August 31, 2023 • 49 mins
Today's episode of What Future is an extreme delight. Not only does Josh speak to "60 Songs That Explain the 90's" host and absolute genius Rob Harvilla, but Zelda (Josh's daughter) joins in to ask the hard hitting questions all true Rob fans want the answers to. If you're a fan of music from any era (though particularly the completely radical decade of the 1990s), you will love, like, or totally hate this show. Discussed: 1989, getting cancelled, Killer Klowns From Outer Space.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Josh Witzapolski,
and I have to say today's show is a unique
treat for me. Our guest, who I'll tell you about
in a second, has become a iconic, really a member
of the family in a way. I mean I don't
actually know him at all personally or in real life,
(00:42):
but he has in some way become a voice in
our house that I hear on a regular basis, of course,
talking about the music journalist and critic Rob Harvilla. He
hosts a show that you can find on I believe
it's on Spotify. It's a Ringer podcast. It's called Sixty
Songs That Explain the Nineties. It is way over sixty
(01:06):
songs at this point, and it is sort of one
man's travelogue through the songs that for me were very
much and for my wife were very much a part
of our youth and a part of our growing up
and sort of are incredibly resonant and important to us.
And actually, to begin the conversation with Rob, a real
(01:29):
member of my family is going to join me, my
daughter Zelda June. So let's just let's get into it. Okay, wait, there,
(01:56):
you go. It's just that the seed is like not
designed for a man in a child to sit on
at the same time. Can you live talking to the
mic and you hi?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
You know?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I mean you definitely definitely was better when you were
like up high. I guess I could tilt the mic
your way like that. Oh yeah, so better? Yeah that works. Okay,
I can hear myself. Hew, there he is when I
got to get Zelda in frame. Okay, this is very exciting.
This is Zelda.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Hi, Zelda. I'm Rob. It's nice to meet you. You
are nine years old? Am I correct? Since stated you're nine?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I have a nine year old son named Griffin, so
he's this is old.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
They should meet.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I have some nine year old experience.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
So you're familiar with nine year olds, is what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
That's what I'm saying. Yes, good.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
So Zelda's mom, Laura, my wife, introduced her to your
show and she is a huge fan.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
That's very flattering, right, would.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
You say it's your favorite podcast?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
You don't have to say that. It's not true.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And she's listened to a lot of very inappropriate episodes
with a lot of bad lines.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I was going to say, I was going to apologize
for the language, which is rude of me. And had
I known this Elda was listening, of course I would
not have said any of the many inappropriate things that
I've said.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Well, you know what, I don't think you should edit yourself, Flda.
So Zelda put some questions together. She wanted to talk
to you, and she made a list of questions here
and we've highlighted two of them.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yes, all right, I'm so excited about this.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Okay, take it away. This is all this is all yours.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Hello, Zelda. Hit me.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
What is a song from the nineties that you like
but you are not going to do on the podcast?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Wow, okay, that's a very good question.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
It's a good question.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Let me think about this for a second. I really
like a band called Morphine h. They were from Boston.
It was a dude playing bass, but I think there
were only like two strings on the bass, if I
remember correctly, and then a dude playing saxophone and a
dude on drums. There was sort of like a jazz
rock type band that had a few modest hits on
(03:59):
all alternative rock radio in the nineties. And I really
really like them, and I listened to them a lot,
and I've thought about doing an episode, but it may
be they may not be quite huge enough to do
a whole episode about. The huge problem I have with
this show is there's too many songs. Right, Like, it's
called sixty songs, but then I did like fifty songs
(04:20):
and I was like, oh my gosh, I have way
too many other songs. And I keep adding new songs
and that's very obnoxious. And now the title of the
show is wrong. It's and the seo is ruined. This
is a terrible situation, and so I have to cut
it off somewhere. And so I fear that I will
not get around to doing an episode on Morphine. On
(04:42):
a song, what would I do if I did Morphine,
I would probably do the song Buyna, which is I
think the first song that I ever heard by them.
I really like it. That means good in Spanish. You
probably know that nine year old's are really smart tu
That's one song that I really really love. And if
every episode of this show is just me being super
indulgent in doing whatever I wanted to do, like, I
(05:03):
would for sure do an episode on the band Morphine.
But because I'm I care about the people you know,
and I have a mission here and I have people
to answer to besides myself. I am I am gonna
have to graciously not do the Morphine episode that I
would really love to do.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
My follow up is I feel like, unfortunately, now that
you've said it, now you've put it out into the universe,
it seems almost inevitable that you'll have to do the episode.
I know what you're saying now, it's like, well, if
you don't do it, maybe you've missed an important moment
for yourself and for the show.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I don't know, well, I think this is the first
time that I've ever said that, like, I'm probably not
going to do this song. Like I've tried to keep
it open ended. I've tried to be really arbitrary. I've
ended up doing other songs that I thought that I
wasn't going to do. And so you're absolutely right that,
for all you know, that could have been just an ingenious,
you know, head fake to make you think that I
(05:56):
wasn't going to do it. But I'm going to do
it immediately now that I've said I is I gonna
do it. That's just how I roll.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I'm unpredictable, also interesting, that Zelda maybe got the first
you're saying maybe the first ever. You're not going to do.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
It, that's right. Yeah, it's it's just that that's just
the kind of interviewer she is. This is very very aggressive,
and I just you freaked me on and I just
hit answered. Honestly, it's it's really remarkable.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I feel like I'm watching Jonathan Swan and Trump right now,
and uh.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
There you go, Frost Nixon.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
She isn't exactly, she's another one here. Do you want
to read that one? You don't know how to phrase it? No,
this is good, this is good. Just read it. Just
read it.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It's a good question too.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I will dying to know the answer to this. Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So if you are going to end the podcast, are
you just gonna stop? Or are you gonna do a
different era of music?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Credible stuff?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Are you just gonna stop? It's that's that is incredible. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
She actually she actually said are you going? She actually
wrote are you going to stop podcasting?
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Specific I'm going to retire?
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, I like this.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
She started with it, so is great. It's very Yeah,
it's jocular. Okay, I would I would love to and
I have every intention to do another podcast after I
stop doing this podcast. I have to stop at some point.
It's going to get obnoxious if I do too many songs.
I am almost certainly actually going to stop at one
(07:27):
hundred and twenty songs, which means I have sixteen left,
which will take me through the end of the year
or maybe a little into January. But I really want
to do something else. I am not quite clear on
what that is yet. I have thought about doing the eighties.
I'm sure you're very familiar with Delda with the eighties.
I thought about doing the twenty one. Big problem here
(07:48):
is I hate the term the aughts, like I just,
I just I don't like that specific way to describe
the first decade of the two thousands, right, like just.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
The yeah yeah, she doesn't you know when when the
two thousands were just originally just the thousands. People call
me a lot because that's an old timey that's an
old timey word for zero for zeros.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Zeros is excellent. Dadding that you're doing right now that
I'm getting to it is I would like to do it.
I would like to do another show. I have every
intention of doing another show. I should know what that is.
I should be more prepared than I am. But I
don't know what it is. But I do know that
it's going to be something. I'm going to come up
with it anytime now. But I do not intend to
(08:33):
retire from podcasting. I should probably keep doing this.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
That's good. I mean, that's very good to know. I
just want to just say, I mean, I mean, this
is I've actually never seen zou to do this. Okay,
she's right taking she's taking notes.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
It's like a therapy.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
If she really originally wrote down one hundred twenty songs
and then she said, put left. But it's not one
hundred twenty songs left. I think, no, you don't have
to race. It's fine. But she wrote one hundred twenty
songs and then wrote down another show, which I guess
has heard is confirming making sure she got the confirmation
that you will be doing another part.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It's in writing, which I if I told Zelda, now
I have to do it. Zelda, can I ask you
a question? Yeah, what is your favorite song from the nineties?
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So oh, I think you probably have an answer to this.
What's your favorite song from the nineties? You just did
your your School of Rock showcase was on nineties. Right,
Oh yeah, is there one of those songs that's your favorite?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Buddy Holly?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Is it from the nineties? It is?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Is it? It is Buddy Holly from by Weezer. Yeah,
Weezer's Buddy Holly is an excellent nineties you're saying you
just played that song. You're in the school of Rock program.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, she sang lead vocals on that song.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
You sang lead vocals on Buddy Holliday. Yeah, so cool.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
You you noticed she did lead vocals on Epics by
Faith No more.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
No, she did not. That's it was ever heard a
nine year Oh my, is there video? Is that available?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I think I have video? Yeah, I definitely have video
of it, and I'm happy to produce it.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
And you gotta drop the SoundCloud, drop the lake. You
were one of the coolest nine year olds I know.
I guess I have a nine year old as well.
You would be, you can't you and my You and
my son are the two coolest nine year olds around.
You sang lead vocals on Do You Like Epic? Is
that a hard song to sing?
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Well, I mean, when you hear it it's hard, but
when you actually like learn it, it's pretty easy.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Okay, she was excited.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
There's it's essentially a rap, and she was very excited
it is.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
That's yeah, it's so cool man, it's at it. Oh
my gosh, that's the neatest day I've ever heard.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I mean, all of it was just seeing children play
those songs, just completely.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Did someone play the piano part at the end? Oh yeah, Yeah,
that's the best part of the song for me, is
the piano part of the wait, did you do epic?
I didn't because it's eighty nine. It's one of the
songs that's not actually from the nineties. Oh wow, it barely,
isn't it barely? Isn't it? It was like popular in
(11:11):
ninety maybe let's say that's right, that's exactly right. It
peaked in nineteen ninety, but did not.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Wow, yeah, so did that was a nineties thing, though,
wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
You gotta go in there and tell them they messed up.
I'd be like, guys, here's the one problem with our
showcase that we did is that thatens technically from the eighties.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Oh so yeah, that's you gotta fact check the school,
you gotta you.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Gotta hit it, get hit with the facts. All right, Well, Zelda,
I think you got to go back in. Right. Do
you have anything else, any other question you want to
ask Rob or any other thing, anything you'd like to say,
you want to do that one? Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
How did you think of a name for your podcast?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
We were trying, We were trying to think of the
right number of songs to do, and ninety songs would
have made more sense. But I was it would have
made a lot more sense, right, But I was worried
that people wouldn't like this show and I would be
embarrassed if the name of the show was ninety songs.
(12:12):
They explained the ninetes, and then after like three episodes,
people like, this show is terrible, you need to stop.
And then I was the guy who got like who
got a show canceled with ninety in the title, right,
and so sixty but then thirty songs was too few songs,
and so sixty which is still an embarrassing amount of songs.
