October 7, 2024 • 31 mins
In the beginning... there was vinyl!!! LPs and 45s reigned supreme for generations but the need for portability spawned the age of plastic music media. Soon four track cassettes were melting in the summer heat of our car interiors - and out of the primordial cassette ooze the digital age of the Compact Disc was born.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I'm Tony. I'm Eric. We are the sons of San Fernando.But we've been friends for over 40 years. And
grew up together in the San Fernando Valley.These are the stories of our experiences as
adventurous Gen X latchkey slackers from backin the day. And don't forget to hit the follow
or subscribe button so you don't miss an episode.
(00:26):
Look at that little cube. Oh, recording. Yes,it does record digitally. And you can't see
it. You can't see your recording. You know whatI mean? Like, it gets on, it looks like anything
else. For example, your recording on that Zoomlooks just like a picture, looks just like
a Word document. You can't see it. Yeah. onthe media. That means it's not really there.
(00:51):
It's not really there. We grew up in an agewhere you could see your media and you knew
what it was. You didn't see a record and think,hey, that could be a word document. Well, there
was no word. Do you remember the first wordprocessors? I used to work on Lotus 123. That's
not an answer. No, but I'm saying, you meanthe physical word processors? Yeah, you remember
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when we had those full like... Oh, I thoughtyou meant like working on spreadsheets and
stuff. No. No, you remember we had like, theywere like little typewriters. The first like,
computery type thing we had was these, therewere these little typewriters, but they were
also word processors. I don't think I ever workedon those. And they had little windows where
you could see your text and write your stuffout before you printed it, and that was the
big benefit, is that you could print it, youcould see it before you print it, and edit
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it before you printed it out. I don't thinkI had one of those. Do you remember Whiteout
on a typewriter? Whiteout on a typewriter? Yeah,it wasn't a part of the ribbon. There was that,
yeah. You had some typewriters that had it inthe ribbon. That was, I sucked at it. I do
all my book reports on typewriters. How interestingthough is, I would kinda like to get a typewriter
and start to write people letters. I'm gonnado this. Tomorrow, I'm buying a typewriter.
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And some stamps. And you just. And it readsto people. Would you not lighten your day by
a million times if you went down to the goddamnmail and it wasn't just bills, but you actually
got a letter from me in the mail. You stillget bills in the mail? I guess I don't really,
to most of them. But you're saying if you didhave a pile of bills, and you opened up. Instead
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of a pile of advertisements. Advertisements,right, you have a pile of advertisements, and
then within that pile of, you got your Val pack,and your Val Kilmer package. That's right,
the Val pack, right. Inside that, Barry andall of that is a letter. And the envelope,
it's handwritten to me. It's handwritten, andthere's a stamp. And there's a stamp, and then
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you open that motherfucker, and inside of itis a serial killer. A killer type. That'd be
amazing. Letter. Okay. Now, you were talkingabout actually typing out letters to people
and sending them to them. But I like this ideabetter. Why is that? I'm going to send letters
to people, but they're going to be those whereyou cut a single letter out of a magazine and
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it looks like a ransom. Right. Serial killer.Yeah. Ransom. But I'm not gonna make it a ransom,
I'm gonna actually make it a nice letter, butit's gonna be cut out. I really enjoyed going
to the park. That would be so terrifying. Andthere's something so inherently terrifying
about the mismatched letters. Maybe that's justbecause the association. Even if you're talking
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about fluffy puppies. Or puppy fluffies. I prefera puppy fluffy. Okay. Maybe I shouldn't do
this. But I think I will anyway. It dependson who you send it to. I don't think it's a
good idea, but I don't think it's a bad ideaeither. Or a superior of any kind. Well, I'd
have to get a job. If somebody's bullying you'retrying to get a job, I'd have to get a job
first. That's what I was gonna say, you'd haveto have a job. Okay, so I'm gonna do that.
I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna get a job. Andthen I'm gonna send said type of letter with
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a cutout. To your boss. To my boss, yeah. Okay,please. But it'll be a nice letter. Yeah, but
you should do all of this and then we'll seehow long. Just for this experiment. Yeah, but
that's what I'm planning on And then see howlong it takes until I get fired. Okay, I like
this. I like this. And we'll take bets. It'llbe a pool. Now, I think in one of my early
jobs, one of my old bosses would have actuallythought that was very funny. was back when
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I worked in the record store. That, yeah, it'sbecause you were talking about records and
you really. I was talking about records, I mean,yes, I had Berlin, we worked at a record store,
but you worked at the record store when therewere also CDs. Well, I were, okay, yeah. Weren't
there CDs there? Yeah. Wait, how old were you?This was 1988. Okay, so in 88 we had CDs. Yes,
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but we still had. And they were in the tall,the tall skinny packs. Yeah, now, the picture,
so I was working at Music Plus. Plus is theplace. I don't wanna picture it. No, you do.
Okay, I will, I don't want to. But now you'regoing to. I'm going to. I'm forcing it on you.
Yes, no, I'm going to, I just don't want to.We still had a couple of bins of. vinyl. Okay.
There was still really yeah because nowadaysthe vinyl revolution is like in the late 80s
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there were no there was no like it was it wasit was almost gone there were still a few record
stores that just carried vinyl but as far aslike the big the big the big chain yeah uh
the warehouse right uh music plus uh we hadpower records power of power i don't know if
it was big we had i think it was a one-off wehad big bends remember big bends yeah Where
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was Big Ben's? Big Ben's was over in... Oh,God, I don't wanna talk about anything that
was in Encino, okay? It's garbage. Encino isabsolute garbage. No matter what moon unit
tells you on that song. Like, oh my God. Encinois garbage. So here's the question. 88, you
had mostly CDs that were in the tall, skinnytower boxes. The tall, skinny, yeah, the tall
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boxes. Now, which is, what a waste of packaging,by the way. And they finally figured that out.
But let's just say, when did, were cassettes?Well, I got something to say boxes. All right,
fine. Here's the thing. So you know why theymanufactured the tall boxes? To have bigger
art. Partly. Okay. So yes, you had these tallCD boxes, you had the artwork, so it's kind
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of like, you know, more like an album, but stillnot quite. Right, no. And then we used to have
a lot of booklets. They came with booklets.All CDs came with booklets. So, but this, the
tall boxes were also meant to... deter theftbecause they were big. It was hard to see.
