
a lot of a lot of practice to be able
to sing any of our songs and play them at
the same time, you know. The I fell in love

(01:10:23):
with playing instruments in college, but I of course was
too impatient to spend the time really necessary for them.
And it was the years of touring that actually taught
me on a plan, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
Okay, so when you were in high school, you were
coordinating making records for other groups or did you have
a group yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
I had a group myself, but we were terrible and
we were I only put one song on one thing.
Mostly it was other groups.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
And did that band ever play outside the basement once?

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
Maybe twice, you know, in our own school gym, like
not not, But you know, the other the other band
that night was the band it with the same kids
that wound up being first Jonathan fire Eater and then
eventually the Walkman.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
You know, So why do you end up going to Brown.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
I it was the I knew I wanted to. I
knew I valued my good education. I knew I liked
the feeling of my brain being pushed by by my
superiors in a good way. But I also knew that
school was for me. Was not going to be a
trade school. I was not going there to learn to

(01:11:38):
be a computer scientist or to learn to be a doctor.
I was going there to learn to grow up, you know.
And this was the one that the good school, where
the other kids that were there seemed like they were
comfortable in their own skin and making and and and
learning to make decisions as opposed to learning to game
the system. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
Okay, so you're at Brown. Do you form a band
at Brown?

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
And did? Yeah? Several? But yeah I had. I had
a sort of punky band my first two years, and
a sort of electronic band my second to you, two
different electronic bands my second to you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
And did they play out of the practice room? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
We played a lot. We had jos.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Really, so you had gigs? Where were these gigs?

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
There were? Providence was pretty good at the time for
that stuff, because you know it Risdy's right there. So
so we played a lot of club Babyhead, and there's
a there's a club on the Brown campus called UH
called the Underground to believe it's called there was you know,
loop Os. And in Providence we used to get get
gigs opening for people. I remember opening for like Karen

(01:12:46):
Black and and UH. I remember opening for Blonde Redhead,
you know at Brown like we we did we did
pretty well and and that and man, they're like the
that talk about getting into the sort of the art
project side of it. I remember learning about screen screen

(01:13:06):
printing while I was there from from Risdy students and
and just like that started my love affair with with
design for the band. Like that that you could actually
screenprint your own posters, like and make them a thing
of beauty was what And it was like so thrilling

(01:13:27):
to me. It was not, you know, it didn't feel
like the necessary marketing. It felt like the life value
add that now I get to I get like that
part of the part of going to do this show
next week is going to make posters this week, you know.
And that that carried on into our Chicago days. We

(01:13:50):
did a lot of screen printing into Chicago and urged
okay Go's earliest UH fan base in Chicago is definitely
because of our absurdly overprinted for color you know, screen
prints that were all over Chicago in the late nineties.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
Okay, you graduate from Brown, you moved to Chicago. What's
the dream?

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
The dream was to continue to be surprised and thrilled
by make an art. Like I was rational enough to
know how unlikely a job as a rock star is, right,

(01:14:37):
but irrational and hope and delusion driven enough to see
all these converging things in the world around me and
and think there's a way to make a living out
of that. Right that that technology was making recording a
different thing, you know that that like during college, I

(01:14:59):
remember my love of of hip hop. You know, DC
growing up in high school had been all about punk
and hip hop, right Go Go is from DC, and
the nineties were like, you know, it was the era
of Tribe called Quests and Black Sheep. You know, it
was like it was an incredible time for all that stuff.

(01:15:20):
And I remember being in college and going how come
punk rock doesn't have hip hop beats? And being like
how someone's going to make this album? And then the
next thing, you know, there's like I remember Odelay by
Beck coming out and being like, there is a person
who just made rock and roll with a sampler, Like, actual,
it's not it's not just like trying to write songs

(01:15:41):
over a sampler. It's rock and roll with a sampler.
And I was like so so in love with that
record and also so jealous of it, you know, but
but that was I remember feeling that convergence in the
late nineties, in the early offs that it was like
every that you could fluency with the with the world

(01:16:03):
around you. What technologically was it was a huge boon
to creativity, like you could make things differently than than
than our parents generation had to like it that you
could get a sampler and make rock and roll with it.
That was a whole that was really really inspiring to me.
And it's hard to say exactly how that crosses over

(01:16:24):
individual but like, the reason I know how to use
photoshop was because a couple of punks in DC had
hired me to work for their software publishing company, where
they they got a job putting out the CD ROMs
of Time Magazine in the early nineties when when Time
Magazine didn't want to didn't digitize anything themselves, they would

(01:16:46):
send all their issues to these two punks in DC
would get them all digitized, and I literally my job
was put them on a scanner, scan the thing and
and digitize from the physical copy of time magine goats,
take off the barcode, and and fill in Hillary Clinton's hair,
you know, like and and the idea that that visual

(01:17:10):
art like this was that it was all malleable, that
you could get into your computer and start playing around
with the way this image looks. That to me, it's
hard to explain about how that connects, but that and
the sampler at the same time, you could see they
were heading the same place, you know. And so that
was the dream to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
Okay, you moved to Chicago, your old friend is there.
Do you immediately form a group? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
They were gonna they were gonna be my backing band
for a bunch of shows of sorry, a bunch of
songs I had written in college. That was the first practice.
But after the first practice, we're like, now we're just
a new band. Because it was all the guys in
the band had They had all been in a band
called Stanley's Joyful Noise prior to this, and they were

(01:17:58):
they were not quite on hiatus yet. But they were
just going to be this other they were going to
be my backing band for this thing, and then we
just decided it was an evand.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
Okay, you have this incredible marketing with the posters. What
happens Usually it's a slow grind. Did you play a
lot of gigs? When did the light go on? What happened?

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
Yeah, we played a lot of We played. We played
as many gigs as we could, I would say it
was I mean we were playing at least once a
month in Chicago, and and and as many times as
we could in this surround, you know, anywhere within a
six or eight hour drive of Chicago, and that I
We did that for a couple of years, I guess,

(01:18:39):
and it it we started to get I think we
like Chicago at that time was a scene not too
different from DC ten years earlier than that in terms
of like the small scene of kids that were there.
Everybody was in a band, like all my friends were
in bands. Everybody went out to shows pretty much every
the night of the week. And what I think the

(01:19:02):
way the reason we stood out in some way was
because we were just all kind of pop focused like
the other bands we were living in with as roommates
and playing with were all these sort of aggressively post
punk sort of art bands, and that was like it

(01:19:22):
was an awesome scene. But like it was like all
these mostly dudes playing, you know, playing math rock and
and trying to push the boundaries of a of a
particular scene. And we wanted, like I said, we wanted
cheap trick and Elvis Costello and a certain type of Catharsis.
And so I like to joke at the time that

(01:19:44):
basically like they'd all come and their girlfriends would all
like us, you know, and it was Our shows were
just really really fun. It was like a really really joyous,
playful event. And they got to be really popular in
Chicago and that sort of growing regionally, and and uh
we we found a manager. We went on tour opening

(01:20:08):
for they might be giants at some point, and and
they might be giants themselves, Like you said, they wanted
to start managing us, and uh it in in the
end we wound up being sort of co managed by
the by there man. It was an awkward deal in
the beginning, but you know, Jamie, our first manager, and

(01:20:28):
he who I loved dearly and who I think was
did wonders for us and uh, and then we got signed.
Eventually got signed. We thought we'd be an Indian. We
sent our demos to all the the indies you would
have imagined, you know, like we figured we belonged in

(01:20:48):
the sort of you know, sub pop lane. But we
wound up there. There was a big It was the
majors who were interested. It turned out like we had
a demo for a the song get Over It that
caught fire and it you know, it's a big bidding
war between I think it was Universal and Capital at
the time and who are now the same?