If I had been canceled after three songs, like but
(12:34):
sixty was between.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Sixty and ninety, I feel like the embarrassment would be
pretty right.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yes, mistakes were made in this in this thought process.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Okay, Zelda, great job and now you're going to go.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
It was great to me, U Zelda. You are my
youngest fan or a person who's ever listened to this podcast,
and I'm honored.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
It's very great to me.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Congratulations on the faith no more weezy thing. That's awesome.
Good luck to you.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Do you want to sign off?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
How would you sign off here? From this conversation? Bye? Bye?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Well that was delightful.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
I consider to be one of the most delightful people
that I know, so as is obvious, I think we
are huge fans of the show and huge fans of you.
And I shouldn't say this because I'm a podcaster, but
I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, and I
think your show I just don't like. I just I'm
very you know, I'm very busy multitask space and it's
(13:45):
a safe space for us, and yours is one that
I find to be consistently entertaining and educational and hilarious.
And just like I'm very charmed by you and I
listened to you. I'm like entering as a fan and
uh and an appreciator.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Of that's tremendously kind of you. It's all a facade.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So I mean, you're you and I must be close
in age.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
We are we are I'm forty five.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Oh I'm forty five also, so we're actually the exact
same age. All right, that's great. You said you think
you're gonna do one hundred and twenty episodes total of
this podcast. You're on what number? Now?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I am thinking about episode one oh five. I have
sixteen episodes remaining, you know that shows on a little
break right now. We'll return, I believe on October eleventh,
and we're going to go straight through. You know, so
the holidays accepted, et cetera. But like the last sixteen
are a block that we are thinking about now, and
(14:44):
it is vexing. This is a vexing document.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
To me, because there are too many songs that you
want to do.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
There are too many saws, and it's just it's not flowing.
Like I just there's like a harmony and like a
beauty that I really want to concoct right of this
Excel chart, and I just I haven't gotten there yet.
It's as I look at it, and it just it
doesn't look quite right.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I don't know if you ever have that feeling, but
I'm just I'm not sure exactly what I'm.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Doing, Like you're missing something or you just don't feel
like the order the flow is correct.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Both really, you know, it's it's it's we you know,
we have you know, the list of songs that we
probably are not going to do at this point is
very disturbing right to me because there's so much cool
stuff on here. But all of those are still technically possible.
But like, yeah, it's a combination of like, you know,
for every song that we add now you know, there
are five that de facto are being left off. Right.
(15:38):
This is the point I would get to previously where
I would then go to my to my friends and
masters at the Ringer and be like, can we please
do more episodes? They're like fine, all right, you know
it's and then like that's what we did when we
got close to sixty, That's what we did when we
got close to ninety, you know, and like they're not
going to let me extend again, Like I I probably
(15:59):
should bring a somewhat dignified conclusion, but it's not a
good feeling to try and orchestrate that, right.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
I feel like there is this kind of symmetry though,
with one hundred and twenty. I mean it immediately evokes
one hundred and twenty minutes from MTV, which of course
was I mean a very much a nineties product, and
like probably the place where so many many of the
songs that you've talked about were sort of not discovered
exactly a bit discovered by the masses or much much
(16:28):
larger audience.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Discovered by me. Certainly, Yeah, absolutely is huge for me.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So I think one twenty sounds right, does I mean,
what you were talking about, this idea that you know
went from sixty to ninety and now you have one
hundred and twenty. I had some idea in my head
when I when I started listening to it that like,
because you hadn't done pretty far into the show, you
hadn't done some songs that I thought were like really important.
I mean one, I think the one that stood out
with smells like teen Spirit, which, which, like I guess
(16:55):
I think from my money. I don't know if this
is a globally considered truth or not, but I feel
like it's probably the most important song from the nineties. Like,
I don't know if that's.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I agree with you, Yeah, to the extent that there's
a consensus. You know, if if rock, if guitar music,
et cetera, is a thing you're at all interested in,
I think that's a safe bad.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah. I guess I should say yeah in the rock space,
but also like more but also beyond rock into like pop,
because I think what was interesting about it, which is
it seems like nothing now, seems like no big deal,
but it was like a song that should not have
been as massively popular as it was, like to a
broad set of people, and yet it was like a
(17:41):
defining point. And that's early nine. That's like it came
out what ninety one, ninety he.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Came out in ninety one, you know. And I think people,
you know how they say, like a decade doesn't begin
like you know, on January first, nineteen ninety like culturally right,
I think a lot of people would fix the beginning
of the nineties, either so when it came out, which
I think was September ninety one, or the moment when
it kicked Michael Jackson off number one on the Billboard charts,
(18:07):
you know, as as you say, when it became pop
and no one when this song came out, I expected
it's ever become pop, like that's the moment when the
nineties begin.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Culturally, yes, I.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Mean it is insane to think about that, just as
conceptually knowing the band, you know where they came from
and who they were, surrounded by the idea that you
would that they're one of their songs would knock Michael
Jackson off of the from the you said number one spot, right,
m h.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I think it was the album? Yeah, yeah, I think
I think it was like the Kicked. I believe Dangerous
was the Michael Jackson album. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Well, you know that's you know, I'll say that it's
probably that's not his best work, so you know, they had.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
A little bit of an edge, that's true.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I want to ask about the way that you do
your shows. So first off, like, there are a lot
of your episodes and I do encourage anybody who's listening
to this to go and listen to to Rob show
because it's really fucking entertaining. But there are episodes where
you're like, I don't know, well, I do know thirty
minutes in or something, or forty minutes in and and
and often not always, but often it is you're sort
(19:13):
of telling a story about your life and your your youth.
I'm like, I thought this episode was about, you know,
play Bone Thugs and Harmony or I don't know if
you did both Thugs a harmonyone. But I haven't looked
in every episode, but but I'm like, I'm like, I
thought this was like I thought this was about Bone
Thugs in Harmony, but I have to look. I have
to check sometimes because I'm like, is he still is
that still one of the one I'm listening to? But
(19:34):
you do get to it. I mean, you you find
your way into the song and the reason and there's
often not often always rationale behind the story, but like,
here's what I want to know. Here's what I'm dying
to know. Because when we started doing this podcast, I
was like, you know, they were like, what podcast do
you like? And I was like, yours. I was like,
I think that's great, And a big part of what
I liked about it was you were just fucking talking,
(19:57):
you know. You were just like it's like it's like
I'm I'm not just saying I'm not saying it's like
low effort or anything. But I was like, you know,
I could talk really well, so if I could just
talk as much as possible, that would be my ideal podcast.
Do you write that shit or are you doing that
just from memory or from your you know, ability to speak?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Oh a billion percent, I write that shit. These things
are scripted down to the word and like almost really
inflection really yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Oh wow, Okay, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, it's just I just opened up the Google doc
and I'm one of I think this has always been
true of my writing. But I'm one of these people
who I reread the first paragraph as I'm writing the second, right, Like,
in the course of writing a piece, I end up
rereading it like fifty times, just because I started at
the beginning, and so that applied to this. And so
now I'm sort of talking out loud and like just
(20:53):
the delivery. You know, I didn't start this show thinking
that it was going to be and I still don't
really think of it as a performance, right, Like I'm
not an actor, you know, Like monologue is probably accurate,
but always felt a little like pretentious to me. But like, right,
it's it's just it's always the way I've done it.
But no, absolutely, I cannot add lib at all, at all,
(21:14):
at all. Yeah, So this is these are just eight
thousand or more word Google docs that I am reading
verbatim and trying not to have it sound like that.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, I should have expected the answer that you were
writing them. But I think that there's something about the
way that you present these narratives that feels I mean,
maybe it's the way you're writing them, obviously, it's just
like this kind of feels like a stream of consciousness,
like someone's just going through this, like you know this obviously.
Obviously there are many moments that are that have to
(21:46):
be like you know, you've got these sort of where
you where you throw to things right, So those I
always assumed were like, you know, planned in some way,
But the rest of it always feels very like freeform
to me, and to the point where I guess what
I'm I guess what's so interesting about it is you
get kind of lost in the story so much that
you you sort of like are like, is that you know,
are we heading? We heading to the right place? Yeah? Now,
in retrospect, I feel stupid for maybe not saying like, oh,
(22:09):
obviously these are written. I don't know, it feels unique
to me. Again, I don't listen to every podcast, but
what's your longest sort of you know, lead up to
do you do you have like a record holder, you know,
for like the longest lead up to the to what
you mentioned the song? Do you know?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
It's a good question I have like an I have
like a vague sense of it, and certainly like it's
it's getting worse. That problem is getting worse. Like the
longest episode of this show ever, like from a from
a script perspective at least, is Pantera. I don't know
how that happened. I just talked about Pantera forever for
(22:45):
ten thousand words, but I don't know what happened. But
they're cool, They're great, but like I would not have
predicted that, Like the Nirvana show, I think to Facto
because Courtney Love was on it and spoke herself for
about two hours. Okay, so yes, I should be keeping
track of exactly when, Like okay, so a script is
like eight thousand words. I feel like I've several times
(23:09):
recently have gotten to like the three thousand or four
thousand word mark and I'm still not out. My name
is Rob Arvilla, and this is like and I'm like,
oh no, like what is happening? Right? And so let
me just here. I've got this arguous thing.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah, here we go.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I'll just get to day if I can. Trying to
see if I can eyeball it and say the Fugazi episode,
I talked about pee Wee Herman to start off, like
because he had passed, and I was like weirdly affected
by that. Like I talked about pee Wee Herman at
sort of unnecessary length, fade into you. The Mazzie Star episode,
I ended up talking about this band Low from Minnesota,
(23:46):
the slowcore band for a great deal of time, Daft Punk.
I was, I don't remember what I was talking about it.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Oh, the daft Punk episode. It's around the world, right,
I think I just listened Repetition, Yeah, repetition and you
Yeah that was that Actually was one of the episodes
I think where I was like, what's is this about
daft punk or not? You know, but no in a
good way.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I think my editor had the same question, and maybe
not as much in a good way in his sense
He's like, you know, there's not a lot of deaf punk.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Yeah no, but but the content, Yeah you're talking about
you You're talking about dance music. I mean I used
to make dance music, like and DJ for a living.
In the actually in the nineties and early two thousands.