Like an album. It's hard to stick an album downyour pants. Well for you. You know, not for
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me. 45s weren't so hard, but you stick likea box set down your trousers. You try to stuff
a box set in your Wranglers. You got down thetrowel. You got like the Eagles greatest hits
down your trowel. Down trowel. Down trowel.Oh, by the way, we gotta start. Oh, we got
it by the way. Down, down, we gotta, we gottastart that, uh, that saying, we're saying down,
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down
No security, just walk right out. Because backthen, we didn't have cameras everywhere down
our butt holes like we do today. Today, everyonehas a camera in their butt hole. I think so.
Every single person. Everybody's looking ateverybody. Butt hole. Yeah. your eyes. It's
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amazing. You can't go anywhere. I don't butyou get used to it. Now there was a period
where I was like, oh my god, you've been watchedeverywhere you go. Now it's like, whatever.
Yeah, I know. Then you didn't. So we trustedthe system. So we would do inventory and like...
Half the CD boxes were just empty CD boxes.Really? Yeah. That much stuff? Oh yeah, it
(08:02):
was massive. Really? And then they finally caughton and they put those stickers on the inside.
Yeah, and I remember, then, when you open thegoddamn jewel case and you're trying to take
those little... First of all, they would getunder your fingernail and pierce through your
finger. They were meant to draw blood. Superpainful drawing blood. And then you couldn't
get them off. And then when you did get themoff, you broke the goddamn jewel case. Remember
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when you would break the edge off the jewelcase? And then you had to buy extra jewel cases,
then people like, Music Plus started selling.Like a 10 pack. That was by design. It was
the same people. The jewel case people had somethinggoing on there. They wanted to, they made them
shitty, so you had to buy them all. It's sofucked up. And then you bought the skinny ones.
You're right, you bought the skinny ones. Theygot the skinny ones. That's right, they're
where the skinny ones. But you couldn't getthe skinny ones for the ones, like when you
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got an Eagles box set, you needed the big pamphletthat came inside of it that was like a Bible.
You had to get the thick. Yeah, yeah, yeah.A chunk of jewel case. But here's my question.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, we know, well let's, you knowwhat, let's go down history lane for a moment.
Okay. I frequent History Lane. Yeah, I parkthere sometimes. It's a nice place to have
(09:06):
a bagel, for example. An Americano I like toget on History Lane. The first commercially
recorded thing that people could buy on a masslevel were vinyl LPs. Right. That was really,
I mean, that's really where the records store...It wasn't the first iteration of it. No, it
wasn't the very first thing that recorded. Butit's where they're mass producing them. Right,
the first mass producing... You go buy a recordof Mozart's yada yada. My parents had some
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vines. Yeah, I had a lot of fun on the house.I didn't have a lot growing up. I can tell
you what we had in the house. We had some HarryBelafonte. You had Harry Belafonte in your
house? He was in a drawer in my house. Thatsounds uncomfortable. Not for me. What did
he, did he? I was fine. Did he join you forbreakfast? Often, and it was really jubilant.
when Harry Belafonte joined us for breakfast.Then we had some Frank Sinatra, a lot of Sinatra
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LPs that my dad was a huge Sinatra fan, flyme to the moon my way. My dad had a lot, he
was more, he was classical. I was gonna say,man, my dad was into death metal. That'd be
amazing, my dad's like, listening to the cannibalcorpse. No, it's not a vinyl! You're like,
dad, what are you listening to? Bernie, ourgeneration, we came after the Atrex. No, we
didn't buy Atrex. No, we didn't buy Atrex, you'reright. Yeah, Atrex were passed. Nor did we
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buy 45s. Just a few. I remember. I did buy LPs,I did buy vinyl LPs. I remember my very first.
45 do you remember your first 45? I never hadI never bought a 45. I only bought LPs. Really?
I only bought LPs. I remember my mom takingmy brother and I to get and my brother He might
remember this even better like I think I havethis right. What was it? Okay, we both got
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to pick one 45 okay, and any idea? Jackson 5?Wait, Star Wars. Oh the Star Wars theme on
one side and what do you think was on the flipside of that 45? Was it John Williams? Cantina
Band.
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Brrr
Amazing.
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Okay, also great. I mean, dude, we had someamazing film music back in the day. And we
bought a lot of soundtracks too. I rememberbuying LP soundtracks. Soundtracks were amazing
back then. It was huge, it was a big deal. Myfavorite one was The Mission. And I used to
listen to The Mission, and I did not know untilyears later that it was Ennio Morricone who
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did all the spaghetti westerns, but he wroteThe Mission, and that music is incredible.
In fact, I'm gonna listen to it on the way hometonight. Are you now? Yeah. I'm a big Ennio
Morricone fan and I didn't know. Are you gonnalisten to it on 45? I wish. Okay, so let's
talk about that for a moment. You bring somethingup. I did. The sound. The sound of vinyl. Now,
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we live in a digital age. I have a record player.I have vinyl today. And you have a really good
setup for it. That's the thing. I do, I havea preamp. I've got an EQ. And that makes the
difference, because when I was listening tomy parents' vinyl, it was on the massive piece
of 500 pound furniture, right? The console,the console. Record player. You opened up that
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big wooden lid. It was like Star Wars. And thenyou got- Pneumatic lifts. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
And it had the massive speakers behind thatsort of like... The mesh. Mesh, yeah. The crazy
metal mesh, yeah. And you had... With the design,like a wooden design. I don't know about yours,
but we could do 33 and a third, we could do45 and 78. You could change the motherfucking
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speeds. And on mine, you could do the auto drop.Yeah, we had the auto drop too. I love the
auto drop. But when you played it through thespeakers, it sounded fucking... great or you
could plug in headphones. It did sound good.It did. But you fast forward to these days.
And most people have those stupid crossley thingsthat they get in. It's a complete piece of
shit. Urban outfitters. Don't fucking. Soundlike garbage. You're just pissing me off that
they can even sell those. Why? They sound likeass. So people like they're going and they're
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getting this nice fucking vinyl, they're goingback and they're playing in a fucking crossley.
It sounds like shit. No, you have to have anice turntable. So if you. A nice stylus. To
your point, if you listen on a good system.Yeah. It's. nothing else man. My cousin has
a Macintosh. Oh, oh. He has a Macintosh, preamp,Macintosh speakers. That's mad cash. You can't
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get that thing, his amp is so powerful you can'tget it past two, but when you listen to that
thing, I've turned up some old vintage LP onhis system. It must sound unbelievable. It's
warm, it's got pops, it's got crackles, it'sgot snaps, it's rice fucking crispies man.