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
Right? But so you signed with Capital with the Andy Sleader,
you know, there's a deep line of demarcation of between
the wooing and then the making. So now you had
a deal. What was the making like.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
Well, Andy is famously very involved in the making of
the album center Man, and he was I he was.
We like we were an easy sell on over production
because it was it was this moment of of when
most of the industry was so was chasing garage rock

(01:21:44):
and we just didn't want. We were we were like
we wanted we wanted Roy Thomas Baker and glam you know,
and so we were happy to go along with the
with with like with with just you know, no do
it again, try and make a bigger version, make it,
you know. And I I have a hard time listening

(01:22:07):
to our first record because of that. But also I
think it's I think it has more to do with
the fact that, like, who wants to hear their them
their own voice twenty years hence, you know, like I
hate the little guy who's singing in those albums, but
other people don't, you know. And there's some things I'd
do differently, but I don't. But I'm also like, I

(01:22:31):
can't be mad at whatever brought us here, you know.
I like that how it's gone.

Speaker 1 (01:22:35):
Okay, So the record comes out, and what was the experience.

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
Well, it was whirlwind. It was just like we just
we toured for two straight years or something. And I
think it was young and naive enough to think that
everything was just the next step, you know, that every
that that every opportunity was just another door open. You
don't get that, like I didn't have the sense that

(01:23:05):
I didn't really have a sense of whether it was
going well or poorly. You know. It's like we had
a we had a we had a single that I
think broke the top twenty, but not the top ten.
So it was like it was the kind of it
was exact. It was big enough to get you a
second album, but not big enough to make you a
household name, you know, and it I don't know. I

(01:23:28):
as you can tell from all these answers, it's like
there's a part of me that like is willfully delusional,
right like, because I I if you only listen to
the rationalist part of yourself, you you don't get to
chase art. If you only listen to the arty side
of yourself, you'll you'll you're going to do it, you know,

(01:23:48):
alone in your basement. So you've got to keep these
two things in balance. And especially in my twenties, you know,
fueled by a lot of caffeine and alcohol, I was
it was easy for me to stay delusional when I
needed to, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
Okay, did you make any videos for the first album?

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
We did. We made two videos for the first album,
one with with Francis Lawrence. Uh, you know, Mega Mega
director who I think we were. We were stuck between
Will Smith and Pink in his schedule. He had one day,
you know, and uh, and it was for the song

(01:24:36):
get over it, and it was. It got some rotation
on MTV, but not I think no one yet knew
how how how dying MTV was right, like YouTube had
not yet eaten it. But but it was rapidly moving
towards reality TV and away from music videos. Some people
saw it. It it It did its job. But it

(01:24:58):
was the biggest budget video we would make for the
next twenty years.

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
How big was the budget.

Speaker 2 (01:25:05):
I think it was something like five hundred K or something.
You know, it was whatever it was was thatt you know,
It's like it was something we that could only be
approved by a Slater like Slater had to pick the
I had to pick the the director cool right, like
you could say, pick between these three kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
You know, Okay, you make the second record, tell me
from the beginning, not the mechanics, but the inspiration and
how you gain control to make the treadmill video.

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
The treadmill video was it was the follow up to
the backyard dance that I described earlier, right that that's
for the video that the song was a million ways
and on the on the first album. Prior to this,
we had been ending our show with this ridiculous dance
routine that for a song from the first album, and

(01:26:02):
again it was a way to be in that that
that indie rock club in Chicago where all of the
hipsters are shuffling their feet and to be like like
fucking smile or get out, you know what I mean.
And because you can't watch a bunch of nerds like
us try to do a dance and uh and and
not laugh at it in some way. And and so

(01:26:23):
we knew that it was like we wanted with our
our second record. We didn't want to keep on ending
our show with that, but it was so fun, right,
So we came up with a new dance routine for
a new song on our second album, and that clip
got we we we made a video of us. In fact,

(01:26:44):
i'll give you the full story. We heard from a
friend a cap that Michelle Gondree, best video director of
all time, had a dance video he was gonna make
with some unheard of from Chicago named Kanye something. And
we were like, wait, he's gonna make a dance video
with someone other than us. We're the dance band. So
we we videotape ourselves doing this and you know, again,

(01:27:08):
we have a delusional side here. Thinking like, we're going
to convince Michelle Gandrie he has to work with us,
But that video has made. The clip in my Backyard
was made for the of an audience of one. It
was just to convince Michelle Gandri that he should make
a video with us. I don't know if he ever
even saw it, but it wound up so ludicrous and
sort of like, you know, there was just something so

(01:27:28):
ridiculous about it and popped the bubble of self seriousness
in rock and roll enough that we when we showed
it to our friends, somebody put it on a site
called I film that was before YouTube is a download site,
and a few months later we saw that it had
been downloaded three hundred thousand times. I think our first

(01:27:50):
album had sold three hundred thousand copies, which, you know, great,
but we just reached the same number of people accidentally,
Ya this nerd website, right, And like at that time,
you can assume the people watching that are all working
in the IT department, right, Like it's not like normal
people don't do a lot of video downloading circa two

(01:28:11):
thousand and two, two thousand and four, whatever it was.
But and so, like I said about the sort of
like us going out into to the fans with spiral notebooks.
It was like this was we suddenly had a direct,
a direct connection to a fan base almost as big
as the one Capital had had helped develop for us.

(01:28:36):
And there were one click away and it was sort
of like, well, if they if they like that, let's
make them another one of those things. We didn't really
think of it as a music video. It was just
like we now have a bunch of people who get
our sense of humor, who think that because there's something
about that that's not quite like you know, we've been
very careful never to make joke music, right, And there's

(01:28:57):
bands that sort of like think of themselves as funny
in a way that I that never appealed to me,
but I did it. But I did like bands who
don't take themselves too seriously, you know, And and it
was sort of a way of connecting with those people.
So we my sister is a professional barum dancer. We said, like,
we want to make another dance like that, but we

(01:29:20):
don't want to dance. We can't just be a dance band, right,
so like, what are we going to do? So I
remember brainstorming with my sister, what could we do to
make dancing different and that, and we came up with
this idea of the treadmills. But that was it. Like
we didn't tell the label we were going to do it.
We didn't tell our manager we were going to do it,
because they would taking ten days off from tour to

(01:29:42):
go make this thing. Was a terrible idea, you know,
like what were you going to do with that? So
we made it and and and it was. We figured
we'd use it as a sort of like love letter
to those nerdy fans when we were done with the
album cycle, right like when everything else is, when we've
done the big rock videos, when we've done all the touring,

(01:30:02):
we'll have one more thing to give those people to
kind of keep the connection alive until the next record
comes out. So after eighteen months of touring, several rock videos,
you know, and won by Michelle Gondry's brother, Olivia Gundry,
and you know, decently successful. You know, our shows are

(01:30:23):
bigger than they were on the first album, where our
audience is a little bit bigger, but like we're not,
we're by no means a household name.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
We put that video out, well, no I'm sorry. The
label who had never okay the making of it, but
did say okay, all right, well that's kind of cool
what you made. They're the head of their internet department,
without our permission, put it up on stupid videos dot Com.
And we were in we were in we were in Moscow,

(01:30:51):
playing at the i think second to annual rock festival
in Moscow, when our roadie goes, hey, I saw your
videos up on stupid videos dot Com. And of course
we freak out, you know, we'd go ballistic on the
label and they're like, what what what I mean? It's
got tons of traffic, and you're like, you don't think
there's some there's maybe a little bit of an optics
problem releasing the video with as Stupid videos dot Com.