So so yeah, you're talking about and you go into
like fat boy Slim and shit like that, and yeah,
I believe you touch on like all of the kind
of weird popular techno music that existed, but all written
(24:40):
all on purpose, not just randomly off the off the
off the day.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
On purpose. Yeah, it's like it's all on purpose.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
But you're writing. You have written a book. You're writing
a book. It's coming out. Is it out?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
No, it's coming out November.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
November, just in time for your holiday shopping. What was
the date, right?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
You know the date November Tuesday, November fourteen.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Great, that's right before Black Friday. I'm saying, perfect and
perfect for the music lover in your life, for the dads.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And nine year olds in your life.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
That's right. So how does the book? How does this format?
Is it just a collection of the essays that you
have written? Did you just copy paste into the book
format and then send it off to the printer or
you know, how does this turn into a book? I
guess's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
That was the plan until I realized that a book
of that size would be literally six hundred thousand words.
That would be the grand total if I just copied really,
and I was informed that that was too long, And
so what I did instead is I reread all the
scripts and I tried to sort of concoct like the
(25:44):
greatest hits sort of you know, sections from those songs
from those scripts, and tried to combine the songs in
interesting ways, right like sellouts for example, this concept of
selling out very popular in the nineties, right. You know,
you think about Green Day for doing it, you think
about Fugazi for not doing it, but you also think
(26:05):
about like ice Cube and coulioh having these huge crossover
hits in the suburbs, like the white kids in the suburbs,
you know, and they're sort of openly grappling with what
it means, you know, to have all these people now
listening to them who aren't from where they're from and
like don't know what it's like where they're from, you know,
that kind of thing. So just trying to find different
(26:27):
ways of attacking, you know, like the women in Rock question,
you know, and just the different ways that someone like
Shinead O'Connor versus Fiona Apple versus like TLC even sort
of dealt with that, and so just trying to group
these songs and these artists in these micro eras within
the nineties just in new ways and just get weird
(26:50):
songs bouncing off one another, you know, get some cool
art in there. I'm really psyched about the artists that
I've got. Tara Jacobe. I worked with her at Gawker Media.
She worked for Jezebel, dead Spin Walker back in the day,
and she's wonderful artist, and I'd like the best part
of the book is the cover and like her illustrations
for each chapter. So yeah, it's it's sort of it
(27:10):
was imagined as a companion to the book, and there's
you know, like there are riffs from the show that
are fairly verbatim in the book and just sort of adjusted.
You know, it's like read okay in a book, but
there's a lot of new material too, and it's all
sort of recombined in a way that hopefully gets some
cool sort of alchemy going, you know, between songs that
(27:33):
you wouldn't necessarily put together.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Right, No, I mean that sounds great actually, Like I
like the idea, the narrative structure of finding those threads
between these songs is actually interesting because maybe I'm wrong,
and you'll tell me you've got the celaborate plan. Like
it doesn't feel like you're necessarily rolling these out in
a very like this. I don't want this to sound insulting,
but it doesn't, you know, it's fairly I don't say,
(27:55):
I don't know. Schizophrenic is not the right word. But
there's like, you know, it's like it's not like, no,
you do a bit. I think it might be like
you do a block of like you know, one hit,
you know, one hit like Chumba one, but like you
didn't do a block of like weird one hit wonder songs,
and then you didn't do a block of like grunge.
You got like sounds like teen Spirit and then shoot
by Saltan Peppa. You know, like it's not like Ei
(28:16):
there was a connective tissue between those two songs as
far as as far as I can.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Tell, Delightful Chaos.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yes, I think the idea that you would take some
of this stuff and find a link between those things
is quite interesting, and so that feels like a reason
for the book to exist. I probably will buy the
book for somebody for the holidays.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
I would be very kind of you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Might maybe Zelda can Zelda read the book? Is it
going to be full of swear words? Are there gonna
be a lot of It's gonna be a lot of
nasty stuff in there.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
There's a goodly amount of nasty stuff. Yeah. Yeah, parental
discretion is advised. Unfortunately, that was I didn't think. I
didn't think that through. You didn't.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
You didn't consider that nine year olds might want to
read the book.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
What I will do for you and for her is
I will take a copy here, and I will just
mark out every objectionable phrase, you know, and I'll mail
that on to her. Just redact.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
You're gonna you're gonna personally redact in.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
My own book exactly what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I appreciate that, and I assume you'll offer that as
a service to anybody who needs a clean version.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
You should do the explicit language version and then the
clean version, which would be I think very reflective of
the parental advisory, you know. Label The show has a
voracious sort of appetite for all of the songs in
(29:40):
the nineties, Like I feel like it doesn't restrain itself
to like a genre, right, And that's great, But like
when you were living through the nineties, were you more
restrained to a genre, were you more focused on one track?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
I'd like to say that I was omnivorous in that way.
But I think I try to own up to being
like an alt rock and teenager, right right, Like, I
don't think there's any question or any point in denying that.
Like my foundation, you know, my top five bands when
I was seventeen years old, most likely Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins,
(30:17):
Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead. They might be giants, you know,
and so like that's that's a fairly narrow band of experience.
So I do think I start from a foundation of
alternative rock. And so when you're talking about Achy Breaky
Hearts for example, or Selena, you know, are like, I
(30:37):
don't have the personal like I've listened to this record
six hundred times in my bedroom sort of experience. And
I try to be honest about that. But I do
think that like in terms of pop radio, you know,
in terms of just driving around listening to pop radio,
like listening watching MTV constantly, you know, like hanging out
(30:57):
with my friends, you know, and whatever they were into.
I think that I got, you know, that's helped fill
into the gaps to some degree, right, you know, I
can talk about rap music, pop music, country music, you know,
with some degree of personal experience, but it's not quite
the same. Like this is my soul, you know, made
(31:18):
manifest in arts, you know, the way that the alternative
rock of the nineties was, And I just I try
to be honest about that, you know, And I try
to be honest about, you know, the places where I am,
perhaps for the first time, doing the deep dive that
I didn't do when I was fifteen, and I certainly
respect you know, like Tori Amos for example, right, Like
(31:39):
she's someone who I always love hearing her on the radio,
always really wanted to go see her play. You know,
I regret not seeing her live in the nineties, but
I wasn't like a super fan of hers, you know.
And then like two years ago, I wake up and
suddenly I want to listen to Tori Amos for a week,
you know, to the exclusion. And I do, and I
(32:00):
understand that that's to listen to her that deeply for
the first time as a forty year old man is
a very different experience, right than as a sixteen year
old girl especially, and so I just try to be
honest about that, you know, when I'm coming when with
a lot of personal baggage and when I'm not necessarily.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Right well, but also I mean the nineties by by
the very function of how you could discover and purchase
and enjoy music. I mean, I think your show has
an omnivorous you know, bent to it in the sense that,
like we're talking about it's not just focused on like
the you know, the alt rock shit that you liked
when you were a teenager or whatever, but partially, you know,
(32:43):
it's it's even possible to have a thing like that
because we now live in an era where the barrier
to all art or all music, let's just say, is
non existent. Like we lived in a time when and
tell me, if this was an experience that you share,
it must have been where you might have heard a
song or somebody played you something and you're like, that's cool,
(33:05):
what is that? And they're like, oh, it's this band,
and you were like, I want to hear more of it.
So you had to go to like a record store,
and I mean you could go to one in the
mall obviously, and find that band's album a lot, right, Like, Like,
I saw the movie Killer Clowns from Outer Space. I'm
not sure if you're familiar with it.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
HBO, My friend, I've watched that movie on HbA and
it's a bad movie.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
It has a song by the Dickies in it. I'm
not sure if you're familiar with the song. It's the
song is called Killer Clowns from Outer Space. Do you
know the Do you know the tune? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Yeah, it's kind of Dickies. That's that's the Dickies.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
That's the Dickies. Wow. So the thing is I had
never fucking heard of the Dickies. Yeah, And I was like, ooh,
Like I like the song because I'm like thirteen and
dumb or whatever, and it's it's the song is literally
about the movie about Killer Clowns from Outer Space. I
like it. By the way, I love a song that's
about a movie. It doesn't happen that often, especially not anymore.
(34:01):
But like when somebody's written a song for like what's
happening in the movie, I think is a really special
and amazing thing or about what has happened in the movie,
which I think is incredible, Like like what is the
Bobby Brown song from Ghostbusters too, which.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
All right, yeah, I love that song.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
It's so good, like he he but he raps.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
People, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Like you don't. You don't hear a lot of raps
about Vigo in recent in a recent era of music.
It is a drag. But but I was like, so
I like it was like, Oh, the Dickeys, they're interesting.
I think I actually ordered like an EP that that
song was on at like something like a a Sam
Goodie or whatever, and I waited for it to come
in and then I was like and then I like,
then I heard some other Dickeys, So I had never
(34:44):
heard of the Dickies before. But the but the other
version was that you know, you would go to a
place that was and I don't know if you had
this experience. I think you got must have, and you
probably talked about it and I'm just misremembering or not remembering,
but you know, you go to like one of these
stories that sold like really good ship, where like there
were a bunch of record or working there, and he
was like an incredibly intimidating experience if you like went
(35:04):
in and you're like you had heard of Slint or
something and you're like wanted to find out more about them,
and you know, you had to confront some guy who
thought you were a shithead, who didn't even want to
tell you because that's his thing and not yours. You know,
so our barrier was very high. So it's like sort
of understandable. I'm working my way back to the question,
which is which is I guess to my point about
the question about the show being omnivorous, but you maybe
(35:27):
not beginning in your sort of musical life like that,
but it was much harder, Like it was not a
thing right in the nineties that you would be. It
was very rare for a person to be have access
to and understand like a wide variety of music. Does
that seem like a fair assessment or am I just
is that just people from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
No, that's just Pittsburgh's very Pittsburgh specifically. Absolutely, I agree
with you, because the thing is like, Okay, so I
hear Undone the Sweater song by Weezer on the radio,
and I try and tape that song off the radio
and take I had just sitting there listening to the
radio with my hand hovering over the record button, like
you're reported onto a blank tape. But to own that song,
(36:08):
I got to buy the Weezer record for twenty dollars
and what if it's bad? Right, Like this is the
eternal conundrum. And I try and limit the number of
times that I do this rant on the show, but
I have done this rant on the show five to
seven times, probably over the course of one hundred plus episodes.
Now where it's like you go, as you say to
(36:28):
good Sam Goodie or Camelot Music, and you have this
wall of CDs and you have twenty dollars in your
pocket and you have to pick one, right, you have
to pick one, and it has to be good. And
you're gonna listen to that record two hundred times because
you are going to extract the value from it. You're
gonna get your money's worth, right, And it's like, do
I risk it on cakes, fashion Nuggets? Do I risk
(36:52):
it like Teenage Fan Club's Bandwagon ass? Do I risk
it on Pablo Honey?
