The Most Important Thing In the World

A new band is playing at The Sphere in Vegas. 

Episode Transcript

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We're listening to the Downbeat on ninetyseven one The Freak. It's your friendly

(00:13):
neighborhood Downbeat at six thirty seven inthe morning. We are sixty ten every
morning Monday through Friday. Ray herein ninety seven one The Freak, Spin
and Skin in the middays speak Easyin the afternoons normally three headed monster here
with me, Danny, and KevinTurner. Kevin's on vacation, so it's
just myself, Mike'sroyd, Danny Baylis, JJ Jackson this morning, didn't use

(00:36):
Morning News coming up at eight thirtySports at seven, like half an hour
from now. I think we're gonnatalk about that dude who was banned for
life from the NBA and is atthe tip of the iceberg for gambling and
sports and a lot of crap goingon. Also, we'll discuss the bets
that we're gonna make on the Mavericksbecause I'm heading to a magical land this

(00:58):
afternoon, which we'll get into justa second or two. I need to
send you some money soon. Yeahyou do. Yeah, if you want
to make money, I do.I do. But as stated, we
have no Kevin today, and Iknow our listeners are trying to fill that
void. We had Kevin Gray onyesterday and we're going to have at least
one Kevin on per day. It'sa iHeartMedia policy, and I guess we

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claim to have one on the phoneright now. Hello caller, you're live
on the radio and Dallas Fort Worth. Who's this Hi? This is Kevin
Costner. Oh my god, WellKevin, Hi, Kevin Costner, How
are you doing well? Boys?How are you all doing good? What's
happening? What can we do foryou today? Well? I just wanted

(01:44):
to call in one to meet yourquote of Kevin's Yes, check two.
I'm trying to get on to sevenKevins. Oh the upcoming feature film from
Serroy Pictures. Yeah, you knowwith with yellow Stone out. I'm actually
on my way to work in alumberyard Durant. His money's kind of tied

(02:06):
right now, so help me out. Well, if you're working at a
lumberyard and Durant, you must havereally squandered away your life's work. Well
that ex wife and her boy toyliving out fact taking mostly. Hey,
we currently do have Kevin Bacon linedup along with Kevin Klein, the Great
Kevin Pollock Kevin. Do you haveKevin from the office. We don't,

(02:30):
but we don't feel like that's areal Kevin. We do have Kevin James
and Kevin Smith is set to direct. I was going to try to book
Kevin debrou from Quiet Riot, butI realized he'd died many years ago.
I can take that spot, allright, I can take that. Thank
ad. And Kevin Costner would bea big plus for us, between you
and Kevin Hart. And to behonest, he's on all right. Well,

(02:57):
thank you, Kevin Costner. Thanksfor listening to our program regularly.
Yeah, we appreciate the talkbacks.You listen on the on the iHeartRadio app
as well. Maybe we'll hear fromhim again at ninem thirty. Maybe I
just gotta say, Danny, Yeah, Kevin, that Beans song you did.
That's a slapper man, what hedoes. He's done one hundred oh

(03:17):
Beans. It is a beautiful song. Thank you. It's one that I'm
quite proud of. Beans. Ilove it. Okay, it's actually my
alarm to wake up beans. God. All right, mister Kossner, thank
you, good job, good luckacting today. Have a great day,
boys, all right, move thatlumber, Kevin, good look at the
lumberyard. There he goes. Thatdude's a nut. He's reminded us too

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why that started, and I've forgottenagain. Kevin Kossner. Hey guysh uh,
time for the most important thing inthe world. Wake up your little

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sleepy head. It's time to getyour stupid ass out of bed. About
the most important thing in the mostimportant thing in a lot of textures coming

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in. That's good. What sayswhen you get home, your mom's gonna
have your head set on playing Callof Duty. She's got diverted, hit
the wrong button, and she's justsmoking kids yelling into the mic. Come
back like Jesus want. I wouldlove that. If you do want to
participate in the nine o'clock segment,it's ask the downbeat, ask whatever you
want. Everything is on the table, and we got some We've got a

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couple that we probably can't answer.But yeah, man, I think your
mom would be more inclined to playthat pirate game, though, boy,
I don't know that's as far assimplicity called. I mean, she would
die instantly in call of duty everysecond, but she wouldn't get off the
docks and see a beeves. Shewouldn't have any chance at Booty on the
High Seas. You should download yourmom of an age appropriate friendly game for

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her. I think you can kindof like pac Man, right, sure,
probably handle that. Yeah, notSuper Mario. M But she hated
Super Mario because we used to,you know, when we first got the
Nintendo, because it's noisy. Ithink we were just obsessed with it.
It was like the very genesis ofkids staring at their TV with a little
controller in their hands, you know, and you're looking at and your parents