(01:31:15):
We got them to take it down before the US
was awake, and we put it up ourselves without the
permission on YouTube. This this new site which just the
guy who ran our you know, our email list at
the time was like, you should check out this one.
And we'd had an we'd had a a request from
Chad at YouTube dot com. You know, the founders in

(01:31:36):
that first year were sending out anytime they thought they
saw something cool. They just write to them. So we
had some emails from them saying you should put your
stuff up on our platform. So we did, and within
a week it was you know, like we thought, we
thought maybe we'd reach those same three hundred thousand people
after a few months, but it was a few million
in the first few days, which back then was you know,
that was breaking the entire internet. And vh one added

(01:31:59):
it with in a week, and and and we had
been asked to perform on the VMAs, and and you know,
a few months later we got a Grammy, and and
we toured for another We toured for another full year.
I mean like our record, which had debuted at the
top of the heat Stickers chart, went back to number

(01:32:20):
one in the fifty third week. So it was like
literally a full year after the record was out, we
started a whole other record cycle, and we toured for
another year, and and it was awesome. I was very
very spent by the end of that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
Okay, where was the label on all this?

Speaker 2 (01:32:40):
They were very cautious about us because they they they
they wanted look that record. They they they were very
anti sort of you know, the youth and sharing, right,

(01:33:00):
Like there was this there was. There was a worry
with that album. When that album came out, they wanted
to put DRM on it. You remember the whole DRM thing, right,
they wanted to put DRM on it. We looked at it.
We were like, look iPods in the in the in
the three years since our first record had come out,
iPods had taken over. And if you're telling our fans
they that they can't they can if they buy our
CD legally they can't put it on their iPod. That's

(01:33:23):
the same things as shooting the band in the face, right,
like it like, no one is going to listen to
something that they can't have on their iPod, So please
don't do that to it. They we had a long
argument with them about that. They in the end decided, okay, no,
we're doing DRM. So we added as a a the

(01:33:46):
secret track. You know, the final track to our album
was exactly as long as there were bites left on
the CD. We made it thirty two minutes and whatever
seconds long, which filled up every last remaining data bought
on the CD. So they couldn't fit the DRM on it,
you know, which they didn't realize until QC sent it
back and sudden they couldn't put a DRM on it,

(01:34:08):
and it was too late to deal with it. But
that obviously set off that was the relationship. Right, They
were like we were the band that that was that
wanted our video to be embeddable back when that was
an issue, right, and I had written op eds for
The New York Times saying like, yeah, our label won't
let us embed our video and here's our problems with it.

(01:34:30):
That was the sort of thing that that put us,
you know, not on great footing with the label. We
were all, you know, sort of aligned in terms of
like all, all of the attention this is getting is good.
But the same person who had when I when I

(01:34:50):
first showed the label our backyard dance video, the first
response was is if this gets out your because it
was because they thought it made they thought it made
us look gay, if they thought it made us look nerdy,
they thought it made us And it was like We're like, yeah,
like it makes us look different than everyone else. Like

(01:35:13):
that's the that's the point, you know, Like that's that's
we are different than everybody else. And and the same
person who had said that then had made very sure
that when you know, like a USA today wanted to
do a piece on the on the on the Treadmill video,
and it's grammy, you know. Eighteen months later they that

(01:35:34):
person had to be sitting in the room to make
sure they didn't. I didn't repeat the story I just
did to you, you know, And so they I don't,
And honestly, like I think everybody, I don't. I never
had a like an a super combative relationship with the label.
It just became pretty clear that like what success looked

(01:35:59):
like to us and to them were very different. Like
they needed success that was replicable and scalable across all
of their investments. Right, we needed to be able to
make art the next day and to have to chase
the things that are working and optimize them, right, Like
that thing's happening and people love it, and that's an

(01:36:21):
opportunity for us to make more things like that in
the future. And that's like, that's what I care about
for my life, you know, And being able to do
that wasn't was not a good business model for the label.
I get that, like, but it's a good business model
for our band. So it got to a point where
it was obvious that we just needed to go different directions.

Speaker 1 (01:36:40):
Okay, but in the interroim, you made a third record.
What was the story with that, Well, I.

Speaker 2 (01:36:46):
Mean they were so look, the same video that they
thought would was going to sink us. They then, you know,
we're once we were getting Grammys for for breaking MTV.
They loved that right, like there it was. They loved
taking credit for it once it was successful. And so

(01:37:06):
we were off onto the idea of a third record
where we would we would really lean into the video thing. Awesome,
We're gonna make a video for every song, and they
gave us a budget for that. And then when we
started making the videos and asking for the budget payoffs,
they didn't pay the checks. You know, they were like, yeah,
but we didn't say yes to that one, and we
didn't say yes to this certain like and so our

(01:37:30):
manager at the time, good friend of yours end mine,
basically just went to them. It was like, if you're
not gonna pay, look, if you don't want, if you
don't want a band like this, just let us off
the fucking deal. And they did. It was pretty shocking.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
Okay, you described it with the emotions of you know,
from the side of creativity and the differences with the label,
but at the time, not today. Leaving a major label
was not what people did.

Speaker 2 (01:38:02):
No, it was scary. It was scary. But again remember
the DC background in the sort of like anti establishment
roots of of of the things I love. Uh, you know,
obviously too cocky about it because I was also you know,
twenty something or whatever. I we knew we had a

(01:38:22):
connection to our fans and that that was valuable, you know,
Like I think what we now recognize as like the
attention economy, it was back then. What it felt like
was we're able to make things that that these that

(01:38:44):
that our fans love, and they know how to get
to us, and we know how to get to them,
and what we used to need a label for. We
it like that that that pipeline is shrinking, right, There's
still lots that we need, but it's it we're less
dependent on them than ever and they don't want to
do the things that we know will work. So it

(01:39:07):
was kind of gold.

Speaker 1 (01:39:07):
Okay, so you've been independent for an excess of a decade.
How does that feel great?

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
I mean, I look, I don't like the business part.
I don't like as you can tell from from all
my squirrely artsy answers. I don't like thinking about budgets.
I don't like thinking about money. I don't like thinking
about you know, return on investment. But I but I
really don't like not being able to make the things

(01:39:38):
we want, you know, and so we make some So
we make we we you know, have to. We have
to assume a lot of risk that in terms of
investing in things like, you know, a six figure of
video which we don't know if we'll find a sponsor
for and that's scary as hell. But no label except
my own.

Speaker 1 (01:40:05):
Okay, So at this point, you know, things have been
sort of weird because of COVID et cetera. But how
many gigs a year is? Okay, go playing.

Speaker 2 (01:40:15):
It right now? I mean where we have it down
fairly low number because we all have young kids. But
so like, if we wanted to make a lot more money,
we'd play a lot more. But we but like this
album and this year, I think we did thirty five shows,
maybe forty.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
Okay, you know you are the record company, you have costs.
Streaming is a winner take all proposition. You could work
thirty five days a year and everybody could pay all
their bills.

Speaker 2 (01:40:51):
I didn't say we worked thirty five days a year.
I say, we tour thirty five days a year.

Speaker 1 (01:40:55):
Okay, then what are the other revenue streams? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:40:58):
I mean first of all, those even those shows take
a lot more work than the days are on. But
but the the I mean, our videos take months. So
I'm not to worry about.

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
No, I'm not saying you're not working. I'm saying where
does the money come from?

Speaker 2 (01:41:11):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:41:12):
The the I mean the our our shows are profitable, right,
like so our shows are merger profitable. Sometimes our videos
are profitable, like this album, We've only gotten to break
even on them. But there are like we made on
our third out I'm sorry, third album, third and fourth album,

(01:41:34):
we made videos that were sponsored to the degree where
we could get feed like one of one of them
was a super Bowl commercial. Like we you know, that's
a that's a hefty, hefty check. It used to be
that a lot of that that we would also make
a lot in licensing. We do okay in licensing, but
you know, our our sort of ongoing streaming and licensing

(01:41:56):
revenue is enough to pay for our infrastructure.

Speaker 1 (01:42:01):
Okay, what does it look like going forward? Because if
you look at the business at large, Okay, the barrier
to entry is very low. You have name recognition in
the history from the twenty first century. The lot of
people have name recognition from the twentieth century who still
can't get over the fact that A labels not supporting them.

(01:42:22):
So as you look forward, what does it look like?