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Right?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Right? Because I really like Creep And so it's extremely limiting,
Like I.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Know, it's nuts to think about that. It's like like
like I remember I heard like an inspiral carpet song
on one hundred and twenty minutes, and I was like,
this is cool. And then like, you know, I think
I kind of almost remember this experience of going to
the record store and looking at the record and going like,
you know, it was probably a CD at this time,
but still they were like twenty bucks or something. They
weren't cheat, you know, they weren't And I was like,
(37:24):
I don't know, like what's on here? And often like
you'd buy some shit, you'd buy a record and it
would suck right. All the rest of the songs would
just blow, like you had one song and twelve others
that were completely not interesting at all to you. But
jumping off of the thing that I was asking about,
like about the show being omnivorous, but you maybe not,
like those episodes that you're doing that are not about
(37:44):
something that you kind of grew up with. I mean
you already said right like you don't obviously you can't
tell the story around it the same way because it's
a different story for you. But are there other people
when you're writing those episodes that you're collaborating with? I mean,
are you are you talking to other people about that
moment for that particular genre or that artist or whatever,
or is it just you just researching and kind of
putting it into into into a narrative.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, I'm just trying to read as widely as I can.
You know. Every episode starts, you know, with my endless monologue,
and then I talked to a guest, right right, and
we just have a you know, like a twenty minute conversation.
And the idea there is that the guest has a
completely different perspective, you know, if it's not something that
I grew up, you know, with a mind meld and
a smashing pumpkin sense, like I try and talk to
(38:26):
someone who did right right, you know, and just and
and so in that sense, I try and talk to
somebody with a more personal connection to whatever I'm talking about.
But if it's something like say like low stell real
like the Mocherina, right, like the Macharena is something I
know as like a cultural force or like a scourge
or whatever, you know, but I can't say that I'm
(38:47):
familiar with like where the Mockerena came from, and like
the scene that it grew out of, and like what
those guys were doing before the mocharina blew up et cetera,
et cetera. So I'm reading books, right, and I'm just
going back and reading articles from that time, and it's
more of a research thing, I guess, and then I
just try and bring in, you know, like I have
plenty of experience like a junior high dances, you know,
(39:08):
like watching people do the macarena and like having this
mixture of like, I hate this song. I wish I
was out there having fun dancing to this song, like
that very complex, right, series of emotions that you have
interested and you're in an eighth grade after school junior
high dance. But yeah, I just it's not necessarily that
I talk to somebody to sort of manufacture that personal connection.
(39:31):
But like the show hopefully does involve me interviewing somebody
after I've done my bit about their more personal story
relating to the song.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
I don't know. Your audience must be made up of
people like our age, right, I mean there must be
a lot of sorry, it's not all it's not sorry,
it's not all people our age. But I'm just like
it's sort of like, you know, I mean, the appetite
for nostalgia is high, and I feel like there's something
about this this era and maybe this is just the
(40:01):
gen X guy. I'm just like it seemed really important,
and like maybe every decade seems really important. But when
I listened to the show, I'm like, oh, yeah, because
a lot of times you're talking about politics or you're
talking about culture, you know, outside of music or societal
things that we're shifting. And do the nineties actually stand
out as a outsized moment in cultural sort of history
(40:24):
or is that just because I'm old now and I
lived through it.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
I do think that both things can be true. I
think it is absolutely true that the music that you
loved when you were a teenager is the greatest music
you'll ever hear. I do think the emotional connection that
you form with that music it's it's it's the music
you love the most. It's the most important music to you,
(40:49):
you know. And so in that sense, it is sort
of a gen X thing, right, Like we think the
nineties are the best because we were teenagers in the
nineties and that's the end of it, you know. And
like if you were a teenager in the sixties, if
you were a teenager in the twenty tens, then that's
the most important music to you. And everything else sucks,
Like everything else is just old or it's new fangled
and it's not as good. I do think that the nineties.
(41:12):
You know, when we started this show, we were just like,
let's do a show that's like songs. Every episode is
about a song, you know, like what is a framing
that works here? And the nineties jumped out immediately, Like
I guess my standard stick is like it's far enough
that it's the past, but it's recent enough that it's
still imprinting on the present, you know, like you can
(41:34):
still hear, see, feel a lot of nineties energy, you know,
in the culture being made today, Like it's it's present
tense enough, right, but it also feels like a distinct
period of time to possibly a greater degree than the
aughts do. Like that's the way it feels for me.
And I try and filter out again the fact that
(41:55):
I was a teenager, Like I try it and acknowledge that,
like the nineties are always going to be the ultimate
for me. But is there something about this decade? Is
there something about the pre internets, the immediate pre Internet
of this decade that makes it distinct? Right? You know,
this is the last decade that will not be dominated
(42:16):
by the Internet the way you know, as you're saying
this whole thing, we're saying with the record stores and
buying one CD for twenty bucks, like this is the
end of the line for that shit, right right, And
that matters, And that makes the two thousands as a
block feel completely different from a musical perspective, because that's Mapster.
You can listen to everything and you can be omnivorous
(42:38):
on a budget now in a way that you just
couldn't in the nineties. So it's it's but I think
both things are true. I think there is an undeniable
bias that you and I both have for this decade.
And when we say, oh, it's the greatest day, like
music will never get better than this's like we're being
old men, undeniably. But I do think that there are
(42:59):
actual objective aspects of the nineties and where it falls
and the scope of human history that make it distinct
and make it like remarkable, as like a block of time,
you know, with qualities that were never repeated before or since.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah, I mean the framing of that is perfect. You're
very good at this. You should do this professionally. That's
my suggestion. You should do podcasting as a profession. I
think it could be very lucrative for you. I know,
it's funny you said, like, you know, we think that
like music in the nineties is the best music. I
don't know that. I actually mean this is not a
knock on anyone who does. I don't know that I do.
(43:35):
But I was a huge nerd in the nineties and
and my like music exposure was really weird, and I
you know, I think like it was. It was definitely
a huge part of my life because part of it
was like me, I used to you know, make money
doing it and used to you know, that was like
a focal point of of many years of my life.
But I had things that were going on, like like
the Internet matter to me in the nineties more than
(43:56):
music did. Like I was a huge fucking nerd, and
where my attention was, folks, was like understanding what this
new thing was called the Internet, which like you know,
I was online fairly young, like before the internet was
even the Internet. But it's interesting because like this was,
like music for you is not a hobby, right, I mean,
you became a man who writes about music and now
(44:19):
has podcasts about music. It's like it's bigger than that
for you.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Nah, this was my life pretty immediately. I have to
say I was. I did dial up onto the internet,
you know, late in the nineties, but I was not
a man of the Internet in the nineties. No, it
was pretty evident to me by the time I was
in high school that I wanted to be a rock critic, right,
I wanted to write for Rolling Stone, you know. It
was clear to me that music was going to be
(44:45):
one of the most important things in my life from
when I was like six years old, right, you know,
from when I became ubsessed with MTV or whatever. And so, No,
I do think that I am printed with music in
a really intense and unnecessary way from the very beginning,
and it was sort of the prism through which I
saw and heard and felt everything.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Absolutely, Yeah, I mean, and I think that comes through
in the show, and I think that's what makes it
still compelling to listen to. I mean, but we should
say the show is at least going to one hundred
and twenty episodes, correct.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yeah, well we'll stop there.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
But yeah, you're sure you're going to stop a one
hundred and twenty I'm I'm pretty sure like what if,
like you get to twenty and then you remember this
one song that was super important that you didn't get to.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Oh yeah, Robo Humpin' slow More, Babe, I gotta do that. Yeah,
it's just as a possibility.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
It could it could happen. So looking through the list,
and I have thought about this, like there are songs
that aren't the obvious song or aren't the one that
you know which is good. But I think it like
opens up the question in my mind is like it
will there be that obvious one that that you feel like,
oh shit, why didn't I do you know X? I'm
thinking of like Pearl Jam, like not that the song
(46:01):
that you chose is not perfect.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Yeah, Pearl Dam was one. Yeah, It's like I tried
to you know, I did Yellow Lead better, but I
tried to talk about what like Jeremy even Flow like Daughter,
Like I if I'm doing an episode on an artist
that has like a huge catalog, like I try and
get to everything that I can, and sometimes you know,
it's in the Nervada episode for example, like I thought
(46:23):
about doing Where did You Sleep Last Night? You know,
the unplugged version? Yeah, you know, but then in the
end it just felt obnoxious not to lead with smells
like Teen Spirit.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
It'd be fucking crazy. Honestly, I thought, for sure, well
when you when you didn't do it for so long,
I was like, okay, so this must be he's going
to end the series.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
That's what I thought forever, right, Yes, that was the plan.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Okay, because it seemed obvious to me, like to do
it that way, like, and I'm like, that's why, because
I'm like, he must have done smells like Teen Spirit
and it wasn't there, And you're like, okay, well that's weird. Yeah, yeah, No,
I mean I think it would have been. I think
people would have been in rage, to be honest, maybe
I don't know if people get it raged about your show,
but like you know, like they're on the internet, so
you're definitely going to get the uh you know. I think, like, yeah,
(47:07):
would have been bizarre at least to ignore smells like
Teen Spirit for you know, actually kind of is kind
of a record store guy move. When you think about it,
to do something like that, it's sort of like you're like, oh,
you get you like smells like teen Spirit. That's actually
not really their best song.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
I've into their earlier stuff, you know, which is not
even nineties. But screw you guys. Yeah exactly, I mean Sliver, Yeah,
I mean you have the you have.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
You definitely have the knowledge of a record store guy.