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looking at them and not understanding it. Hell to this day, I think
parents are frustrated with at least rightnow. Now we're meshing parents who play
and kids who play, but thereare a ton of parents still it would
look at their kids just wasting timeplaying games, which I'm not. I
don't really even here to argue againstthem, and I don't know that it's
productive, but I love it.Man. I got out of the video

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game game as a kid, likepretty much out of high school. Never
really went back to it until lateron with the PS one, and I
just missed the Donkey Kong, SuperMario Nintendo phenomenon that was outright Yeah,
basically Nintendo dropped pretty much. Italigned perfectly. I remember I was in

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I think fifth grade and Christov DeFalcois a badass name. He was the
first one to get a Nintendo.Yeah, you have it in your house.
I mean that math checks out,you know, for me, because
when you were fifth grade, youwere ten, and I would have been
eighteen eighty six. Yeah, Iwould have been eighteen and leaving high school

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and it hit just as I left. That's crazy. And then yeah,
for my birthday, I got aNintendo. And boy, you never seen
someone quicker get to get something setup. And I think he did it.
Come with Duck Hunt too. Ithink he came with Duck Hunt and
the little Gun. I don't knowif that was in the original, but
yeah, man, we all attackedthat thing. I've said it before,
but there's one day my brother wasplaying Super Mario and got so mad.

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He was in my room too,on old as TV. You know,
he got so mad and he diedand he just and hawked a loogie on
the screen, your brother, andwalked out of my room. I think
he got banned. I think Billbanned him for a couple of weeks.
I'll never met an idiot. Ohseriously, someonelike cash. Well this is

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what I get it. Well,we're still I was shocked when my mom
got me and I guess for mylittle sister too, an Atari twenty six
hundred because we were super ass poor, so that was kind of a big
big box or a big ticket luxuryitem. And when we got that,

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I was what the hell? Andon granted, we didn't get any games.
It was just the console and youhad the one game that it came
with, and it wasn't even anAtari. It was like the Sears Atari
that they so at aarready made thetwenty six hundred, but they would also

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license it through the Sears Christmas Catalog, so it wouldn't say Atari. It
was rebranded, but it was theexact same system. They just put like
a different logo and different name ofit, and it was like the Sears
Game Center or something like that.Really yeah, and the game that I'm

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gonna make get these mixed up.The game that the twenty six hundred came
with from Atari, I think itwas called either Combat or Tankah and it
was just two tanks and they wouldjust fire a blip at each other.
Was Combat was okay, if there'san equivalent named Tang. Yes, the
game that they came with the consolefrom the Sears catalog was called Tank,

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and I remember not liking combats sucked. Yeah, it was hard and it
sucked and it didn't do anything,but it's all you had, no you
know, it was just kind ofa glorified version of Pong. Yeah,
basically the same principle. Did youever have uh in this maybe because uh
we had Pitfall? You know,oh, dude, pitfall was great?

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Not there yet? This is apitfall was awesome. Did you ever have
Kaboom? I don't remember Kaboom,you know had the regular joystick. Then
there's another one with a little knobon it. Yeah, that was the
little paddle or like just a rotatingYeah, that's the one you would play
like your Pong type games on oruh Tetra type games. Yeah, and
Breakout, yeah, exact big one. But Kaboom was drop bombs and you

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were like a bucket of water andyou had to like catch the bomb before
they hit. Dude, that wasbefore it's time because that was high speed
and accurate and you were flying aroundthose board. Yeah that was fun,
but that kind of gave me moreincentive to work and make money so I
could afford my own cartridges. Andthen it was Activision that was the you

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know, because you had your secondarymarket of developers that would make games that
were compatible with the twenty six hundred. It wasn't you weren't just limited to
Atari's roster, and Activision was this. They were the ones that made Pitfall.
They took their technology, took thateight bit or sixteen bit was up
a big level. Because Pitfall feltcompared to Combat or any of those first

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level basic games. Pitfall was likethese wearing a hat. I'm on the
alligator and you're grown down into thepit. The alligator just turn upside down.
If you heard him, you hadto jump on his head and his
mouth was closed as basically Indiana Jones, right, yeah, pretty much we
playing those games. Imagine kids.I'm sure that you can probably go on

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YouTube and watch kids playing our firstgames. You can actually buy what is
just an Atari twenty six hundred controllerand it's got a USB or an HDMI
or whatever plug. Yeah, youplug that into your TV and just in
the controller and play its ever likethirty thousand games in it that are all
whatever whatever was made for Atari twentysix hundred. Yeah, and you can

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just sit there and play them allday. I had one, was bored
with it after like three days.Not interested, not interested anyway, I'm
sure you had something more important thanthat. It's far less important, and
we don't need to hit the open. But the most important thing in the
world is I mean, all thetalk we did of the Sphere in Las
Vegas getting completed and finally opening upand you two having this incredible run there,
and tonight is the second band everto set foot in the Sphere and