Speaker 2 (01:42:27):
I am terrified, But I also have always been terrified,
like we've are. Our financial model has basically been the
roadrunner off the cliff forever, right, Like, just keep on going,
keep on making the thing you want to make, and
if there's money in the bank to do it and

(01:42:47):
you can stomach the risk, it usually pays off, you know,
or rather the one out of ten times it pays off,
it pays off tenfold. And so that has sustained us
this long, and that's all. I just have to hope
it keeps doing that. I look, what I know of
the industry at large is not a good bet. But

(01:43:09):
it's the only one I can make because I want to,
because I this is this is what I love doing.

Speaker 1 (01:43:13):
Okay, If I spoke with the other band members, are
they on the same page.

Speaker 2 (01:43:21):
I think so. I mean, we would all love to
have bigger paychecks. But but certainly no one, No one
wants to tour more during this phase of our lives.
I could see us touring more when our kids get
a little older. But it's do you have kids, No,
it's it is the period during which they really want

(01:43:41):
to be with you and you really want to be
with them is short and different, and and I I
would have a really hard time being gone more than
I am right now. That right now, that as you know,
that sort of service industry model of music, of music
industry where you can get paid as long as you're
out there pounding the pavement is the only way to
really make it profitable. We're we are happy to live

(01:44:05):
fairly frugally right now and keep on making, keep on
making this weird art that we get to make, and
and look at where that leads us. I mean, here's
one thing that we do that no other band can.
We have a performing Arts center show where we live,
score our videos, and we do the circuit. You know,

(01:44:25):
we we'll do some of this again, like you're asking
about next year, We'll do some of this next year.
This is like we're playing in you know, like Disney
Hall style things, right Like we're sit down show where
there's a you're you're invited to bring your kids. The
volumes are a little lower. There's a lot of Q
and A with us, and and and instead of trying,

(01:44:46):
instead of trying to put on the most energetic and
most uh moving, sweaty rock show where we're inviting you
to watch the film and we're gonna live score it
for you, right and those that that tour is pretty evergreen,
like we've never had trouble, Like we can do that anywhere,

(01:45:09):
And we can only do that if our videos are
as great as they are and every and every album
we're gonna add to, you know, and that that show
is a real, a real pleasure. I would I think
that there's a real opportunity for us to do similar
theater type things with with the videos that we have
in the future. That may or may not happen, but

(01:45:31):
we have a lot of offers from science institutions and
from from theaters you know, Broadway and Broadway adjacent stuff
Like I don't know if we'll do it or not,
but like I'm not sitting here trying to figure out
how we're going to make ends meet by the number
of shows we're playing next year. I'm trying to figure
out what art projects are going to remain exciting and

(01:45:55):
and worthwhile and riveting and worth putting our lives into.
Because so far, if we're able to make great stuff,
there will be a revenue stream that attached to it.
We're not always sure where it's going to come from,
but it happens.

Speaker 1 (01:46:08):
Okay, you've gotten older, the band is evolved, but there's
been rapid change in the world. You had this moment
with the Treadmill video the VMAs. One can ask whether
anybody can have a moment like that anymore, But are
you searching to equal that? How do you metabolize having

(01:46:30):
that peak yet keep going on.

Speaker 2 (01:46:33):
Well, that's why the Grammy nominations this year are such
a big deal to us, because like we've been look,
I went away and made a film after COVID, which
shut down things for it, like it was ten full
years between it. In fact, a little more than ten
years between our last two albums. That's the kind of
you know, we didn't intentionally go on hiatus. We were

(01:46:53):
just busy, but that's the type of thing that when
we were putting out the record, we were like, look,
this could easily come off, as you knows, as the
has beens trying to make a comeback or whatever, but
the fact that we're nominated for multiple Grammys is like,
it is I'm very gratified by this nod from our

(01:47:19):
peers that like it still matters, you know, and our
shows have been selling out. We have you know, we
have our fan base is as big as it ever was,
and so I'm I feel very gratified that it's still here.
It's something we can be doing, and it's you know,
it's this is sort of related to the like how

(01:47:40):
do you deal with the videos being more famous than
the music question. It's like that's only the case to
the broad shallow audience. The narrow, deep audience go like
those who go down the rabbit hole with us. Man,
it's a deep rabbit hole, and I that's the one
I get to live in, right because they're my songs
and my videos and they're my art projects, and so

(01:48:03):
where I live that the shallow thing is just like
that's just a catchment for more people who want to
come in, you know, and I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:12):
Okay. Simultaneous with this career, you're married a number of times.
When were you first married.

Speaker 2 (01:48:23):
My late twenties to my early thirties.

Speaker 1 (01:48:26):
And how did you meet that woman? And where were
you in your career at that point?

Speaker 2 (01:48:30):
That was my just after she and I met in college,
but we weren't romantically. After college, I followed her. That's
how I moved to La She went to grad school
at UCLA, and I followed her out there. I was
already spending more time in la than Chicago because we
were recording our record there, and and and we we

(01:48:52):
got married during the middle of that law that that
that thirty two month tour for our second album. I
think the law guest we ever took off of that
tour was so that I could get married. We took
ten days off and and uh it we were just
too young and too in our own worlds for it
to last. I mean, she's a wonderful woman, and we

(01:49:14):
we maybe in a different life, but it was by
the end of it, it was we were just we
had different lines like being in a relationship like like that.
Trying to have that close relationship when you're on tour
two hundred and fifty days a year is crazy, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:49:30):
But how long until you get married again?

Speaker 2 (01:49:35):
It was then, I guess three or four years. So
I got married again in a I fell head over
heels for someone too quickly, and and we we had
we had like a fantasy relationship where I think we
were both in love with an idealized version of the other.

(01:49:58):
Slightly slightly, I mean, at least the touring was less
of the of the downfall of that relationship. But we
weren't grown ups yet.

Speaker 1 (01:50:10):
So how long did that last?

Speaker 2 (01:50:13):
The full relationship was less than four years, including a
marriage of two.

Speaker 1 (01:50:20):
So how long after that do you meet your present wife?

Speaker 2 (01:50:24):
I met my present wife at the very end of
re met my present wife at the very end of that.
But we were just friends for a full year and
then we were romantic for two before he got married.
And then we've been married.

Speaker 1 (01:50:38):
Ten Had she been married before?

Speaker 2 (01:50:42):
She had been married once before.

Speaker 1 (01:50:43):
Yeah, And did she have any reluctance to marry you
because you were a two time loser? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:50:51):
I think she probably did. I think she probably did.
Luckily she gave me the benefit of that.

Speaker 1 (01:50:55):
Okay. Her father is al Gore's like being the sudden
law of al Gore.

Speaker 2 (01:51:04):
It is very humbling. It's it's really good at reminding
you of what's important in life, because if you think
what you're doing matters. Look at what he does, you
know what I mean, it's it is ah it. He's
a he's a spectacularly smart and soulful man who I

(01:51:24):
really looked up to great deal. But he's also he's
also a grand granddad, you know what I mean, Like
he's my My kids didn't know, didn't know he had
a famous history until just this last year. Like because
he's just to him, he's to them, he's his granddad,
you know. And my wife grew up you know, my
my wife, I knew her in high school. We we

(01:51:47):
we knew each other in high school. She and at
the time she was the daughter of the vice president,
and we didn't know each other well. But you know,
that was a brutal, awful thing to go through as
a teenage girl. Uh. And so like it's not a
The last thing I'd ever want from my kids is
for them to feel to really have any relationship to

(01:52:13):
my public life. Like I want them their lives to
be their own, you know, or their grandfather.

Speaker 1 (01:52:20):
And so how much contact does your family have with
al Go or how often you see.

Speaker 2 (01:52:25):
Him several times a year? I mean we we overall,
we he's a very he's a he's a very busy man,
but but he's also a very active grand so we
see him a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:52:35):
And how about his significant other? Tiper Gore, of course,
was involved in the whole Lyrics controversy. Is that something
you've ever discussed with her?