It's rice motherfucking crispies. It is. Thebest kind. It is. It's very different. I during
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the digital age when we were younger and itwas probably the early 90s. And by that time,
everything we owned was CD because it seemedlike the future and it seemed like it was better.
Yeah, I mean, you couldn't, like it was almostindestructible. It sounded really good. On
paper, digital is better. You didn't have toflip the fucking thing, it is. Yeah, on paper
it's better, but then, but here's the thing,the compression and the warmth of a good vinyl.
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playback system. There's nothing that beatsit. Anyway, I had been listening to CDs and
I went into this thrift store and I don't rememberwhere I was. I think it was in Santa Barbara
somewhere. Maybe in Isla Vista or something.There was a thrift store and this dude was
blasting Bob Marley on an amazing. turntableslash hi-fi system from like the 70s. That
sounded unbelievable. And I was like, whoa,why does this sound so different than everything
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I'm listening to today? And that's when it clickedthat like, oh, there's something to the vinyl.
And that's amazing for home, but the problemwas that wasn't portable. That was not portable.
So cassettes. Cassettes, oh, well cassettes.So you had the cassettes, yeah. Wait, let me
ask you a question about cassettes. Did cassettes,were they concurrent with vinyl? Yeah. I mean,
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cassettes had been around, well there was eight-trackbefore the four-track cassette. Yes, and then
cassette, I don't know if cassette was, it wasdefinitely during the vinyl days, I'm sure
vinyl obviously was first, but cassettes werearound before CDs. Did you ever experience
the eight-track player in a car where you couldskip songs and just jump? The only eight-track
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player I ever remember was actually well after8 Tracks weren't a thing anymore. Taki had
an old Cadillac that he bought. It was a milefucking long, yeah. And it had an 8 Track player,
which was, had to go out and buy some 8 Tracks.Dude, that's fun. The car was a piece of shit.
Do you remember what the 8 Track car that youbought? I know he bought, I don't know what
he had. Do you remember what you had? I don'tknow, but it was fucking cool. Did you listen
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to any of them in the car? Oh yeah, it was cool.Yeah, it sounded like it sounded so fucking
big, kissy and green, but warm to cassettesto also sound different. There had to be some
Elvis or something. But I will say cassettesdon't hold up with the kind of quality that
L.P. Yeah, but right. But cassettes, that waswhat I lived on. Like in the car. Because yeah,
yeah. Because I tried I tried the whole turntablein the car thing. And I did that setup and
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it just never worked right. But we didn't know.You hit a bumpy fucking skip. We know that
you're joking, however, we did do the CD conversionto cassette player in our cars before we actually
had CD players in the cars. Remember the cassettethat you would put in the car and you would
plug it into a CD player? Yeah, but first wehad cassettes. I mean, we just had cassettes.
For most of the time we had cassettes. I don'tknow about you, but remember you buy at the...
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at the record store, you would get the big...Cassette holder. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the
zippered one. So you got the small one, like12 or so. But then they had one that was like,
it held like 500. Oh! It was like you jam itin your trunk. They were amazing. And you're
right, you're right. We all had, like all throughouthigh school, there was nobody I knew who did
not have a cassette holder. Yeah. And at firstit started out just a few. So you only had
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like, what? 8, 10, 12. And that's all you hadto choose. So you listened to the same goddamn
album 600 times. And that's how we got to- That'sa fair warning, $65,000. And we did. I would
listen to fucking Emotions until I wore outthe fucking cassette because that's all you
had. Now you get in your car and you can listento anything. You have a billion fucking songs.
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On Spotify. Back then you only had whateverfit in your cassette case. But then you would
buy bigger and bigger cassette cases. You would.And pretty soon you had like the- Trade out,
trade out, right? And remember, at home, wehad the cassette tower. Oh yeah, you'd have
like 180 fucking cassette tower. Wall hangersfor cassettes, cassette towers. Did you alphabetizers?
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Eric. I will say, today, to this day, in myrecord collection is alphabetized. Yeah, but
you didn't alphabetize your cassettes? But backthen, I did not alphabetize my cassettes. Numbers
came first, and then A through Z. You wouldn'thappen to be the son of a librarian, would
you? You Dewey Desmo motherfuckers. You sonof a librarian. Chantal, if you're listening,
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you son of a librarian. You are a son of a librarian,and I appreciate that. I appreciate the organization.
But in the car, at some point it got to be whereyou wanted more selection, so you got the bigger
and bigger... cassette holder, which means,like, at some point, you had to have one less
person in the car because you needed space.You need your cassette holder, sir. Yeah, I
took up. And you definitely have a hatchbackof some sort. Oh, there's no way. My first,
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like, three cars were hatchbacks. Just to holdmy cassettes. So we had cassettes. That was
brilliant. You listened to the same motherfuckingalbums over and over and over. And. And then
you'd swap out the ones from home. And in thesummer, what would happen? Melt. Yeah, the
cassette holdups would melt. In the valley,110 degrees. And the cassettes would melt.
The cassettes would actually melt. Yeah, theywould melt every year. They would have melted
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cassettes. Then you had to bring, that's whenthey started bringing out the cassette holders
that had handles that you could pick up andbring into your fucking house with you when
you got home. Yeah. Otherwise you would meltyour cassettes in your car. And that happened
to me multiple times, or I would lose cassettes.Remember cassette singles? Cussingles? You
do, don't you? I don't... I think I had manycassingles. Cassingles wound up being a hot
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thing. It's like, cause then it became the ad.It became the ad. It became the ad vend of
the single. No, the single happened a long timebefore that. That was the 45, what do you think
a 45 was? Yeah, but it played further on. Yeah,because you had the cassette single and then
you had like the extended cassette single, whichgive you like three or four songs. And then,
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no, this was the fucking coup de grace. Thiswas the fucking shit right here. Personics.
Yes. There was a system that we had in the storefor a while at Music Plus. You could make your
own cassette. Oh, okay, wait. Stop right there.Just stop right there. Mix tapes. We were already
doing it home. We were already doing it homeon our dual cassette recorder. I remember I
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had a little boombox that recorded, right, thatmy dad got me from downtown, you know. Yeah,
you'd record off the radio. Right, and you,okay, so you record off the radio. So I would
hold, so we had a little radio built into thewall of the kitchen. It used to be a monitoring
system that you could, it was an intercom toupstairs and you could talk to the upstairs.