I don't know that. I think based on how much
you want to share the knowledge, you don't have the
personality of a record store guy. So that's very important.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
That's that's very kind of you to say.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
On that nice moment. So sixty Songs That Explain the
Nineties comes out November fourteenth.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
November fourteenth, and.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Rob, thank you for coming on. And uh, I would
love to have you back when you when you have
decided on your next decade, you're going to have to
come back and explain.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
I would love to come back. I would I would
like to talk to Zelda again when I come back.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Well, I could almost guarantee that will happen because she'll
be very excited to explore another another decade of music.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
You could book it.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
We'll do that, Rob, thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Thanks to.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Well. That is our show for this week, and what
a show. I gotta say. I feel like I maybe
he was a little bit of like a fanboy, maybe
too much in parts of then not really sure, but uh,
you know, it's fine. I'm going to own it. I'm
gonna own it. I'm gonna own my fan positioning that
I may have stepped into during the show, and you know,
and I'm not ashamed. I think it's great to like
(48:43):
something and I don't have any I don't have any
qualms about owning it completely. Anyhow, that is our show
this week. We'll be back next week with more of
what future, and as always, I wish you and your
family the very best. Ye
Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Josh Witzapolski,
and I have to say today's show is a unique
treat for me. Our guest, who I'll tell you about
in a second, has become a iconic, really a member
of the family in a way. I mean I don't
actually know him at all personally or in real life,
(00:42):
but he has in some way become a voice in
our house that I hear on a regular basis, of course,
talking about the music journalist and critic Rob Harvilla. He
hosts a show that you can find on I believe
it's on Spotify. It's a Ringer podcast. It's called Sixty
Songs That Explain the Nineties. It is way over sixty
(01:06):
songs at this point, and it is sort of one
man's travelogue through the songs that for me were very
much and for my wife were very much a part
of our youth and a part of our growing up
and sort of are incredibly resonant and important to us.
And actually, to begin the conversation with Rob, a real
(01:29):
member of my family is going to join me, my
daughter Zelda June. So let's just let's get into it. Okay, wait, there,
(01:56):
you go. It's just that the seed is like not
designed for a man in a child to sit on
at the same time. Can you live talking to the
mic and you hi?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
You know?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I mean you definitely definitely was better when you were
like up high. I guess I could tilt the mic
your way like that. Oh yeah, so better? Yeah that works. Okay,
I can hear myself. Hew, there he is when I
got to get Zelda in frame. Okay, this is very exciting.
This is Zelda.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Hi, Zelda. I'm Rob. It's nice to meet you. You
are nine years old? Am I correct? Since stated you're nine?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I have a nine year old son named Griffin, so
he's this is old.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
They should meet.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I have some nine year old experience.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
So you're familiar with nine year olds, is what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
That's what I'm saying. Yes, good.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
So Zelda's mom, Laura, my wife, introduced her to your
show and she is a huge fan.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
That's very flattering, right, would.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
You say it's your favorite podcast?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
You don't have to say that. It's not true.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And she's listened to a lot of very inappropriate episodes
with a lot of bad lines.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I was going to say, I was going to apologize
for the language, which is rude of me. And had
I known this Elda was listening, of course I would
not have said any of the many inappropriate things that
I've said.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Well, you know what, I don't think you should edit yourself, Flda.
So Zelda put some questions together. She wanted to talk
to you, and she made a list of questions here
and we've highlighted two of them.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yes, all right, I'm so excited about this.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Okay, take it away. This is all this is all yours.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Hello, Zelda. Hit me.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
What is a song from the nineties that you like
but you are not going to do on the podcast?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Wow, okay, that's a very good question.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
It's a good question.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Let me think about this for a second. I really
like a band called Morphine h. They were from Boston.
It was a dude playing bass, but I think there
were only like two strings on the bass, if I
remember correctly, and then a dude playing saxophone and a
dude on drums. There was sort of like a jazz
rock type band that had a few modest hits on
(03:59):
all alternative rock radio in the nineties. And I really
really like them, and I listened to them a lot,
and I've thought about doing an episode, but it may
be they may not be quite huge enough to do
a whole episode about. The huge problem I have with
this show is there's too many songs. Right, Like, it's
called sixty songs, but then I did like fifty songs
(04:20):
and I was like, oh my gosh, I have way
too many other songs. And I keep adding new songs
and that's very obnoxious. And now the title of the
show is wrong. It's and the seo is ruined. This
is a terrible situation, and so I have to cut
it off somewhere. And so I fear that I will
not get around to doing an episode on Morphine. On
(04:42):
a song, what would I do if I did Morphine,
I would probably do the song Buyna, which is I
think the first song that I ever heard by them.
I really like it. That means good in Spanish. You
probably know that nine year old's are really smart tu
That's one song that I really really love. And if
every episode of this show is just me being super
indulgent in doing whatever I wanted to do, like, I
(05:03):
would for sure do an episode on the band Morphine.
But because I'm I care about the people you know,
and I have a mission here and I have people
to answer to besides myself. I am I am gonna
have to graciously not do the Morphine episode that I
would really love to do.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
My follow up is I feel like, unfortunately, now that
you've said it, now you've put it out into the universe,
it seems almost inevitable that you'll have to do the episode.
I know what you're saying now, it's like, well, if
you don't do it, maybe you've missed an important moment
for yourself and for the show.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I don't know, well, I think this is the first
time that I've ever said that, like, I'm probably not
going to do this song. Like I've tried to keep
it open ended. I've tried to be really arbitrary. I've
ended up doing other songs that I thought that I
wasn't going to do. And so you're absolutely right that,
for all you know, that could have been just an ingenious,
you know, head fake to make you think that I
(05:56):
wasn't going to do it. But I'm going to do
it immediately now that I've said I is I gonna
do it. That's just how I roll.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I'm unpredictable, also interesting, that Zelda maybe got the first
you're saying maybe the first ever. You're not going to do.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
It, that's right. Yeah, it's it's just that that's just
the kind of interviewer she is. This is very very aggressive,
and I just you freaked me on and I just
hit answered. Honestly, it's it's really remarkable.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I feel like I'm watching Jonathan Swan and Trump right now,
and uh.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
There you go, Frost Nixon.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
She isn't exactly, she's another one here. Do you want
to read that one? You don't know how to phrase it? No,
this is good, this is good. Just read it. Just
read it.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It's a good question too.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I will dying to know the answer to this. Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So if you are going to end the podcast, are
you just gonna stop? Or are you gonna do a
different era of music?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Credible stuff?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Are you just gonna stop? It's that's that is incredible. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
She actually she actually said are you going? She actually
wrote are you going to stop podcasting?
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Specific I'm going to retire?
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, I like this.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
She started with it, so is great. It's very Yeah,
it's jocular. Okay, I would I would love to and
I have every intention to do another podcast after I
stop doing this podcast. I have to stop at some point.
It's going to get obnoxious if I do too many songs.
I am almost certainly actually going to stop at one
(07:27):
hundred and twenty songs, which means I have sixteen left,
which will take me through the end of the year
or maybe a little into January. But I really want
to do something else. I am not quite clear on
what that is yet. I have thought about doing the eighties.
I'm sure you're very familiar with Delda with the eighties.
I thought about doing the twenty one. Big problem here
(07:48):
is I hate the term the aughts, like I just,
I just I don't like that specific way to describe
the first decade of the two thousands, right, like just.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
The yeah yeah, she doesn't you know when when the
two thousands were just originally just the thousands. People call
me a lot because that's an old timey that's an
old timey word for zero for zeros.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Zeros is excellent. Dadding that you're doing right now that
I'm getting to it is I would like to do it.
I would like to do another show. I have every
intention of doing another show. I should know what that is.
I should be more prepared than I am. But I
don't know what it is. But I do know that
it's going to be something. I'm going to come up
with it anytime now. But I do not intend to
(08:33):
retire from podcasting. I should probably keep doing this.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
That's good. I mean, that's very good to know. I
just want to just say, I mean, I mean, this
is I've actually never seen zou to do this. Okay,
she's right taking she's taking notes.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
It's like a therapy.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
If she really originally wrote down one hundred twenty songs
and then she said, put left. But it's not one
hundred twenty songs left. I think, no, you don't have
to race. It's fine. But she wrote one hundred twenty
songs and then wrote down another show, which I guess
has heard is confirming making sure she got the confirmation
that you will be doing another part.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It's in writing, which I if I told Zelda, now
I have to do it. Zelda, can I ask you
a question? Yeah, what is your favorite song from the nineties?
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So oh, I think you probably have an answer to this.
What's your favorite song from the nineties? You just did
your your School of Rock showcase was on nineties. Right,
Oh yeah, is there one of those songs that's your favorite?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Buddy Holly?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Is it from the nineties? It is?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Is it? It is Buddy Holly from by Weezer. Yeah,
Weezer's Buddy Holly is an excellent nineties you're saying you
just played that song. You're in the school of Rock program.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, she sang lead vocals on that song.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
You sang lead vocals on Buddy Holliday. Yeah, so cool.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
You you noticed she did lead vocals on Epics by
Faith No more.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
No, she did not. That's it was ever heard a
nine year Oh my, is there video? Is that available?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I think I have video? Yeah, I definitely have video
of it, and I'm happy to produce it.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
And you gotta drop the SoundCloud, drop the lake. You
were one of the coolest nine year olds I know.
I guess I have a nine year old as well.
You would be, you can't you and my You and
my son are the two coolest nine year olds around.
You sang lead vocals on Do You Like Epic? Is
that a hard song to sing?
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Well, I mean, when you hear it it's hard, but
when you actually like learn it, it's pretty easy.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Okay, she was excited.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
There's it's essentially a rap, and she was very excited
it is.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
That's yeah, it's so cool man, it's at it. Oh
my gosh, that's the neatest day I've ever heard.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I mean, all of it was just seeing children play
those songs, just completely.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Did someone play the piano part at the end? Oh yeah, Yeah,
that's the best part of the song for me, is
the piano part of the wait, did you do epic?
I didn't because it's eighty nine. It's one of the
songs that's not actually from the nineties. Oh wow, it barely,
isn't it barely? Isn't it? It was like popular in
(11:11):
ninety maybe let's say that's right, that's exactly right. It
peaked in nineteen ninety, but did not.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Wow, yeah, so did that was a nineties thing, though,
wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
You gotta go in there and tell them they messed up.
I'd be like, guys, here's the one problem with our
showcase that we did is that thatens technically from the eighties.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Oh so yeah, that's you gotta fact check the school,
you gotta you.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Gotta hit it, get hit with the facts. All right, Well, Zelda,
I think you got to go back in. Right. Do
you have anything else, any other question you want to
ask Rob or any other thing, anything you'd like to say,
you want to do that one? Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
How did you think of a name for your podcast?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
We were trying, We were trying to think of the
right number of songs to do, and ninety songs would
have made more sense. But I was it would have
made a lot more sense, right, But I was worried
that people wouldn't like this show and I would be
embarrassed if the name of the show was ninety songs.
(12:12):
They explained the ninetes, and then after like three episodes,
people like, this show is terrible, you need to stop.
And then I was the guy who got like who
got a show canceled with ninety in the title, right,
and so sixty but then thirty songs was too few songs,
and so sixty which is still an embarrassing amount of songs.