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melt faces and rock and it isa band called Fish. Very polarizing band,
I think, or I guess mostpeople are just indifferent and poke fun
at a band like Fish that theydon't like are enjoy and I don't care.
That's fine. I am a massivefan of the band Fish. I
bet that most people that make funof Fish or say that they hate them
have never heard them. Yeah,yeah, and they just think they're they're

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grateful, dead and they whatever.I don't really care. And frankly,
the prices are for they're playing tonight, They're playing Thursday, Friday, Saturday
and Sunday. And I am ona plane this afternoon, right around one
o'clock, and I'm going to Vegas. I'm going to the Friday night show
and the Saturday night Saturday Night showat the Sphere to see Fish. Look

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fish guy, you know. AndI don't feel like I'm a stereotypical fish
dude. I mean it's smelly wookiehippies, which is not the case.
I mean a few blue eyed whitedevils. Half the people that in the
Sphere are going to be lawyers anddoctors. Fish fans were always smart,
and they got older, and theygot wealthy, and they now still love
to go see fish. Can youtell me this? How many bands?

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I mean the tickets are over athousand bucks each every day. That's way
more than we're for you too.Maybe not for opening night, but I
mean how many? How I abnormal? Is that over a thousand? I
mean I'm talking getting the building price. Now. Yeah, the Sphere has
a couple obstructed seats, which Ididn't know, But if you're in section
one hundred towards the back, youwill be under Section two hundred, thereby

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impeding your view of the sphere.It renders the upper part of the sphere
pretty much useless to you. Sothose are seven eight hundred bucks. Yeah,
but if you want to get anydecent seat, it's twelve hundred bucks.
Best seats in the house are approachingtwo thousand dollars, and I just
as a Fish fan, we don'twant anyone else to get on board,
you know, I don't think you'regonna but we don't want these ticket prices

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to go up anymore. But ishow abnormal is that? I mean in
this day and age, it's fora band that is as popular, a
live band that's as popular as theyare, that's probably that's probably not a
bad price. Because I remember seeingMcCartney for the first time ever and I

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think it was was it American Airlines? It must have been, And just
to get in the door there you'relooking at three you were looking at three
hundred and fifty dollars, and thatwas probably twenty years ago. So with
inflation and everything, for a bigname act that that is a top level
touring band, I guarantee you thatif McCartney came and did a little short

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residency at the Sphere, you couldstart at one thousand dollars. You think
so at least? Yeah, Yeah, I mean, for a band that
most people listening wouldn't go out totheir backyard and see you know what I
mean. We're not talking about PaulMcCartney on the public scale of musician quality,

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but as far as touring acts,they're always at the top fishes as
far as income and how hard theywork, and they're row dogs and they
and people love them. They havediehard loyal fans that, yeah, well,
that have a disposable income, youknow. So if you went and
sell pal McCartney, you'd sit there, you'd enjoy it, you might get
up, you might dance a littlebit. But this is going to be

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whatever, seventeen thousand whatever. Thecapacity is people standing, dancing, partying,
having a blast together. And that'sone of the coolest things about a
fish show. So I'm going toFriday and Saturday night show. So I'm
psyched, and it's four nights thesphere. Because the tickets sold so quickly,
they asked them to do four morenights, like do you want to
do the next weekend? And theydebated it and they're like, look,
we have two options. We caneither do the same four shows that we're

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doing, you know, over thenext four nights, do them again the
next week, or because they wantevery one of these shows to be completely
unique. They're not going to repeatone song. The visuals are going to
be all completely different. And theydecline. They're like, we don't want
to dilute what we're doing in thesefour days. Yeah, because they have
wild s planned over the next fourdays. The Fish shows now are experiences.

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I mean they've done at MSG.They just they just did a fleet
of clones where they got ten peoplethat look like each of the members of
Fish and dressed them the same andwent out there holding instruments and trick the
fans into thinking it's them. Thenthey leave and another one shows up.
They just do kind of games withthe audience. You know. They did
another one at MSG where all thelights were blue and they had drones of

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whales and dolphins and maybe turn theentire thing into an underwater aquarium. And
that's at MSG. So at thesphere, no one knows what to expect
until tonight. Until tonight, welland then tomorrow is gonna be completely diffletely.
That's awesome. They said there's somethingthat ties in the four shows,
like there is a theme, AndI was like, are they gonna do
like Jack Queen King Ace, youknow in Vegas as the as a loose

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theme and then they'll sing a couplesongs that touch on those themes, you
know. But truth is, wedon't know what the hell's gonna be.
But anyway, when you think aboutthe Sphere, all I think about is
the visuals. Right, I'm gonnaplay at audio double J Sorry here you
guys plug in. I think ofthe visuals, like just stepping in this
building, what it's going to looklike, and that is definitely the most
intriguing thing. But I wanted toplay something for you, and it's an

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interview with Trey. It's only abouta minute long where he's talking about the
audio in the sphere, which Idon't know anything about, okoy, and
he's talking about the directional audio.And you tell me if this is even
possible or if this makes sense fora band to pull off inside the sphere.
JJ, here we are the debutof the Sphere Sphere sound system.