And you'd hold the boombox up to it, aren'tyou? But it also had a radio in it, and I would
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hold the boombox, waiting for Jay Geil's Angel,is it Angel is the centerfold or Angel in the
centerfold? Angel is the centerfold. Okay, soAngel is the centerfold, waiting for that to
come on. I remember waiting for, you know, LandDown Under is the name of the song for the
Men at Work. Men at Work, yeah. I remember waitingfor those two songs to come on to record them,
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right? And then you would just like literallyat the end of every song get ready to press
play and record on your boombox. Boom, holdit up, record it. I mean, talk about lo-fi.
Every one of our mixtapes had like that, youwould hear the DJ like talking in the beginning
of it or the end. Yeah, at the end or the beginningof it, right, exactly. And they'd do like a
funky fade up. Because you used to always talkover the beginning of the song. And now coming
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in for do-d
the intro music. So that was part of your mixtape.Which is why, back then, if you listened to
songs from that era, there are a lot of songsthat have eight year long intros. Yes, because
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it was for the DJs. Yeah, and they would talkover your intro. That's a good point, I didn't
think about that. You don't have that anymore,you don't listen to a song that has an intro
that's a minute fucking long. You know, likelisten to the original version of Jetliner,
of a Steve Miller band. Da da da. Oh. Junkedygunked down. Yeah. Liddy liddy liddy. It's
like it wasn't for a minute. You have a fuckingcup of coffee. There's like a whole verse.
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Do do do. No no no. It's just nothing happened.There's no. Dude, make it mixed. I did, like
it reminds me now of doing that same thing.Recording off of like. Oh yeah. Well, we had
KLOS and the Mighty 690. KLOS. Uh huh. 95.5.You can do better than me. 95.5. I can't do
it. Your voice gets lower. Try it. It does.95.5 KLS That was so smooth. Rock of the 80s.
(22:37):
That's so smooth. Actually K-Rock might havebeen the Rock of the 80s. Rock of the 80s,
yeah. K-Rock was Rock of the 80s, yeah. K-Rock,dude. Great, great station. Still around. Still.
Is it really around still? Yeah, K-Rock's stillon. Really? I'm still making mix tapes off
of K-Rock. Okay. Yeah. I still hold my boombucks. Did you ever make a, boom bucks? Did
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you ever make a mix tape for a person and giveit to them? For a girlfriend in high school
or such things? No. Oh, you didn't? No, justlike, maybe one side. That was the thing that
I did! I don't know, I missed that boat. I rememberdoing that for Meredith O'Sullivan. If you're
out there, Merida Sullivan. Haven't seen hersince you did 1990. It was probably the mixtape
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you gave her. Yeah, she was on a long time.You fucked up. What'd you put it, yeah, you
put, yeah. You had, well, that's the question.What was on the mixtape? Yeah, what was it?
Well, definitely Peter Gabriel. That was yourfirst idea, Little Red Rain? You gotta put
In Your Eyes on them because of Say Anything,right? Because Say Anything became the ultimate,
like, romantic teen song. Yeah, and she's like,oh my god, another mixtape with Peter Gabriel.
(23:48):
No. Yeah, you fucked that up. I feel completely...If you would've put like a little Def Leppard
animal on there or something like that, it would'vebeen a whole different story. Or, um, hush
hush. Keep it down now, voices carry. Did youjust tilt Tuesday me? That's a great song.
It's a great song. You agree? Oh yeah, Amy Manningjust, bomb voice to this day. Love that song.
(24:12):
Which is why that ended up on a fuck ton ofmix tapes. Right. Before CDs really, really
embedded themselves. Took off and like suckedyou in and that was it, that's all you had.
Dat. and mini disc. Who had deck players? Nobody.Nobody had a mini disc. No, but for a hot minute,
a few things, a few artists, they put out songson mini discs. Yes, they did. I remember that
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the mini disc- It was a format that didn't makeit. And you know why the CDs won? Why? Because
you could fit a lot more in your CD wallet toput in your fucking- That's the other thing.
To then use what you were talking about earlier,which is the cassette adapter for the CD disc.
So we went from the CD player in your car. Doyou remember the visor holder? Oh no, what
(24:58):
do you mean do I remember? You had a visor holder?I held like 20 CDs. Right, yeah, held a bunch
of CDs. So I had. You had to take them out ofthe jewel case and stick them in there. Yeah,
but I had this, so you had way more selectionwith CDs because they're skinny, they're flat.
You could. and they're easy to get to whileyou're driving. Just like my ass. Skinny and
flat. Right, exactly. Yeah. Go ahead, sorry.And I had the cassette adapter thingy-dealy.
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So you'd shove that cassette In my ass. In theass. In the cassette butt. It worked much better
in the cassette player of the car. Ah, speakfor yourself. I don't know what you're going
for. Did you have a hi-fi ass? What was thatsound like? Was it stereo? I don't believe
it was. Did you have a stereo butthole? Okay,stereo butthole. No, but that's an invention
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you need to work out right now. No, that's aband name. Yeah, stereo butthole. Stereo butthole,
wow. Yeah, it's a punk band. Okay, sorry. Yeah.Visor, CDs. Visor, but the cassette that had,
you would stick this funky cassette in the cassetteplayer in your car and have that wire coming
out that went to the Discman thing. Oh yeah,I had one. And then even then though. It would
jump. It would jump, yes. How many times you'dbe driving, hit a little bump, it would skip,
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it would skip. That's so annoying. But still.You had that portability and I had like fucking
50 goddamn CDs in my car. Yeah, so you couldhold more CDs than you could cassettes. Lot
more selection. Right, so our cassettes tooka back seat. Everybody put their cassettes
in a brown box, cardboard box they put in garagesat their parents' house. Oh yeah, just stop
listening to them, yeah. And then they wouldjust sit there. Years later, you go back and
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be like, oh my God, all these cassettes, saidI love all this music and I don't have a cassette
player. Yeah, and then you would try, but thenyou would plop, bump into a cassette player
and realize that the fucking. the tape had fuckingwarped and it sounded like shit. That's the
problem. And, but the thing is, is that you,there's no nostalgia around cassettes. There's
no nostalgia around CDs because they don't havethe sound that vinyl records have. And vinyl
(26:51):
records had the artwork. Artwork, they had the-The big artwork. Huge! And even CDs did have
like lyric sheets and stuff, but not like thealbums. No, having a 12 inch square that you
could look at artwork and open a pamphlet oran insert that had a fold out photo of Mick
Jagger or whatever, David Bowie. I mean, thatshit's amazing. And they tried to replicate
(27:13):
that with the little booklets and the CD players,but it just wasn't the same thing. It was never
the same. And now, with digital media and digitalmusic, there is no connection to any physical
product. music comes via zeros and ones intoour phone and we don't have any kind of connection
just like art. And you know and you know whatyou know what that killed? Hmm. What did digital
(27:36):
radio star no video killed the radio star accordingto the Buggles. Right. Video killed the radio
star in my mind and in my car. That's excellent.Thank you. Because what did we do? Like, okay,
(27:59):
side A and side B was, no, it's okay, I'm goingsomewhere. Oh, I see, I see. It was all one.