If I had been canceled after three songs, like but
(12:34):
sixty was between.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Sixty and ninety, I feel like the embarrassment would be
pretty right.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yes, mistakes were made in this in this thought process.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Okay, Zelda, great job and now you're going to go.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
It was great to me, U Zelda. You are my
youngest fan or a person who's ever listened to this podcast,
and I'm honored.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
It's very great to me.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Congratulations on the faith no more weezy thing. That's awesome.
Good luck to you.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Do you want to sign off?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
How would you sign off here? From this conversation? Bye? Bye?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Well that was delightful.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
I consider to be one of the most delightful people
that I know, so as is obvious, I think we
are huge fans of the show and huge fans of you.
And I shouldn't say this because I'm a podcaster, but
I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, and I
think your show I just don't like. I just I'm
very you know, I'm very busy multitask space and it's
(13:45):
a safe space for us, and yours is one that
I find to be consistently entertaining and educational and hilarious.
And just like I'm very charmed by you and I
listened to you. I'm like entering as a fan and
uh and an appreciator.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Of that's tremendously kind of you. It's all a facade.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So I mean, you're you and I must be close
in age.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
We are we are I'm forty five.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Oh I'm forty five also, so we're actually the exact
same age. All right, that's great. You said you think
you're gonna do one hundred and twenty episodes total of
this podcast. You're on what number? Now?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I am thinking about episode one oh five. I have
sixteen episodes remaining, you know that shows on a little
break right now. We'll return, I believe on October eleventh,
and we're going to go straight through. You know, so
the holidays accepted, et cetera. But like the last sixteen
are a block that we are thinking about now, and
(14:44):
it is vexing. This is a vexing document.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
To me, because there are too many songs that you
want to do.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
There are too many saws, and it's just it's not flowing.
Like I just there's like a harmony and like a
beauty that I really want to concoct right of this
Excel chart, and I just I haven't gotten there yet.
It's as I look at it, and it just it
doesn't look quite right.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I don't know if you ever have that feeling, but
I'm just I'm not sure exactly what I'm.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Doing, Like you're missing something or you just don't feel
like the order the flow is correct.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Both really, you know, it's it's it's we you know,
we have you know, the list of songs that we
probably are not going to do at this point is
very disturbing right to me because there's so much cool
stuff on here. But all of those are still technically possible.
But like, yeah, it's a combination of like, you know,
for every song that we add now you know, there
are five that de facto are being left off. Right.
(15:38):
This is the point I would get to previously where
I would then go to my to my friends and
masters at the Ringer and be like, can we please
do more episodes? They're like fine, all right, you know
it's and then like that's what we did when we
got close to sixty, That's what we did when we
got close to ninety, you know, and like they're not
going to let me extend again, Like I I probably
(15:59):
should bring a somewhat dignified conclusion, but it's not a
good feeling to try and orchestrate that, right.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
I feel like there is this kind of symmetry though,
with one hundred and twenty. I mean it immediately evokes
one hundred and twenty minutes from MTV, which of course
was I mean a very much a nineties product, and
like probably the place where so many many of the
songs that you've talked about were sort of not discovered
exactly a bit discovered by the masses or much much
(16:28):
larger audience.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Discovered by me. Certainly, Yeah, absolutely is huge for me.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So I think one twenty sounds right, does I mean,
what you were talking about, this idea that you know
went from sixty to ninety and now you have one
hundred and twenty. I had some idea in my head
when I when I started listening to it that like,
because you hadn't done pretty far into the show, you
hadn't done some songs that I thought were like really important.
I mean one, I think the one that stood out
with smells like teen Spirit, which, which, like I guess
(16:55):
I think from my money. I don't know if this
is a globally considered truth or not, but I feel
like it's probably the most important song from the nineties. Like,
I don't know if that's.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I agree with you, Yeah, to the extent that there's
a consensus. You know, if if rock, if guitar music,
et cetera, is a thing you're at all interested in,
I think that's a safe bad.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah. I guess I should say yeah in the rock space,
but also like more but also beyond rock into like pop,
because I think what was interesting about it, which is
it seems like nothing now, seems like no big deal,
but it was like a song that should not have
been as massively popular as it was, like to a
broad set of people, and yet it was like a
(17:41):
defining point. And that's early nine. That's like it came
out what ninety one, ninety he.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Came out in ninety one, you know. And I think people,
you know how they say, like a decade doesn't begin
like you know, on January first, nineteen ninety like culturally right,
I think a lot of people would fix the beginning
of the nineties, either so when it came out, which
I think was September ninety one, or the moment when
it kicked Michael Jackson off number one on the Billboard charts,
(18:07):
you know, as as you say, when it became pop
and no one when this song came out, I expected
it's ever become pop, like that's the moment when the
nineties begin.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Culturally, yes, I.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Mean it is insane to think about that, just as
conceptually knowing the band, you know where they came from
and who they were, surrounded by the idea that you
would that they're one of their songs would knock Michael
Jackson off of the from the you said number one spot, right,
m h.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I think it was the album? Yeah, yeah, I think
I think it was like the Kicked. I believe Dangerous
was the Michael Jackson album. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Well, you know that's you know, I'll say that it's
probably that's not his best work, so you know, they had.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
A little bit of an edge, that's true.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I want to ask about the way that you do
your shows. So first off, like, there are a lot
of your episodes and I do encourage anybody who's listening
to this to go and listen to to Rob show
because it's really fucking entertaining. But there are episodes where
you're like, I don't know, well, I do know thirty
minutes in or something, or forty minutes in and and
and often not always, but often it is you're sort
(19:13):
of telling a story about your life and your your youth.
I'm like, I thought this episode was about, you know,
play Bone Thugs and Harmony or I don't know if
you did both Thugs a harmonyone. But I haven't looked
in every episode, but but I'm like, I'm like, I
thought this was like I thought this was about Bone
Thugs in Harmony, but I have to look. I have
to check sometimes because I'm like, is he still is
that still one of the one I'm listening to? But
(19:34):
you do get to it. I mean, you you find
your way into the song and the reason and there's
often not often always rationale behind the story, but like,
here's what I want to know. Here's what I'm dying
to know. Because when we started doing this podcast, I
was like, you know, they were like, what podcast do
you like? And I was like, yours. I was like,
I think that's great, And a big part of what
I liked about it was you were just fucking talking,
(19:57):
you know. You were just like it's like it's like
I'm I'm not just saying I'm not saying it's like
low effort or anything. But I was like, you know,
I could talk really well, so if I could just
talk as much as possible, that would be my ideal podcast.
Do you write that shit or are you doing that
just from memory or from your you know, ability to speak?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Oh a billion percent, I write that shit. These things
are scripted down to the word and like almost really
inflection really yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Oh wow, Okay, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, it's just I just opened up the Google doc
and I'm one of I think this has always been
true of my writing. But I'm one of these people
who I reread the first paragraph as I'm writing the second, right, Like,
in the course of writing a piece, I end up
rereading it like fifty times, just because I started at
the beginning, and so that applied to this. And so
now I'm sort of talking out loud and like just
(20:53):
the delivery. You know, I didn't start this show thinking
that it was going to be and I still don't
really think of it as a performance, right, Like I'm
not an actor, you know, Like monologue is probably accurate,
but always felt a little like pretentious to me. But like, right,
it's it's just it's always the way I've done it.
But no, absolutely, I cannot add lib at all, at all,
(21:14):
at all. Yeah, So this is these are just eight
thousand or more word Google docs that I am reading
verbatim and trying not to have it sound like that.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, I should have expected the answer that you were
writing them. But I think that there's something about the
way that you present these narratives that feels I mean,
maybe it's the way you're writing them, obviously, it's just
like this kind of feels like a stream of consciousness,
like someone's just going through this, like you know this obviously.
Obviously there are many moments that are that have to
(21:46):
be like you know, you've got these sort of where
you where you throw to things right, So those I
always assumed were like, you know, planned in some way,
But the rest of it always feels very like freeform
to me, and to the point where I guess what
I'm I guess what's so interesting about it is you
get kind of lost in the story so much that
you you sort of like are like, is that you know,
are we heading? We heading to the right place? Yeah? Now,
in retrospect, I feel stupid for maybe not saying like, oh,
(22:09):
obviously these are written. I don't know, it feels unique
to me. Again, I don't listen to every podcast, but
what's your longest sort of you know, lead up to
do you do you have like a record holder, you know,
for like the longest lead up to the to what
you mentioned the song? Do you know?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
It's a good question I have like an I have
like a vague sense of it, and certainly like it's
it's getting worse. That problem is getting worse. Like the
longest episode of this show ever, like from a from
a script perspective at least, is Pantera. I don't know
how that happened. I just talked about Pantera forever for
(22:45):
ten thousand words, but I don't know what happened. But
they're cool, They're great, but like I would not have
predicted that, Like the Nirvana show, I think to Facto
because Courtney Love was on it and spoke herself for
about two hours. Okay, so yes, I should be keeping
track of exactly when, Like okay, so a script is
like eight thousand words. I feel like I've several times
(23:09):
recently have gotten to like the three thousand or four
thousand word mark and I'm still not out. My name
is Rob Arvilla, and this is like and I'm like,
oh no, like what is happening? Right? And so let
me just here. I've got this arguous thing.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah, here we go.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I'll just get to day if I can. Trying to
see if I can eyeball it and say the Fugazi episode,
I talked about pee Wee Herman to start off, like
because he had passed, and I was like weirdly affected
by that. Like I talked about pee Wee Herman at
sort of unnecessary length, fade into you. The Mazzie Star episode,
I ended up talking about this band Low from Minnesota,
(23:46):
the slowcore band for a great deal of time, Daft Punk.
I was, I don't remember what I was talking about it.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Oh, the daft Punk episode. It's around the world, right,
I think I just listened Repetition, Yeah, repetition and you
Yeah that was that Actually was one of the episodes
I think where I was like, what's is this about
daft punk or not? You know, but no in a
good way.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I think my editor had the same question, and maybe
not as much in a good way in his sense
He's like, you know, there's not a lot of deaf punk.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Yeah no, but but the content, Yeah you're talking about
you You're talking about dance music. I mean I used
to make dance music, like and DJ for a living.
In the actually in the nineties and early two thousands.
So so yeah, you're talking about and you go into
like fat boy Slim and shit like that, and yeah,
I believe you touch on like all of the kind
of weird popular techno music that existed, but all written
(24:40):
all on purpose, not just randomly off the off the
off the day.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
On purpose. Yeah, it's like it's all on purpose.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
But you're writing. You have written a book. You're writing
a book. It's coming out. Is it out?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
No, it's coming out November.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
November, just in time for your holiday shopping. What was
the date, right?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
You know the date November Tuesday, November fourteen.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Great, that's right before Black Friday. I'm saying, perfect and
perfect for the music lover in your life, for the dads.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And nine year olds in your life.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
That's right. So how does the book? How does this format?