Speaker 2 (01:52:49):
Only only superficially. She is an incredibly playful and incredibly
wonderful and incredibly artistic woman. You know, she like has
played drums with that with the Grateful Dead, like she
and you know she and Frank Zapp were like really
good friends after all of that, Like the I think
that was a that whole episode was I have realized

(01:53:16):
with distance is was greatly greatly I'm amplified by the Right,
Like the whole point is to sew division and and
in fact, all she was was a young mother who
was like, didn't didn't want her wanted to know if
if an album she was buying for a kid was
filled with the word fuck, like I would want that
for my kids, you know. And it turned into this

(01:53:39):
whole like it got the Right used it as a
wedge between lefties to be like, look they're trying to
center you, you know it, and it worked like the
it's easy to convince us that we're being that, that
the powers that be are trying to to shit on us,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:53:57):
And how did you end up living in Santa Barbara.

Speaker 2 (01:54:00):
Because of her? We went she during the fires last year,
we escaped, We escaped La. My kids school, sorry, our
house was fine. My kids school was too close for
comfort to the eat and fire in East La. I
mean in Pasadena, sorry, Alaina and uh and we came.

(01:54:22):
We came up to stay with with Tipper, and we
loved the community up here so much that we stayed.

Speaker 1 (01:54:36):
Okay, you have a very full life, Okay, go and
all its permutations. You're married, you have a couple of kids.
Is there any time left over for other things? Whether
it be streaming television, movies, books, whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:54:51):
I read a lot. I read a lot of books
just because that's how that's my like nighttime routine. But
I know, I mean I I have even before kids,
I had a problem where anything I find interesting gets
sucked into the art. Right Like if I if I
get fascinated with something, let's make a video out of it.
If I get fascinated with, you know, some instrument, let's
make a record out of it like it. It's hard

(01:55:13):
for me not to take everything I love and make
a job out of it, which is a blessing and
the curse obviously it means I don't have a lot
of of of hobbies. Well, I'm trying to play tennis.
I'm trying to play tennis. But then once you add
kids to that, there's really there's zero time left for
ant of it.

Speaker 1 (01:55:32):
Just so I understand why is it a curse?

Speaker 2 (01:55:34):
Well, because you'd like to be able to shut off sometimes,
you know, like every when you professionalize your passion, there's
it also means, you know, like you sap it of
some of its purity. You know that that I want
to learn to be a better piano player. So I'm

(01:55:57):
so I'm taking piano lessons right now, and I love
practicing and I feel it. I feel it coming in
when I start playing something and go, oh, what's that
I got to I should make a song out of that? Right,
And that's a beautiful thing. That's that's my that's what
I want to feel. But it's also almost impossible for
me not to be kind of like looking for the opportunity,

(01:56:17):
you know, just to be and there, you know, and
there's a, there's a there's a I I just don't
really understand the idea of hobbies the way other people do,
because everything I've ever had as a as a demi
hobby has turned into a.

Speaker 1 (01:56:32):
Job of something you know and what books do you read?

Speaker 2 (01:56:36):
Well? I kind of vacillate between different things right now.
I just I've just gone through a big Ted Chang phase.
You know, the sci fi writer. He's absolutely fantastic. And
I let's say, I just read James the you know,
the Personal Ever book, and I'm I'm just finished now

(01:57:01):
one called Same Bed, Different Dreams, which which is sort
of a broadened my understanding of the Korean War and
Korean history quite a lot. Every once in a while,
I go through a uh a non fiction phase like
have you have you been? Have you read? If anyone
builds it, everyone dies.

Speaker 1 (01:57:20):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:57:21):
Well, it's it's about AI, obviously, and I find it
very I find it shockingly convincing. It's very well written.
I there are many there there are many arguments to
the contrary, but it's it's it's but I recommend it
as a good read. And uh, I don't know. I
I I've been doing a lot of audiobooks recently too,

(01:57:43):
because if there's a lot of driving back and forth
between La and Santa Barbara and I, when I'm not
in love with a new band or a new a
new uh new piece of music, an audiobook is a
good way to pass that time.

Speaker 1 (01:57:55):
And what's your take on AI?

Speaker 2 (01:58:00):
It's very complicated. I mostly like, I think it's inevitable.
So it's it's sort of like it's it's like what's
your take on streaming circa ten years ago? You know,
it's sort of like, what are you gonna stop it? Like,
it's not like the major labels thinking they can sue
it out of existence is crazy. Like it's coming. It's coming,
and it can do all the things you're worried it
can do. And so how quickly will we adapt? And

(01:58:23):
what will it mean for creativity? You know, it's already
the case. I think that like people are just even
bands like in our echelon, are re recording things that
they demoed using AI. They just demo in an AI
and then and then record like and I to me,
it just it SAPs all of the joy out of

(01:58:49):
it for me. Uh, Like the idea that you that
you could create something more efficiently and also without any
of the joy of creation, sort of like, well, then
what's the point, you know now, I but I do understand,
like as a as a as a person, you know,
as the director of a of a you know, relatively

(01:59:14):
high budget feature film. If if if my choice were
to make this really difficult shot out in the middle
of the wilderness, in this incredibly beautiful place that's going
to be really expensive and really hard to do, or
do it all in ai I I would want to
do the former, and my film would require that I
do the latter. You just can't waste you can't waste

(01:59:36):
all the money to do the thing and not pay
every you know, like you you have to make everything
in the most efficient way possible and under circumstances like that.
And it's hard to know where that how to flip
that switch when you get back down to sitting in
a room with the three your three lifelong friends trying
to make music, you know, and it's hard to know

(01:59:59):
what to do when you flip yourself onto the other
side and just say, now I'm not caring about what
I make. I'm caring about what I consume. Like you know,
if you don't know it was made by AI. Does
it matter to you, like if it still moves your soul?
Who cares?

Speaker 1 (02:00:14):
Right?

Speaker 2 (02:00:15):
Like that scares the living shit out of it. But
I also believe it's it's possible, you know, like there's
no I'm not enough of I am enough for romantic
to want to spend my life doing this and enough
for rationalists to be like, yeah, I'm sure that the
AI can mimic the types of things we're doing well

(02:00:35):
enough to be good at it. Like there's no I know,
no guitarists who learn guitar by reading right, you learn
like everybody heard a guitar and mimicked it. That's all
AI is doing, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:00:48):
Yes, but AI cannot come up with the idea for
the treadmill video yet. Well, according to you know the
experts I read in the paper, not that diamond expert,
they say any level of being a sentient being is
at least thirty years off.

Speaker 2 (02:01:05):
You should you should read the other books too, Okay, Okay,
I hope, I hope you're right. I hope you're right.
My concern like I worry for the creative industries, but
I worry about them actually less than every everything else
because like, why would you hire a paralegal right now,
right like why would you like when even like wouldn't you,

(02:01:30):
to be honest, trust an AI cancer diagnosis if if
it's suitably well trained and as really good data inputs,
Like all it's doing is really high level pattern recognition,
and almost every job that humans do is really high
level pattern recognition. Yes, so is creativity, right.

Speaker 1 (02:01:50):
Yeah, okay, but just staying since we're talking about the
hallucination rate is extremely high in terms of lawyers. They're
getting busted on a regular basis where they have AI
right there briefs, then the judge reads it. No such
case exists.

Speaker 2 (02:02:07):
Oh I'm not look, I'm not a booster. I'm scared
of shit.