You're saying it's one side versus side A, sideB on an LP or a cassette. It was side A, side
B. Okay, that's true, that's a good point. Inever thought about that. And then once you
got to CD, but CDs you were still listeningto a full album. Yeah, still programmatic.
(28:19):
You're still listening to an album. Then whenyou got to MP3s when the whole Napster thing
happened, now it's single. Nobody's listeningto a fucking album anymore. And that's the
problem now. And I remember when it was firstdigitized and you would listen back to stuff
that was digital. you wouldn't get, like therewould be separations between songs where there
wasn't supposed to be a separation, where songsflow into each other programmatically, and
(28:40):
it was problematic to listen to. But now theyfixed that, but that took a while to index
those things properly. But you're right, thatis interesting. I never thought about the fact
that the side A, side B thing went away. Becauseside A, side B really is like act one, act
two of a storytelling experience. record, well,what we'll call it albums. I mean, it's not
(29:06):
vinyl, it's not cassette. The album. was a lotof them were designed that way. Right, programmatic.
Right, where that very, very last song was likethat one weird, like, it was like fucking Darling
Nikki or something off of 1999 or. Or the Beatles,a majesty is a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't
have a lot to say, it's 30 seconds of her majesty.And so on side A, you'd have like a banger
(29:30):
coming right out, but then usually the singlewas like two or three deep. Yeah, yeah. And
then side B, that first song on side B had tobe fucking. a banger again. Yeah, yeah. Blah,
blah, blah. Once you got the CDs. Say it's yourbirthday. It completely changed. You had, the
order changed. Yep. And then after that, itwas like. You're right. Nobody's listening
anymore. I never thought about that before inmy entire lifetime that with CDs you have A
(29:55):
through Z without a separation. Yeah. Song onethrough 10, one through 12. You don't have
act one, act two anymore. Yeah. You've cut thatout. It was very different. And then once you
go all digital. The choice of the order of songswas very, very different because you didn't
have a side A side B. Sequencing was different.You're right. That's true. That's a very good
point. And then with digital, or not with digital,I'm sorry, with MP3s it went away because now
(30:16):
it's just, it's all single driven. Nobody'slistening to the record. And you know what
that killed too, were concept albums. My Butthole?Do you have a concept album about your Butthole?
If you did, if you did, and I'm not saying youdo, but you might. I love it. Because I know
you. What's it called? What would you call aconcept album by your butt hole? I would call
it Flat and Skinny.
(30:45):
listening to the Sons of San Fernando. Don'tforget to hit that subscribe or follow button
in your favorite podcast app so you don't missan episode. Drop us a review, we'd love to
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the show. We'll catch you on the next episode.
I'm Tony. I'm Eric. We are the sons of San Fernando.But we've been friends for over 40 years. And
grew up together in the San Fernando Valley.These are the stories of our experiences as
adventurous Gen X latchkey slackers from backin the day. And don't forget to hit the follow
or subscribe button so you don't miss an episode.
(00:26):
Look at that little cube. Oh, recording. Yes,it does record digitally. And you can't see
it. You can't see your recording. You know whatI mean? Like, it gets on, it looks like anything
else. For example, your recording on that Zoomlooks just like a picture, looks just like
a Word document. You can't see it. Yeah. onthe media. That means it's not really there.
(00:51):
It's not really there. We grew up in an agewhere you could see your media and you knew
what it was. You didn't see a record and think,hey, that could be a word document. Well, there
was no word. Do you remember the first wordprocessors? I used to work on Lotus 123. That's
not an answer. No, but I'm saying, you meanthe physical word processors? Yeah, you remember
(01:15):
when we had those full like... Oh, I thoughtyou meant like working on spreadsheets and
stuff. No. No, you remember we had like, theywere like little typewriters. The first like,
computery type thing we had was these, therewere these little typewriters, but they were
also word processors. I don't think I ever workedon those. And they had little windows where
you could see your text and write your stuffout before you printed it, and that was the
big benefit, is that you could print it, youcould see it before you print it, and edit
(01:39):
it before you printed it out. I don't thinkI had one of those. Do you remember Whiteout
on a typewriter? Whiteout on a typewriter? Yeah,it wasn't a part of the ribbon. There was that,
yeah. You had some typewriters that had it inthe ribbon. That was, I sucked at it. I do
all my book reports on typewriters. How interestingthough is, I would kinda like to get a typewriter
and start to write people letters. I'm gonnado this. Tomorrow, I'm buying a typewriter.
(02:02):
And some stamps. And you just. And it readsto people. Would you not lighten your day by
a million times if you went down to the goddamnmail and it wasn't just bills, but you actually
got a letter from me in the mail. You stillget bills in the mail? I guess I don't really,
to most of them. But you're saying if you didhave a pile of bills, and you opened up. Instead
(02:26):
of a pile of advertisements. Advertisements,right, you have a pile of advertisements, and
then within that pile of, you got your Val pack,and your Val Kilmer package. That's right,
the Val pack, right. Inside that, Barry andall of that is a letter. And the envelope,
it's handwritten to me. It's handwritten, andthere's a stamp. And there's a stamp, and then
(02:47):
you open that motherfucker, and inside of itis a serial killer. A killer type. That'd be
amazing. Letter. Okay. Now, you were talkingabout actually typing out letters to people
and sending them to them. But I like this ideabetter. Why is that? I'm going to send letters
to people, but they're going to be those whereyou cut a single letter out of a magazine and
(03:09):
it looks like a ransom. Right. Serial killer.Yeah. Ransom. But I'm not gonna make it a ransom,
I'm gonna actually make it a nice letter, butit's gonna be cut out. I really enjoyed going
to the park. That would be so terrifying. Andthere's something so inherently terrifying
about the mismatched letters. Maybe that's justbecause the association. Even if you're talking
(03:31):
about fluffy puppies. Or puppy fluffies. I prefera puppy fluffy. Okay. Maybe I shouldn't do
this. But I think I will anyway. It dependson who you send it to. I don't think it's a
good idea, but I don't think it's a bad ideaeither. Or a superior of any kind. Well, I'd
have to get a job. If somebody's bullying you'retrying to get a job, I'd have to get a job
first. That's what I was gonna say, you'd haveto have a job. Okay, so I'm gonna do that.