Is it just a collection of the essays that you
have written? Did you just copy paste into the book
format and then send it off to the printer or
you know, how does this turn into a book? I
guess's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
That was the plan until I realized that a book
of that size would be literally six hundred thousand words.
That would be the grand total if I just copied really,
and I was informed that that was too long, And
so what I did instead is I reread all the
scripts and I tried to sort of concoct like the
(25:44):
greatest hits sort of you know, sections from those songs
from those scripts, and tried to combine the songs in
interesting ways, right like sellouts for example, this concept of
selling out very popular in the nineties, right. You know,
you think about Green Day for doing it, you think
about Fugazi for not doing it, but you also think
(26:05):
about like ice Cube and coulioh having these huge crossover
hits in the suburbs, like the white kids in the suburbs,
you know, and they're sort of openly grappling with what
it means, you know, to have all these people now
listening to them who aren't from where they're from and
like don't know what it's like where they're from, you know,
that kind of thing. So just trying to find different
(26:27):
ways of attacking, you know, like the women in Rock question,
you know, and just the different ways that someone like
Shinead O'Connor versus Fiona Apple versus like TLC even sort
of dealt with that, and so just trying to group
these songs and these artists in these micro eras within
the nineties just in new ways and just get weird
(26:50):
songs bouncing off one another, you know, get some cool
art in there. I'm really psyched about the artists that
I've got. Tara Jacobe. I worked with her at Gawker Media.
She worked for Jezebel, dead Spin Walker back in the day,
and she's wonderful artist, and I'd like the best part
of the book is the cover and like her illustrations
for each chapter. So yeah, it's it's sort of it
(27:10):
was imagined as a companion to the book, and there's
you know, like there are riffs from the show that
are fairly verbatim in the book and just sort of adjusted.
You know, it's like read okay in a book, but
there's a lot of new material too, and it's all
sort of recombined in a way that hopefully gets some
cool sort of alchemy going, you know, between songs that
(27:33):
you wouldn't necessarily put together.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Right, No, I mean that sounds great actually, Like I
like the idea, the narrative structure of finding those threads
between these songs is actually interesting because maybe I'm wrong,
and you'll tell me you've got the celaborate plan. Like
it doesn't feel like you're necessarily rolling these out in
a very like this. I don't want this to sound insulting,
but it doesn't, you know, it's fairly I don't say,
(27:55):
I don't know. Schizophrenic is not the right word. But
there's like, you know, it's like it's not like, no,
you do a bit. I think it might be like
you do a block of like you know, one hit,
you know, one hit like Chumba one, but like you
didn't do a block of like weird one hit wonder songs,
and then you didn't do a block of like grunge.
You got like sounds like teen Spirit and then shoot
by Saltan Peppa. You know, like it's not like Ei
(28:16):
there was a connective tissue between those two songs as
far as as far as I can.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Tell, Delightful Chaos.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yes, I think the idea that you would take some
of this stuff and find a link between those things
is quite interesting, and so that feels like a reason
for the book to exist. I probably will buy the
book for somebody for the holidays.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
I would be very kind of you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Might maybe Zelda can Zelda read the book? Is it
going to be full of swear words? Are there gonna
be a lot of It's gonna be a lot of
nasty stuff in there.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
There's a goodly amount of nasty stuff. Yeah. Yeah, parental
discretion is advised. Unfortunately, that was I didn't think. I
didn't think that through. You didn't.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
You didn't consider that nine year olds might want to
read the book.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
What I will do for you and for her is
I will take a copy here, and I will just
mark out every objectionable phrase, you know, and I'll mail
that on to her. Just redact.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
You're gonna you're gonna personally redact in.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
My own book exactly what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I appreciate that, and I assume you'll offer that as
a service to anybody who needs a clean version.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
You should do the explicit language version and then the
clean version, which would be I think very reflective of
the parental advisory, you know. Label The show has a
voracious sort of appetite for all of the songs in
(29:40):
the nineties, Like I feel like it doesn't restrain itself
to like a genre, right, And that's great, But like
when you were living through the nineties, were you more
restrained to a genre, were you more focused on one track?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
I'd like to say that I was omnivorous in that way.
But I think I try to own up to being
like an alt rock and teenager, right right, Like, I
don't think there's any question or any point in denying that.
Like my foundation, you know, my top five bands when
I was seventeen years old, most likely Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins,
(30:17):
Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead. They might be giants, you know,
and so like that's that's a fairly narrow band of experience.
So I do think I start from a foundation of
alternative rock. And so when you're talking about Achy Breaky
Hearts for example, or Selena, you know, are like, I
(30:37):
don't have the personal like I've listened to this record
six hundred times in my bedroom sort of experience. And
I try to be honest about that. But I do
think that like in terms of pop radio, you know,
in terms of just driving around listening to pop radio,
like listening watching MTV constantly, you know, like hanging out
(30:57):
with my friends, you know, and whatever they were into.
I think that I got, you know, that's helped fill
into the gaps to some degree, right, you know, I
can talk about rap music, pop music, country music, you know,
with some degree of personal experience, but it's not quite
the same. Like this is my soul, you know, made
(31:18):
manifest in arts, you know, the way that the alternative
rock of the nineties was, And I just I try
to be honest about that, you know, And I try
to be honest about, you know, the places where I am,
perhaps for the first time, doing the deep dive that
I didn't do when I was fifteen, and I certainly
respect you know, like Tori Amos for example, right, Like
(31:39):
she's someone who I always love hearing her on the radio,
always really wanted to go see her play. You know,
I regret not seeing her live in the nineties, but
I wasn't like a super fan of hers, you know.
And then like two years ago, I wake up and
suddenly I want to listen to Tori Amos for a week,
you know, to the exclusion. And I do, and I
(32:00):
understand that that's to listen to her that deeply for
the first time as a forty year old man is
a very different experience, right than as a sixteen year
old girl especially, and so I just try to be
honest about that, you know, when I'm coming when with
a lot of personal baggage and when I'm not necessarily.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Right well, but also I mean the nineties by by
the very function of how you could discover and purchase
and enjoy music. I mean, I think your show has
an omnivorous you know, bent to it in the sense that,
like we're talking about it's not just focused on like
the you know, the alt rock shit that you liked
when you were a teenager or whatever, but partially, you know,
(32:43):
it's it's even possible to have a thing like that
because we now live in an era where the barrier
to all art or all music, let's just say, is
non existent. Like we lived in a time when and
tell me, if this was an experience that you share,
it must have been where you might have heard a
song or somebody played you something and you're like, that's cool,
(33:05):
what is that? And they're like, oh, it's this band,
and you were like, I want to hear more of it.
So you had to go to like a record store,
and I mean you could go to one in the
mall obviously, and find that band's album a lot, right, Like, Like,
I saw the movie Killer Clowns from Outer Space. I'm
not sure if you're familiar with it.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
HBO, My friend, I've watched that movie on HbA and
it's a bad movie.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
It has a song by the Dickies in it. I'm
not sure if you're familiar with the song. It's the
song is called Killer Clowns from Outer Space. Do you
know the Do you know the tune? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Yeah, it's kind of Dickies. That's that's the Dickies.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
That's the Dickies. Wow. So the thing is I had
never fucking heard of the Dickies. Yeah, And I was like, ooh,
Like I like the song because I'm like thirteen and
dumb or whatever, and it's it's the song is literally
about the movie about Killer Clowns from Outer Space. I
like it. By the way, I love a song that's
about a movie. It doesn't happen that often, especially not anymore.
(34:01):
But like when somebody's written a song for like what's
happening in the movie, I think is a really special
and amazing thing or about what has happened in the movie,
which I think is incredible, Like like what is the
Bobby Brown song from Ghostbusters too, which.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
All right, yeah, I love that song.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
It's so good, like he he but he raps.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
People, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Like you don't. You don't hear a lot of raps
about Vigo in recent in a recent era of music.
It is a drag. But but I was like, so
I like it was like, Oh, the Dickeys, they're interesting.
I think I actually ordered like an EP that that
song was on at like something like a a Sam
Goodie or whatever, and I waited for it to come
in and then I was like and then I like,
then I heard some other Dickeys, So I had never
(34:44):
heard of the Dickies before. But the but the other
version was that you know, you would go to a
place that was and I don't know if you had
this experience. I think you got must have, and you
probably talked about it and I'm just misremembering or not remembering,
but you know, you go to like one of these
stories that sold like really good ship, where like there
were a bunch of record or working there, and he
was like an incredibly intimidating experience if you like went
(35:04):
in and you're like you had heard of Slint or
something and you're like wanted to find out more about them,
and you know, you had to confront some guy who
thought you were a shithead, who didn't even want to
tell you because that's his thing and not yours. You know,
so our barrier was very high. So it's like sort
of understandable. I'm working my way back to the question,
which is which is I guess to my point about
the question about the show being omnivorous, but you maybe
(35:27):
not beginning in your sort of musical life like that,
but it was much harder, Like it was not a
thing right in the nineties that you would be. It
was very rare for a person to be have access
to and understand like a wide variety of music. Does
that seem like a fair assessment or am I just
is that just people from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
No, that's just Pittsburgh's very Pittsburgh specifically. Absolutely, I agree
with you, because the thing is like, Okay, so I
hear Undone the Sweater song by Weezer on the radio,
and I try and tape that song off the radio
and take I had just sitting there listening to the
radio with my hand hovering over the record button, like
you're reported onto a blank tape. But to own that song,
(36:08):
I got to buy the Weezer record for twenty dollars
and what if it's bad? Right, Like this is the
eternal conundrum. And I try and limit the number of
times that I do this rant on the show, but
I have done this rant on the show five to
seven times, probably over the course of one hundred plus episodes.
Now where it's like you go, as you say to
(36:28):
good Sam Goodie or Camelot Music, and you have this
wall of CDs and you have twenty dollars in your
pocket and you have to pick one, right, you have
to pick one, and it has to be good. And
you're gonna listen to that record two hundred times because
you are going to extract the value from it. You're
gonna get your money's worth, right, And it's like, do
I risk it on cakes, fashion Nuggets? Do I risk
(36:52):
it like Teenage Fan Club's Bandwagon ass? Do I risk
it on Pablo Honey?