Speaker 1 (02:02:11):
No, no, no, I'm looking at it. I think it's inevitable. Okay,
but I think the paranoia is not warranted. If it
is something simply zero's in one's digits programming, it is
proven that it works extremely well as soon as you
get to conceptual things and thinking. You know, the previous

(02:02:35):
version of chatch EPT was chatch you know three that
hallucinated more than two. I might have the numbers wrong.
And the latest version that got some of the hallucination down.
You have uh elon musks, which he tweaks one way
or another. You know the way this stuff works. I
don't want to be a louttite and say it can't

(02:02:57):
be right, but I believe it's a tool. As I say,
at this point in time and the way it works,
there is no way it can take a great leap
forward conceptually and artistically. That is still with the artists.
You're talk about learning how to play the guitar. Yes,
this is something from my generation. A lot of people

(02:03:20):
spend time in bedrooms learning how to play, and you
have people today who can barely play, who promote themselves
saying listen to me all over the internet. Okay, but
I am savvy enough to know that the new tools
can be used in a new way, not really as
replacement of what we have, but as a stepping stone
to the next place.

Speaker 2 (02:03:43):
Yes, I I think I agree with everything you've just said.
I don't have any way of predicting how fast it
moves or what it can do eventually. I hope you're right.
I'm because I'm old enough to be scared of change, right,
Because I like I I like making the things I

(02:04:03):
make and I like. I like the constraints i'm up against.
I like the tools I've gotten good at and I
don't and I'm not I'm not looking for you know, like,
even if the street the attention industry isn't it's a lottery,
you know, like it feels it feels like, well.

Speaker 1 (02:04:22):
Well, I wouldn't say it's a lottery. I'd say it's
a tower of Babbel, but not a lottery.

Speaker 2 (02:04:27):
Okay, I guess I mean in terms of in terms
of how music works with it, it's sort of like
it hits our our our memes, you know it. Hits
are are like a thing that spins up out of
a out of the mailstrom of attention on on social

(02:04:48):
media in a way that it's much hard like it
doesn't Not that I haven't understood how culture works entirely,
but it's very hard to understand how how art interfaces
with that anymore. For me, that's already hard enough without
it without putting in.

Speaker 1 (02:05:06):
Oh, okay, what do we know? Prior to maybe twenty
twelve or so, you could be pretty sure that if
something was great, it would surface. I'm not sure that's
the case anymore.

Speaker 2 (02:05:19):
Okay, I agree with that I'm not even sure I
agree with that prior to twenty twelve, but.

Speaker 1 (02:05:23):
There's some period along the time. But let's I don't
want to argue, you know whatever. However, there are very
few great things out there, and if you find something great,
you want to tell everybody about it. Okay. It can
be as simple as a one off Gangnam Style, or

(02:05:44):
it can be a whole ovuh whatever you however you
pronounce oeuvre okay, And they're different things. And I think
because of the focus on money as opposed to art,
people are constantly bitching I'm not making enough money. I mean,
I can go on about this. You know, if you

(02:06:04):
were trying to get a record deal in the sixties
and you didn't sing, well, everybody say, well, what's up
with this? Or or like you'd have to be Bob,
don't you have to be like the best writer of
all time? Whereas today we have bands they're not great
writers and they're not great singers, and they're wondering why
they're not getting noticed by the said, did you watch

(02:06:26):
the TV show Adolescens?

Speaker 2 (02:06:29):
No, but I've heard great things about it.

Speaker 1 (02:06:32):
Well, it's a type of thing. If you see it,
you want to talk to other people about it. Now.
It's interesting to me because it being on Netflix, where
they drop it all at once, is supposed to go
over time. It didn't get the mind share of White Lotus,

(02:06:53):
even though when White Lotus finished more people had seen Adolescens.
So I mean, listen, there's so many issues there, publicity,
mind share, how you measure it. All I know is
if you say the word adolescence, someone's going to have
a reaction, whether they saw it, liked it, didn't like it,

(02:07:13):
like the way it was made, or you know, are
not interested. Whereas I can name twenty things off the
top of my head that even you were going to say,
I had no idea what you're talking about, and I
can't say, you know, well, if you check it out,
it's gonna be phenomenal. I mean, I can talk about
adolescents and say that's phenomenal. You may or may not
like it, but we're all looking for those things and

(02:07:36):
those things that you're gonna get me going here, those
things have been buried under a tsunami of hype and reaction. Okay,
I have a different feeling about social media. Let me
just make it the Internet, which then blends into social media. Man,
if I could connect with all these like minded people
in high school, what would have been better? Sure there

(02:07:59):
would be etcetera. But there's always bullying and parents can't
protect bullying whatever, et cetera, et cetera. But I can
talk to you virtually, I can reach people all around
the world. Does it come at a cost? The example
I always use, you're a little young. Prior to air
conditioning in every car, cars came with vent windows. Once

(02:08:21):
every car had air conditioning, they got rid of the
vent windows for cost control. Then windows were great, but
air conditioning is a lot better. So with every step
forward there is somewhat of a loss. The other thing
is you say, listen, I you know, just living through
this whole napster thing. Change is tough, and I'm someone

(02:08:44):
who doesn't like change in many ways, but it's happening.
And it's same thing with AI. I mean, the best
thing I've heard about AI is we can decide whatever
we want to do with restrictions in America. That doesn't
apply to China. They're gonna do whatever they want on anyway.

Speaker 2 (02:09:01):
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, I'm not before I get into
AI restrictions like when, but but suicide ras and teens
go up as soon as they get social media.

Speaker 1 (02:09:12):
You know, this is just like I don't want to
sound like a right winger here, but the data can
be interpreted multiple ways. They had the guy I said,
I forget his name, he's the anti social media guy.
A lot of this right, A lot of this stuff
is the way the data is parsed. You know, they've

(02:09:33):
been studies saying no, they're really social media doesn't have
a negative effect. Really, Okay, yes, absolutely, but I wish
I had it at my fingertips. Okay, but I'm not
pulling it out of my ass.

Speaker 2 (02:09:44):
Okay, but now I get that. But do you do?
Do you personally when you're on social media? You don't
feel that poll of just like that dopamine another thing
to look at, another thing to look You don't you don't.

Speaker 1 (02:09:55):
Wait a second, Wait a second. You went on a
about emotion connection. If you get a sponsor you want
to have in the production, you make a connection where
the audience can connect with the maker and see all
the stuff is. Suppose something that's fast and flat, they

(02:10:17):
saw it. Whatever, let's just talk TikTok because it's a
dominant platform. Okay, are there influencers on TikTok who are
hawking stuff, who are sold out to the max. Absolutely, Okay,
there is raw humanity there when I see people across

(02:10:39):
the country testifying about their stories and here that I
love that. In addition, there's a lot of informational stuff. Okay,
but the raw humanity on TikTok is not evidenced in
the superhero movies and the Spotify top fifty. Okay, so

(02:11:02):
that for me, you know, this is like the New
York Times. Okay, they are constantly listen, it's the best
we have. I'm a subscriber or whatever. But they're constantly
anti technology. All they're saying an infinitum is put the
phone down. Are you fucking kidding me? The phone is
the best thing that ever happened. I can connect with

(02:11:23):
anybody anytime I have all this information. Do I like
it when I go to dinner and somebody's on the phone. No, Okay,
I'm not saying it's perfect. But these are people, these
are baby boomers and gen xers representing the largest percentage
of the population. We're very self satisfied saying they know better.

(02:11:46):
And the other thing is I grew up in the
era of television. It was called the idiot Box and
a lot of it was junkie. Okay, but didn't stop
the kids from watching. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:12:01):
I my experience of kids with social media is not
It is not that that it makes them feel connected
instead of make them feel disconnected, because they're not. They're not.
They're not. It's not one to one and it's not
in person and it's not human. It's one to many
and it is it's judge yourself against this because the

(02:12:21):
algorithm is sending it to you. I agree when when
social media.

Speaker 1 (02:12:24):
A lot of what you're saying is true and Instagram
is more fomo look at me, et cetera. But I
went to public high school, not gigantic, but not small,
sixteen hundred people. There was a stratification. There were the jocks,
there were the popular people. On the other hand, there

(02:12:45):
were real nerds, people who had no friends, not what
they call nerds today. Okay, yeah, finding your like minded
people was difficult to be able to go online and
find all these like minded people.