I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna get a job. Andthen I'm gonna send said type of letter with
(03:56):
a cutout. To your boss. To my boss, yeah. Okay,please. But it'll be a nice letter. Yeah, but
you should do all of this and then we'll seehow long. Just for this experiment. Yeah, but
that's what I'm planning on And then see howlong it takes until I get fired. Okay, I like
this. I like this. And we'll take bets. It'llbe a pool. Now, I think in one of my early
jobs, one of my old bosses would have actuallythought that was very funny. was back when
(04:18):
I worked in the record store. That, yeah, it'sbecause you were talking about records and
you really. I was talking about records, I mean,yes, I had Berlin, we worked at a record store,
but you worked at the record store when therewere also CDs. Well, I were, okay, yeah. Weren't
there CDs there? Yeah. Wait, how old were you?This was 1988. Okay, so in 88 we had CDs. Yes,
(04:41):
but we still had. And they were in the tall,the tall skinny packs. Yeah, now, the picture,
so I was working at Music Plus. Plus is theplace. I don't wanna picture it. No, you do.
Okay, I will, I don't want to. But now you'regoing to. I'm going to. I'm forcing it on you.
Yes, no, I'm going to, I just don't want to.We still had a couple of bins of. vinyl. Okay.
There was still really yeah because nowadaysthe vinyl revolution is like in the late 80s
(05:06):
there were no there was no like it was it wasit was almost gone there were still a few record
stores that just carried vinyl but as far aslike the big the big the big chain yeah uh
the warehouse right uh music plus uh we hadpower records power of power i don't know if
it was big we had i think it was a one-off wehad big bends remember big bends yeah Where
(05:29):
was Big Ben's? Big Ben's was over in... Oh,God, I don't wanna talk about anything that
was in Encino, okay? It's garbage. Encino isabsolute garbage. No matter what moon unit
tells you on that song. Like, oh my God. Encinois garbage. So here's the question. 88, you
had mostly CDs that were in the tall, skinnytower boxes. The tall, skinny, yeah, the tall
(05:53):
boxes. Now, which is, what a waste of packaging,by the way. And they finally figured that out.
But let's just say, when did, were cassettes?Well, I got something to say boxes. All right,
fine. Here's the thing. So you know why theymanufactured the tall boxes? To have bigger
art. Partly. Okay. So yes, you had these tallCD boxes, you had the artwork, so it's kind
(06:18):
of like, you know, more like an album, but stillnot quite. Right, no. And then we used to have
a lot of booklets. They came with booklets.All CDs came with booklets. So, but this, the
tall boxes were also meant to... deter theftbecause they were big. It was hard to see.
Like an album. It's hard to stick an album downyour pants. Well for you. You know, not for
(06:40):
me. 45s weren't so hard, but you stick likea box set down your trousers. You try to stuff
a box set in your Wranglers. You got down thetrowel. You got like the Eagles greatest hits
down your trowel. Down trowel. Down trowel.Oh, by the way, we gotta start. Oh, we got
it by the way. Down, down, we gotta, we gottastart that, uh, that saying, we're saying down,
(07:19):
down
No security, just walk right out. Because backthen, we didn't have cameras everywhere down
our butt holes like we do today. Today, everyonehas a camera in their butt hole. I think so.
Every single person. Everybody's looking ateverybody. Butt hole. Yeah. your eyes. It's
(07:40):
amazing. You can't go anywhere. I don't butyou get used to it. Now there was a period
where I was like, oh my god, you've been watchedeverywhere you go. Now it's like, whatever.
Yeah, I know. Then you didn't. So we trustedthe system. So we would do inventory and like...
Half the CD boxes were just empty CD boxes.Really? Yeah. That much stuff? Oh yeah, it
(08:02):
was massive. Really? And then they finally caughton and they put those stickers on the inside.
Yeah, and I remember, then, when you open thegoddamn jewel case and you're trying to take
those little... First of all, they would getunder your fingernail and pierce through your
finger. They were meant to draw blood. Superpainful drawing blood. And then you couldn't
get them off. And then when you did get themoff, you broke the goddamn jewel case. Remember
(08:23):
when you would break the edge off the jewelcase? And then you had to buy extra jewel cases,
then people like, Music Plus started selling.Like a 10 pack. That was by design. It was
the same people. The jewel case people had somethinggoing on there. They wanted to, they made them
shitty, so you had to buy them all. It's sofucked up. And then you bought the skinny ones.
You're right, you bought the skinny ones. Theygot the skinny ones. That's right, they're
where the skinny ones. But you couldn't getthe skinny ones for the ones, like when you
(08:45):
got an Eagles box set, you needed the big pamphletthat came inside of it that was like a Bible.
You had to get the thick. Yeah, yeah, yeah.A chunk of jewel case. But here's my question.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, we know, well let's, you knowwhat, let's go down history lane for a moment.
Okay. I frequent History Lane. Yeah, I parkthere sometimes. It's a nice place to have
(09:06):
a bagel, for example. An Americano I like toget on History Lane. The first commercially
recorded thing that people could buy on a masslevel were vinyl LPs. Right. That was really,
I mean, that's really where the records store...It wasn't the first iteration of it. No, it
wasn't the very first thing that recorded. Butit's where they're mass producing them. Right,
the first mass producing... You go buy a recordof Mozart's yada yada. My parents had some
(09:31):
vines. Yeah, I had a lot of fun on the house.I didn't have a lot growing up. I can tell
you what we had in the house. We had some HarryBelafonte. You had Harry Belafonte in your
house? He was in a drawer in my house. Thatsounds uncomfortable. Not for me. What did
he, did he? I was fine. Did he join you forbreakfast? Often, and it was really jubilant.
when Harry Belafonte joined us for breakfast.Then we had some Frank Sinatra, a lot of Sinatra
(09:58):
LPs that my dad was a huge Sinatra fan, flyme to the moon my way. My dad had a lot, he
was more, he was classical. I was gonna say,man, my dad was into death metal. That'd be
amazing, my dad's like, listening to the cannibalcorpse. No, it's not a vinyl! You're like,
dad, what are you listening to? Bernie, ourgeneration, we came after the Atrex. No, we
didn't buy Atrex. No, we didn't buy Atrex, you'reright. Yeah, Atrex were passed. Nor did we
(10:21):
buy 45s. Just a few. I remember. I did buy LPs,I did buy vinyl LPs. I remember my very first.