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Right?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Right? Because I really like Creep And so it's extremely limiting,
Like I.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Know, it's nuts to think about that. It's like like
like I remember I heard like an inspiral carpet song
on one hundred and twenty minutes, and I was like,
this is cool. And then like, you know, I think
I kind of almost remember this experience of going to
the record store and looking at the record and going like,
you know, it was probably a CD at this time,
but still they were like twenty bucks or something. They
weren't cheat, you know, they weren't And I was like,
(37:24):
I don't know, like what's on here? And often like
you'd buy some shit, you'd buy a record and it
would suck right. All the rest of the songs would
just blow, like you had one song and twelve others
that were completely not interesting at all to you. But
jumping off of the thing that I was asking about,
like about the show being omnivorous, but you maybe not,
like those episodes that you're doing that are not about
(37:44):
something that you kind of grew up with. I mean
you already said right like you don't obviously you can't
tell the story around it the same way because it's
a different story for you. But are there other people
when you're writing those episodes that you're collaborating with? I mean,
are you are you talking to other people about that
moment for that particular genre or that artist or whatever,
or is it just you just researching and kind of
putting it into into into a narrative.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, I'm just trying to read as widely as I can.
You know. Every episode starts, you know, with my endless monologue,
and then I talked to a guest, right right, and
we just have a you know, like a twenty minute conversation.
And the idea there is that the guest has a
completely different perspective, you know, if it's not something that
I grew up, you know, with a mind meld and
a smashing pumpkin sense, like I try and talk to
(38:26):
someone who did right right, you know, and just and
and so in that sense, I try and talk to
somebody with a more personal connection to whatever I'm talking about.
But if it's something like say like low stell real
like the Mocherina, right, like the Macharena is something I
know as like a cultural force or like a scourge
or whatever, you know, but I can't say that I'm
(38:47):
familiar with like where the Mockerena came from, and like
the scene that it grew out of, and like what
those guys were doing before the mocharina blew up et cetera,
et cetera. So I'm reading books, right, and I'm just
going back and reading articles from that time, and it's
more of a research thing, I guess, and then I
just try and bring in, you know, like I have
plenty of experience like a junior high dances, you know,
(39:08):
like watching people do the macarena and like having this
mixture of like, I hate this song. I wish I
was out there having fun dancing to this song, like
that very complex, right, series of emotions that you have
interested and you're in an eighth grade after school junior
high dance. But yeah, I just it's not necessarily that
I talk to somebody to sort of manufacture that personal connection.
(39:31):
But like the show hopefully does involve me interviewing somebody
after I've done my bit about their more personal story
relating to the song.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
I don't know. Your audience must be made up of
people like our age, right, I mean there must be
a lot of sorry, it's not all it's not sorry,
it's not all people our age. But I'm just like
it's sort of like, you know, I mean, the appetite
for nostalgia is high, and I feel like there's something
about this this era and maybe this is just the
(40:01):
gen X guy. I'm just like it seemed really important,
and like maybe every decade seems really important. But when
I listened to the show, I'm like, oh, yeah, because
a lot of times you're talking about politics or you're
talking about culture, you know, outside of music or societal
things that we're shifting. And do the nineties actually stand
out as a outsized moment in cultural sort of history
(40:24):
or is that just because I'm old now and I
lived through it.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
I do think that both things can be true. I
think it is absolutely true that the music that you
loved when you were a teenager is the greatest music
you'll ever hear. I do think the emotional connection that
you form with that music it's it's it's the music
you love the most. It's the most important music to you,
(40:49):
you know. And so in that sense, it is sort
of a gen X thing, right, Like we think the
nineties are the best because we were teenagers in the
nineties and that's the end of it, you know. And
like if you were a teenager in the sixties, if
you were a teenager in the twenty tens, then that's
the most important music to you. And everything else sucks,
Like everything else is just old or it's new fangled
and it's not as good. I do think that the nineties.
(41:12):
You know, when we started this show, we were just like,
let's do a show that's like songs. Every episode is
about a song, you know, like what is a framing
that works here? And the nineties jumped out immediately, Like
I guess my standard stick is like it's far enough
that it's the past, but it's recent enough that it's
still imprinting on the present, you know, like you can
(41:34):
still hear, see, feel a lot of nineties energy, you know,
in the culture being made today, Like it's it's present
tense enough, right, but it also feels like a distinct
period of time to possibly a greater degree than the
aughts do. Like that's the way it feels for me.
And I try and filter out again the fact that
(41:55):
I was a teenager, Like I try it and acknowledge that,
like the nineties are always going to be the ultimate
for me. But is there something about this decade? Is
there something about the pre internets, the immediate pre Internet
of this decade that makes it distinct? Right? You know,
this is the last decade that will not be dominated
(42:16):
by the Internet the way you know, as you're saying
this whole thing, we're saying with the record stores and
buying one CD for twenty bucks, like this is the
end of the line for that shit, right right, And
that matters, And that makes the two thousands as a
block feel completely different from a musical perspective, because that's Mapster.
You can listen to everything and you can be omnivorous
(42:38):
on a budget now in a way that you just
couldn't in the nineties. So it's it's but I think
both things are true. I think there is an undeniable
bias that you and I both have for this decade.
And when we say, oh, it's the greatest day, like
music will never get better than this's like we're being
old men, undeniably. But I do think that there are
(42:59):
actual objective aspects of the nineties and where it falls
and the scope of human history that make it distinct
and make it like remarkable, as like a block of time,
you know, with qualities that were never repeated before or since.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah, I mean the framing of that is perfect. You're
very good at this. You should do this professionally. That's
my suggestion. You should do podcasting as a profession. I
think it could be very lucrative for you. I know,
it's funny you said, like, you know, we think that
like music in the nineties is the best music. I
don't know that. I actually mean this is not a
knock on anyone who does. I don't know that I do.
(43:35):
But I was a huge nerd in the nineties and
and my like music exposure was really weird, and I
you know, I think like it was. It was definitely
a huge part of my life because part of it
was like me, I used to you know, make money
doing it and used to you know, that was like
a focal point of of many years of my life.
But I had things that were going on, like like
the Internet matter to me in the nineties more than
(43:56):
music did. Like I was a huge fucking nerd, and
where my attention was, folks, was like understanding what this
new thing was called the Internet, which like you know,
I was online fairly young, like before the internet was
even the Internet. But it's interesting because like this was,
like music for you is not a hobby, right, I mean,
you became a man who writes about music and now
(44:19):
has podcasts about music. It's like it's bigger than that
for you.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Nah, this was my life pretty immediately. I have to
say I was. I did dial up onto the internet,
you know, late in the nineties, but I was not
a man of the Internet in the nineties. No, it
was pretty evident to me by the time I was
in high school that I wanted to be a rock critic, right,
I wanted to write for Rolling Stone, you know. It
was clear to me that music was going to be
(44:45):
one of the most important things in my life from
when I was like six years old, right, you know,
from when I became ubsessed with MTV or whatever. And so, No,
I do think that I am printed with music in
a really intense and unnecessary way from the very beginning,
and it was sort of the prism through which I
saw and heard and felt everything.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Absolutely, Yeah, I mean, and I think that comes through
in the show, and I think that's what makes it
still compelling to listen to. I mean, but we should
say the show is at least going to one hundred
and twenty episodes, correct.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yeah, well we'll stop there.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
But yeah, you're sure you're going to stop a one
hundred and twenty I'm I'm pretty sure like what if,
like you get to twenty and then you remember this
one song that was super important that you didn't get to.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Oh yeah, Robo Humpin' slow More, Babe, I gotta do that. Yeah,
it's just as a possibility.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
It could it could happen. So looking through the list,
and I have thought about this, like there are songs
that aren't the obvious song or aren't the one that
you know which is good. But I think it like
opens up the question in my mind is like it
will there be that obvious one that that you feel like,
oh shit, why didn't I do you know X? I'm
thinking of like Pearl Jam, like not that the song
(46:01):
that you chose is not perfect.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Yeah, Pearl Dam was one. Yeah, It's like I tried
to you know, I did Yellow Lead better, but I
tried to talk about what like Jeremy even Flow like Daughter,
Like I if I'm doing an episode on an artist
that has like a huge catalog, like I try and
get to everything that I can, and sometimes you know,
it's in the Nervada episode for example, like I thought
(46:23):
about doing Where did You Sleep Last Night? You know,
the unplugged version? Yeah, you know, but then in the
end it just felt obnoxious not to lead with smells
like Teen Spirit.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
It'd be fucking crazy. Honestly, I thought, for sure, well
when you when you didn't do it for so long,
I was like, okay, so this must be he's going
to end the series.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
That's what I thought forever, right, Yes, that was the plan.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Okay, because it seemed obvious to me, like to do
it that way, like, and I'm like, that's why, because
I'm like, he must have done smells like Teen Spirit
and it wasn't there, And you're like, okay, well that's weird. Yeah, yeah, No,
I mean I think it would have been. I think
people would have been in rage, to be honest, maybe
I don't know if people get it raged about your show,
but like you know, like they're on the internet, so
you're definitely going to get the uh you know. I think, like, yeah,
(47:07):
would have been bizarre at least to ignore smells like
Teen Spirit for you know, actually kind of is kind
of a record store guy move. When you think about it,
to do something like that, it's sort of like you're like, oh,
you get you like smells like teen Spirit. That's actually
not really their best song.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
I've into their earlier stuff, you know, which is not
even nineties. But screw you guys. Yeah exactly, I mean Sliver, Yeah,
I mean you have the you have.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
You definitely have the knowledge of a record store guy.
I don't know that. I think based on how much
you want to share the knowledge, you don't have the
personality of a record store guy. So that's very important.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
That's that's very kind of you to say.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
On that nice moment. So sixty Songs That Explain the
Nineties comes out November fourteenth.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
November fourteenth, and.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Rob, thank you for coming on. And uh, I would
love to have you back when you when you have
decided on your next decade, you're going to have to
come back and explain.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
I would love to come back. I would I would
like to talk to Zelda again when I come back.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Well, I could almost guarantee that will happen because she'll
be very excited to explore another another decade of music.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
You could book it.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
We'll do that, Rob, thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Thanks to.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Well. That is our show for this week, and what
a show. I gotta say. I feel like I maybe
he was a little bit of like a fanboy, maybe
too much in parts of then not really sure, but uh,
you know, it's fine. I'm going to own it. I'm
gonna own it. I'm gonna own my fan positioning that
I may have stepped into during the show, and you know,
and I'm not ashamed. I think it's great to like
(48:43):
something and I don't have any I don't have any
qualms about owning it completely. Anyhow, that is our show
this week. We'll be back next week with more of
what future, and as always, I wish you and your
family the very best. Ye
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