Speaker 2 (02:12:59):
Is the dages, Well, but I just playing Devil's advocate here.
Finding the like minded people was difficult, and then they
meant some like in the same way that finding the
song that you loved was difficult back in the day,
but but boy, your relationship tool there was a lot
more when you went to Tower Records and you bought it.
And I I'm not I'm I just I think the community.

(02:13:21):
I think physical communities are very different than digital ones.
And I think echo chambers are a dangerous thing sometimes,
so like it, especially if the echo chamber is set
in motion at the same time that your brain is
still developing. Like, I think it's pretty hard to argue

(02:13:41):
that that, you know, adolescent female brain should be fed
lots and lots of pictures of of you know, the
swimsuit issue.

Speaker 1 (02:13:53):
Well, needless to say, you can just google that stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:13:56):
Okay, sure, but that's but that's different than that than
not having an algorithm that specifically picks it for you.
That is, like, these algorithms are designed for our attention,
and they were.

Speaker 1 (02:14:12):
What you're talking about is a very serious issue, and
it is problematic. This may sound too adjacent, but when
I grew up, my parents were not about restrictions. When
I grew up, that's when the movie reading started. Okay,
it's like my parents were not protective, and that's the

(02:14:35):
background that I come from, and social media is it's
beyond that. But the protection of children to this level,
it's like a friend of mine, his nephew okay, even
went to private school and was complaining to the mother
about bullying, and the mother went to the principal. I

(02:14:55):
guarantee you that had no effect, if anything, that the
kid ended up of course, because this is the nature
of life. You cannot protect people from the nature of life. Okay,
And let's let's let's use the example John. I don't
want to get too many crazy things. Some people are

(02:15:16):
just crazy. Some people are just prone. Some of the
best raised kids become drug addicts. Okay. And I don't
want to throw the baby out with the bathroom and
the ongoing paranoia with you know, it's amongst the classes
in power, whether it be AI, the smartphone, social media,
it's all negative when we see, you know, in foreign

(02:15:39):
countries that gen z is bringing down the government using
these platforms. I don't want to oversimplify it and make
it twenty ten in the Arab spring. But I guess
the narrative is the one you were uttering. The question
becomes does the narrative reflect what is really happening? I

(02:16:03):
mean all these anti technology, all this other stuff. If
we were to the classic case here is they wanted
to get rid of poornography. This is a true story
on the cable systems in Utah, and the law was
community standards. Well, they did the research. More people in

(02:16:26):
Utah were watching porn on television than in other states,
so they couldn't ban it. So the question becomes other
than the people screaming loudest, what are people really doing?

Speaker 2 (02:16:42):
You would know better than I for sure, and I
definitely don't like I am not a big crusader on technology,
and frankly, like you know, it would be an incredibly
strange and hypocritical position for me, like the the YouTube
guy to to to to get angry at new platforms

(02:17:09):
just for existing. I what my like to bring it
to bring it back off of the precipice of sort
of like where is culture going? And what is what
is the whole world doing? Just back to like my
own life. I I like investing lots and lots of
time in one piece of art that I think is transcended. Okay, yeah,

(02:17:33):
that's pretty much the opposite of what works on social
media these days.

Speaker 1 (02:17:45):
One thing I don't believe in is the short attention span.
I believe people have incredible shit directors with they used
detectors even what they used to watch, it wouldn't people
are binging, streaming television, they're watching All the Friends twenty four.
How short of it is henshon spin can you have?
If people find something is great there, they have unlimited

(02:18:06):
amount of time to dedicate it to it. That's what
your fans are doing. You're saying, they are tapped into
your mind. They go deep. This is not someone who
heard something in the Spotify top fifty has to go
to so far and you know, go to the show
and buy merch and then think about something else. They're
living for this. In addition, you're not in the Spotify

(02:18:30):
top fifty, and that that means we have the luxury
of all these other things that can surface. Now. We
used to have gatekeepers and we used to be able.
It used to be more comprehensive. It's so incomprehensible how
you find stuff, et cetera, et cetera. But people get
to play and there will be a few steps. It
will become more comprehensible. This is the flip side. As

(02:18:53):
much as the older people who are anti technology. You
have all the people who have who can complain. Now
I'm not I'm not getting paid. That becomes the narrative.
Daniel Leck is the devil. It's like it's too detached.
As I say, if you create something that resonates with

(02:19:13):
the public, you know there are plenty of things when
they say many people consider it to be astral Weeks
to be one of the best albums of all time.
I own it. I've seen Van Morrison performing live. I
don't agree. Okay, public didn't resonate with it. Some things
of public resonates, some don't. And the em and sent
stuff is such oh yeah, yeah, that was something I

(02:19:35):
listened to. It's like it's the beanie babies.

Speaker 2 (02:19:39):
I think I agree with that.

Speaker 1 (02:19:41):
Okay, this is a much longer discussion. I'm gonna leave
it here.

Speaker 2 (02:19:44):
A great deal. I'm enjoying it, A great deal.

Speaker 1 (02:19:46):
I am.

Speaker 2 (02:19:47):
I'm I'm I'm glad to hear like. It makes me
excited to hear someone so pro I'm not because I
don't feel like i'm particularly anti like I like, I
feel I'm happy in my little community, Like I'm really
happy that we've developed this relationship to our fans. It
does not seem to be dependent on the ebbs and
flows right like the and the and the and the

(02:20:09):
the the platforms service serve it pretty well, I guess.
I mean, I don't mean to keep dragging you through this,
but like when we've put up a video as a
music video and we put up the same video with
factoids that you can read at the same time, the
ones with the one with the factoids is what goes viral,

(02:20:31):
I think, because that's what works on social media. Now,
I'm not saying I'm just making the point that the
platforms do that a different type of of thing resonates there. Right,
I'm taking taking all value judgments out of it because
it's not about like is it good or bad? But

(02:20:52):
what I mean is that like that, if you want
to develop a career on social media, what you're making
is a lot of material that's very that's very repeatable,
very quickly. It's all about I think you have multiple

(02:21:14):
things there in order to survive with social media. It's
a full time job and that's fucked up. Okay, but
there's a lot of stuff that's lengthy whatever reason.

Speaker 1 (02:21:27):
Okay. The algorithm on TikTok found that I'm interested in
car repair. Have I ever repaired one thing on my car? No? Okay,
there are certain people I can tell you. There's Royalty
Auto in Georgia, there's the Car Wizard. They have multiple things.

(02:21:47):
It ends up being like fifteen or twenty minutes. I
will watch or even Jay Leno's garage whatever. It's not
hid and run. Are there people trying for hit and run? Yes,
but you know as an artist, that's a different business,
and you don't want to be in that business. You
want to be in the blue sky business.

Speaker 2 (02:22:09):
Absolutely, But I also know that they at least Instagram stopped.
You cannot put something over three minutes and have it
shared algorithmic TikTok you can. But you know what they
do to our videos. They put do not try this
at home, which also keeps it off like their algorithm
puts do not try the zero gravity video at home.

(02:22:32):
What are you going to try? Who's going to try
a zero gravity video at home?

Speaker 1 (02:22:37):
Well, I mean you made a video with meta, so
there are limits to what you can say. And this
is the thing right now. Is Apple winning by losing
the AI war? Are they losing? If you look at
the history of Apple and it was all Steve Jobs.
They were late to every everything. Yeah, and then they won. Okay,

(02:23:03):
So Mark Zucker has not invented anything in his life.
Did invent Facebook, didn't invent Instagram, et cetera, et cetera,
which is why they could come along with TikTok. Okay.
So the only good thing about Instagram reels, which is
not great but not terrible, is that you can play
music at the same time. You can't do that with TikTok.

(02:23:25):
But as I say, the other thing is we talk
about this, the world is so broad and so amorphous.
I mean, you're obviously in listen. I could talk about
this for hours. I'm gonna stop because it's about you,
not me. So when you when you do a podcast,

(02:23:49):
you can you can have me and I'll I'll go
on and on.