45 do you remember your first 45? I never hadI never bought a 45. I only bought LPs. Really?
I only bought LPs. I remember my mom takingmy brother and I to get and my brother He might
remember this even better like I think I havethis right. What was it? Okay, we both got
(10:44):
to pick one 45 okay, and any idea? Jackson 5?Wait, Star Wars. Oh the Star Wars theme on
one side and what do you think was on the flipside of that 45? Was it John Williams? Cantina
Band.
(11:15):
Brrr
Amazing.
(11:41):
Okay, also great. I mean, dude, we had someamazing film music back in the day. And we
bought a lot of soundtracks too. I rememberbuying LP soundtracks. Soundtracks were amazing
back then. It was huge, it was a big deal. Myfavorite one was The Mission. And I used to
listen to The Mission, and I did not know untilyears later that it was Ennio Morricone who
(12:03):
did all the spaghetti westerns, but he wroteThe Mission, and that music is incredible.
In fact, I'm gonna listen to it on the way hometonight. Are you now? Yeah. I'm a big Ennio
Morricone fan and I didn't know. Are you gonnalisten to it on 45? I wish. Okay, so let's
talk about that for a moment. You bring somethingup. I did. The sound. The sound of vinyl. Now,
(12:27):
we live in a digital age. I have a record player.I have vinyl today. And you have a really good
setup for it. That's the thing. I do, I havea preamp. I've got an EQ. And that makes the
difference, because when I was listening tomy parents' vinyl, it was on the massive piece
of 500 pound furniture, right? The console,the console. Record player. You opened up that
(12:50):
big wooden lid. It was like Star Wars. And thenyou got- Pneumatic lifts. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
And it had the massive speakers behind thatsort of like... The mesh. Mesh, yeah. The crazy
metal mesh, yeah. And you had... With the design,like a wooden design. I don't know about yours,
but we could do 33 and a third, we could do45 and 78. You could change the motherfucking
(13:13):
speeds. And on mine, you could do the auto drop.Yeah, we had the auto drop too. I love the
auto drop. But when you played it through thespeakers, it sounded fucking... great or you
could plug in headphones. It did sound good.It did. But you fast forward to these days.
And most people have those stupid crossley thingsthat they get in. It's a complete piece of
shit. Urban outfitters. Don't fucking. Soundlike garbage. You're just pissing me off that
they can even sell those. Why? They sound likeass. So people like they're going and they're
(13:36):
getting this nice fucking vinyl, they're goingback and they're playing in a fucking crossley.
It sounds like shit. No, you have to have anice turntable. So if you. A nice stylus. To
your point, if you listen on a good system.Yeah. It's. nothing else man. My cousin has
a Macintosh. Oh, oh. He has a Macintosh, preamp,Macintosh speakers. That's mad cash. You can't
(13:57):
get that thing, his amp is so powerful you can'tget it past two, but when you listen to that
thing, I've turned up some old vintage LP onhis system. It must sound unbelievable. It's
warm, it's got pops, it's got crackles, it'sgot snaps, it's rice fucking crispies man.
It's rice motherfucking crispies. It is. Thebest kind. It is. It's very different. I during
(14:18):
the digital age when we were younger and itwas probably the early 90s. And by that time,
everything we owned was CD because it seemedlike the future and it seemed like it was better.
Yeah, I mean, you couldn't, like it was almostindestructible. It sounded really good. On
paper, digital is better. You didn't have toflip the fucking thing, it is. Yeah, on paper
it's better, but then, but here's the thing,the compression and the warmth of a good vinyl.
(14:42):
playback system. There's nothing that beatsit. Anyway, I had been listening to CDs and
I went into this thrift store and I don't rememberwhere I was. I think it was in Santa Barbara
somewhere. Maybe in Isla Vista or something.There was a thrift store and this dude was
blasting Bob Marley on an amazing. turntableslash hi-fi system from like the 70s. That
sounded unbelievable. And I was like, whoa,why does this sound so different than everything
(15:05):
I'm listening to today? And that's when it clickedthat like, oh, there's something to the vinyl.
And that's amazing for home, but the problemwas that wasn't portable. That was not portable.
So cassettes. Cassettes, oh, well cassettes.So you had the cassettes, yeah. Wait, let me
ask you a question about cassettes. Did cassettes,were they concurrent with vinyl? Yeah. I mean,
(15:25):
cassettes had been around, well there was eight-trackbefore the four-track cassette. Yes, and then
cassette, I don't know if cassette was, it wasdefinitely during the vinyl days, I'm sure
vinyl obviously was first, but cassettes werearound before CDs. Did you ever experience
the eight-track player in a car where you couldskip songs and just jump? The only eight-track
(15:45):
player I ever remember was actually well after8 Tracks weren't a thing anymore. Taki had
an old Cadillac that he bought. It was a milefucking long, yeah. And it had an 8 Track player,
which was, had to go out and buy some 8 Tracks.Dude, that's fun. The car was a piece of shit.
Do you remember what the 8 Track car that youbought? I know he bought, I don't know what
he had. Do you remember what you had? I don'tknow, but it was fucking cool. Did you listen
(16:06):
to any of them in the car? Oh yeah, it was cool.Yeah, it sounded like it sounded so fucking
big, kissy and green, but warm to cassettesto also sound different. There had to be some
Elvis or something. But I will say cassettesdon't hold up with the kind of quality that
L.P. Yeah, but right. But cassettes, that waswhat I lived on. Like in the car. Because yeah,
yeah. Because I tried I tried the whole turntablein the car thing. And I did that setup and
(16:32):
it just never worked right. But we didn't know.You hit a bumpy fucking skip. We know that
you're joking, however, we did do the CD conversionto cassette player in our cars before we actually
had CD players in the cars. Remember the cassettethat you would put in the car and you would
plug it into a CD player? Yeah, but first wehad cassettes. I mean, we just had cassettes.
For most of the time we had cassettes. I don'tknow about you, but remember you buy at the...