(17:29):
It wasn't surround, but it's directional. The Sphere sound system is hyperdirectional.
It's so directional it's like pinpoints ofsound and thousands and thousands of them,
which is very different than a normalsound system. When they give you the
demo, you can stand on anX and they'll play with song and the

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artist is singing in French, andthen you step one foot to the side
and the artist is singing in Spanish. That's how directional it is. So
our sound man or any soundman thatcomes in here, has to rearrange their
concept. They have to be openminded and embrace the technology. And if

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you do so, the possibilities areendless. I'm very excited about what we
figured out. We figured out waysto put instruments all over, like it's
coming from every direction. It soundsreally cool. I got to hear it
a couple of days ago. Okay, so you've been to an IMAX movie
and you know at the very beginningwhen they kind of show off the sound

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of what IMAX is about. Yeah, you got the static and you hear
it from what feels like twelve differentpoints in the auditorium. It's so where
the sound is isolated, and it'slike you can if you were looking to
the source of the sound, yourhead would go from the corner to the

(19:03):
side, to this side, Oh, to the back, Oh, it's
up here now it's over here.That's kind of what he's talking about that
they they have so many different speakersthat are set up in all points of
this sphere that they can point thesound waves to a specific area in the
arena. It's almost like think ofthink of the audio as as like a

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laser to where it is beaming toa certain section, and they can move
those things too around, so you'regonna have swirling audio. It's going to
be it's going to be sensory effingoverload, is what it's going to be
when you combine that with the visualsand what I hope and I'm sure they
are. These guys are a milliontimes smarter than me when it comes to

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production, or they have people thatare is sometimes to me, the beauty
of a great production is kind oflike when it's what you don't do as
opposed to what you do do.So if it's kitchen sink all the time,
it's going to drive you crazy,it's going to exhaust you. It's

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going to make you not know whereto look or not know where to listen,
or not know when to look orlisten. You've got to create space
to where there's lulls where kind ofnothing's nothing's happening almost, or where it's
just one singular visual and your head'snot having to whip around like you're afraid
of missing something. They'll know howto orchestrate that. I think it's going

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to be phenomenal, but it isgoing to be a sensory exploration. So
there's one hundred and sixty seven thousandspeaker sound system in there. Yeah,
so that would obviously facilitate that.But do you believe that. Can I
stand right here and the singer singingin French? Yeah, and then I
can move three feet to the left. That's what they've That's what's bill beautiful.
But it's a different language because youare, Yeah, because it's targeted.

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It's targeting, like you would havea channel of a vocal that's singing
in French and a channel of anothervocal singing in Spanish and depending on where
you're standing. Yeah, I think, like I said, think of it
as an audio laser. So ifI'm shooting that laser at you right now,
and it's a red laser, ifyou move out of that spot and
move over here where a blue laseris pointing, and you get in front

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of that one, the red laseris no longer touching you, the blue
one is. Think of that asaudio. They can do the same thing
with sound waves now and be thatprecise and pinpoint them to be wherever they
want them to be, and foryou to experience whatever they want you to
experience it I understand. I don'tunderstand. Yeah, that seems, you
know. And for a band likeFish that messes with their fans and has
fun with their fans and does bits, so they're gonna project instruments all over

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this room, yeah, bounce themoff of Yeah, my god. And
that another thing that will lead tois every person in that auditorium is going
to have a different experience than quitepossibly the person that's two feet from them.
God, that's crazy. You're gonnahave a great time. Yeah,

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I cannot wait. I'm almost moreexcited to hear about your Sphere experience than
I am this lavish lavish Pasha.Well, uh yeah, so Fish kicking
off four straight nights at the Spheretonight, and I'm heading there Friday and
Saturday. I can't wait. They'realso worried someone's gonna croak because they recommend
you sit down during shows when you'reup high at the sphere and these fish

(22:23):
fans are not gonna sit down.They're going to be dancing and drunk and
drunk and other things. Machine worriedabout the big tumble tumble off the top
rope. Let's hope all is welldown there at the at the sphere,
but I can't wait to see itall. Right, there you go.
Coming up next, we got Sportat seven, I don't know, maybe
talk about this dude who's banned forlife and is this the beginning of gamble

(22:48):
again in professional sports? That's nextninety