Speaker 2 (02:23:53):
It'll be a terrible podcast if I'm if I'm hosting, well,
thank you. I really enjoyed it, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (02:23:57):
No, I really you know, you're obviously a thinker in
you're an artist in the intersection of what people don't understand.
As I continue to go on, it's about conception. Execution
is secondary to conception. So you can get twenty people

(02:24:18):
together to write a song and make it perfect. It
could be trump by something that someone came up with,
an instant that touches people, and we live in a
mercenary society where that people don't even recognize that. But
that's the business you're in. How can I push it
far enough that I get to a space You've said
it very early. It's about the emotion and lenk iguan emotion.

(02:24:43):
You can listen to people talk about hit music all
day long. They're not going to even use the word emotion.

Speaker 2 (02:24:48):
It's true, it's true. I'm not going to say anything
about AI before about whether or not it can ever
get real emotions out of us. I think it's going
to get real emotions out of us, and then we're
going to be really confused. I mean, there are there
are does, right, aren't there already? AI hits?

Speaker 1 (02:25:03):
Wait? Wait, hold on a second. First of all, they're
not hits. If you look at the statistics, you know
this is typical. I usually get more magazines than anybody
I've ever known. I subscribe to the Apple News. There's
so much clickbait there. Okay, it's like the record went
to number one. Yeah, in Bulgarian Chance and Zanzibar. There's

(02:25:26):
a chart for everything. You look at, how many people
you know? There's a country one which also wasn't successful.
But the woman wrote, has you know wrote the lyrics?
Et cetera. Okay, so far they have songs. Okay, this
is really going back. I was a big Beach Boys fan. However,

(02:25:47):
big a Beach Boys fan you were, you could not
predict California girls forget good vibrations. Okay, when you're a
California girls, she said, this does not sound like what
came before, with a lengthy intro. The way AI works
is there's a query, it is sent out in a

(02:26:08):
million different places, Everything comes back with data, and it
assembles an answer. This is the whole thing about training
in the model that shit that already exists. No.

Speaker 2 (02:26:21):
I get that it's definitionally at current it's definitionally copying. Yes,
my What scares me about it long term is that
what it's good at is pattern recognition, right, Okay, and
so what it's currently doing is figuring out what patterns

(02:26:42):
fit fit your query? Right. But if you are to extrapolate,
like I don't think we're that many steps away. I
hope you're right. I really really hope you're right, because
that that's what that's the world I want to live in.
But it seems to me that you can actually look
at the at the twentieth century and and find a

(02:27:02):
pattern in what broke the music industry, right what like
you can go of course punk was doesn't come because
as soon as as soon as you get this far
into disco, you're gonna have something counter that, right, or
you know, as soon as you've got this far into
a racism, you're going to you're you're going to add

(02:27:25):
actual pleasure to soul and hip hop too, right, Like
you you can you can look at the the cultural
dynamics and see the patterns playing out, and I would
and if we can make if we can see that pattern,
it can see that pattern.

Speaker 1 (02:27:40):
Right. Let me ask you this. Though we used to
have a new sound every three to five years, since
the turn of the century, we haven't had a new sound. Yeah,
so the pattern doesn't exist. It's like uh, skew lines
or if you really look at how you know, I'm

(02:28:01):
not good on science. You know, the protons of the
new time, they don't get around in circles. They bounce
all around. Okay, I'm not saying that I have the answer.

Speaker 2 (02:28:12):
We have no homogeneity period, So there's no way to
have a sound because they have everything.

Speaker 1 (02:28:18):
It's so what we have now is akin to religion.
The religion is answers for the unknown. It's a little
bit more than that, but that's the genesis. So we
have a lot of people acting like they know in
order to feel good about themselves. I don't want to
make it about social media, but I'll use exactly. I
hear negative stuff about TikTok all day long. My first

(02:28:40):
question is have you been on the service? No, they've
all not been on the service. You may hate it
if you're on the service, but you you don't have
any self, you don't have any knowledge, no experience.

Speaker 2 (02:28:53):
Well on that one, I mean, I'm much more Instagram
than I am TikTok, but I find it incredibly it
but it's not a good feeling.

Speaker 1 (02:29:01):
Wait, wait, it is addictive. I'm not saying it's not.
Is that a good thing? No, but that's not the
only thing that's there.

Speaker 2 (02:29:13):
I will then, then we have arrived at our point
in perfect agreement. Because I do think like as a
connector fantastic I have no problem with that with with
with technology connecting us. I it's it's that I feel
like it's disconnecting and I feel like it's it is
it puts us into the into sort of you know,
the classic thing you've heard over and over again, that

(02:29:35):
you are, that you are the product. You know that
your attention is what's being sold. And and I and
I feel that because I can feel I got like
I can feel the urge to pull my phone out
because I need another hit of of I haven't gotten
any emails that I want to read today. I got
thirty that I don't want to deal with, but I
haven't gotten any more that I want to read. But
I but there's another platform where there's probably more, and

(02:29:59):
and I can feel, I feel that pull to it,
and it is addictive and and not devoid of inspiration.
And I've also found tons and tons of inspiration and
and and made real connections there. So it's not like
it's definitely it's definitely not one or the other, but
it is. But the dangers are real and and I

(02:30:21):
and I and I what I want to do is
believe like if we could cherry pick all the good
stuff from what's there and and your version of what
could be like that's that's wonderful. If if AI only
it only acts as a more efficient tool that I
than then that it's going to be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

(02:30:41):
I I you know, like I've worked you know again,
put put yourself in the position of a film director
who who's on a tight budget and needs background music?
How are you not going to use AI for them? Right?

Speaker 1 (02:30:58):
And you know we live we live through this with
the drum machine? What did it reyield yield programmers? Yeah,
you can use drum machine.

Speaker 4 (02:31:10):
But these guys who make a fortune programming the drum machine, well,
it's not gonna it's not gonna be the If it's
not gonna be the director, they're gonna hire somebody who
puts in the right prompts to get the right.

Speaker 2 (02:31:23):
Oh well they're gonna hi there. But that's a much
smaller industry that like there are those are the only
the orchestral composition jobs left in the world, right is
film film score? And and and I just came through that, right,
And it's and they make a lot more money than
I do. I'll tell you that it's like it's a
it's a it for for for to hire a set

(02:31:47):
of union violinists, and you know, to hire a union
orchestra to play for six hours. Is you know that's
that's several rock and roll albums worth of money right there,
and that and that job will go.

Speaker 1 (02:32:00):
In without going down the rabbit hole of that. I'll
just say one thing leading out all of what we
just said. Pretty much, you have a device in your
hand where everything is playing to you. How many times

(02:32:22):
have I been in environments where I say I can't
relate to these people. I can't talk to these people.
But here on my device is stuff specially curated just
for my interests? Is I say you have to you
have to see it.

Speaker 2 (02:32:40):
Down And I do love that, but that also just
stopped you from connecting with those people. Now you don't
have to understand.

Speaker 1 (02:32:45):
Yes, but there's a fiction that everyone. Let's use it.
Musicians as example. You know, I've met a lot of
classic musicians. A lot of them can't talk to anybody.

Speaker 2 (02:32:58):
Oh yeah, we're the worst.

Speaker 1 (02:33:00):
They can play their instrument and that's how they connect
with people, but they can't have a conversation. They can't
do it. Okay, So all these people say, well, you
got to meet face to face. There are a lot
of people can't do that.

Speaker 2 (02:33:14):
Fair enough.

Speaker 1 (02:33:16):
Let's leave it at that, because it'll go out forever.

Speaker 2 (02:33:18):
David, I really enjoyed this thing.

Speaker 1 (02:33:20):
Okay, it's been great talk you do, great hearing about you.
You're being in your insights and creativity. In any event,
Thank you. Till next time.

Speaker 2 (02:33:29):
This is Bob Left sets