(16:55):
at the record store, you would get the big...Cassette holder. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the
zippered one. So you got the small one, like12 or so. But then they had one that was like,
it held like 500. Oh! It was like you jam itin your trunk. They were amazing. And you're
right, you're right. We all had, like all throughouthigh school, there was nobody I knew who did
not have a cassette holder. Yeah. And at firstit started out just a few. So you only had
(17:18):
like, what? 8, 10, 12. And that's all you hadto choose. So you listened to the same goddamn
album 600 times. And that's how we got to- That'sa fair warning, $65,000. And we did. I would
listen to fucking Emotions until I wore outthe fucking cassette because that's all you
had. Now you get in your car and you can listento anything. You have a billion fucking songs.
(17:40):
On Spotify. Back then you only had whateverfit in your cassette case. But then you would
buy bigger and bigger cassette cases. You would.And pretty soon you had like the- Trade out,
trade out, right? And remember, at home, wehad the cassette tower. Oh yeah, you'd have
like 180 fucking cassette tower. Wall hangersfor cassettes, cassette towers. Did you alphabetizers?
(18:02):
Eric. I will say, today, to this day, in myrecord collection is alphabetized. Yeah, but
you didn't alphabetize your cassettes? But backthen, I did not alphabetize my cassettes. Numbers
came first, and then A through Z. You wouldn'thappen to be the son of a librarian, would
you? You Dewey Desmo motherfuckers. You sonof a librarian. Chantal, if you're listening,
(18:23):
you son of a librarian. You are a son of a librarian,and I appreciate that. I appreciate the organization.
But in the car, at some point it got to be whereyou wanted more selection, so you got the bigger
and bigger... cassette holder, which means,like, at some point, you had to have one less
person in the car because you needed space.You need your cassette holder, sir. Yeah, I
took up. And you definitely have a hatchbackof some sort. Oh, there's no way. My first,
(18:46):
like, three cars were hatchbacks. Just to holdmy cassettes. So we had cassettes. That was
brilliant. You listened to the same motherfuckingalbums over and over and over. And. And then
you'd swap out the ones from home. And in thesummer, what would happen? Melt. Yeah, the
cassette holdups would melt. In the valley,110 degrees. And the cassettes would melt.
The cassettes would actually melt. Yeah, theywould melt every year. They would have melted
(19:07):
cassettes. Then you had to bring, that's whenthey started bringing out the cassette holders
that had handles that you could pick up andbring into your fucking house with you when
you got home. Yeah. Otherwise you would meltyour cassettes in your car. And that happened
to me multiple times, or I would lose cassettes.Remember cassette singles? Cussingles? You
do, don't you? I don't... I think I had manycassingles. Cassingles wound up being a hot
(19:30):
thing. It's like, cause then it became the ad.It became the ad. It became the ad vend of
the single. No, the single happened a long timebefore that. That was the 45, what do you think
a 45 was? Yeah, but it played further on. Yeah,because you had the cassette single and then
you had like the extended cassette single, whichgive you like three or four songs. And then,
(19:53):
no, this was the fucking coup de grace. Thiswas the fucking shit right here. Personics.
Yes. There was a system that we had in the storefor a while at Music Plus. You could make your
own cassette. Oh, okay, wait. Stop right there.Just stop right there. Mix tapes. We were already
doing it home. We were already doing it homeon our dual cassette recorder. I remember I
(20:18):
had a little boombox that recorded, right, thatmy dad got me from downtown, you know. Yeah,
you'd record off the radio. Right, and you,okay, so you record off the radio. So I would
hold, so we had a little radio built into thewall of the kitchen. It used to be a monitoring
system that you could, it was an intercom toupstairs and you could talk to the upstairs.
And you'd hold the boombox up to it, aren'tyou? But it also had a radio in it, and I would
(20:40):
hold the boombox, waiting for Jay Geil's Angel,is it Angel is the centerfold or Angel in the
centerfold? Angel is the centerfold. Okay, soAngel is the centerfold, waiting for that to
come on. I remember waiting for, you know, LandDown Under is the name of the song for the
Men at Work. Men at Work, yeah. I remember waitingfor those two songs to come on to record them,
(21:03):
right? And then you would just like literallyat the end of every song get ready to press
play and record on your boombox. Boom, holdit up, record it. I mean, talk about lo-fi.
Every one of our mixtapes had like that, youwould hear the DJ like talking in the beginning
of it or the end. Yeah, at the end or the beginningof it, right, exactly. And they'd do like a
funky fade up. Because you used to always talkover the beginning of the song. And now coming
(21:24):
in for do-d
the intro music. So that was part of your mixtape.Which is why, back then, if you listened to
songs from that era, there are a lot of songsthat have eight year long intros. Yes, because
(21:48):
it was for the DJs. Yeah, and they would talkover your intro. That's a good point, I didn't
think about that. You don't have that anymore,you don't listen to a song that has an intro
that's a minute fucking long. You know, likelisten to the original version of Jetliner,
of a Steve Miller band. Da da da. Oh. Junkedygunked down. Yeah. Liddy liddy liddy. It's
like it wasn't for a minute. You have a fuckingcup of coffee. There's like a whole verse.
(22:10):
Do do do. No no no. It's just nothing happened.There's no. Dude, make it mixed. I did, like
it reminds me now of doing that same thing.Recording off of like. Oh yeah. Well, we had
KLOS and the Mighty 690. KLOS. Uh huh. 95.5.You can do better than me. 95.5. I can't do
it. Your voice gets lower. Try it. It does.95.5 KLS That was so smooth. Rock of the 80s.
(22:37):
That's so smooth. Actually K-Rock might havebeen the Rock of the 80s. Rock of the 80s,
yeah. K-Rock was Rock of the 80s, yeah. K-Rock,dude. Great, great station. Still around. Still.
Is it really around still? Yeah, K-Rock's stillon. Really? I'm still making mix tapes off
of K-Rock. Okay. Yeah. I still hold my boombucks. Did you ever make a, boom bucks? Did
(23:00):
you ever make a mix tape for a person and giveit to them? For a girlfriend in high school
or such things? No. Oh, you didn't? No, justlike, maybe one side. That was the thing that
I did! I don't know, I missed that boat. I rememberdoing that for Meredith O'Sullivan. If you're
out there, Merida Sullivan. Haven't seen hersince you did 1990. It was probably the mixtape
(23:23):
you gave her. Yeah, she was on a long time.You fucked up. What'd you put it, yeah, you
put, yeah. You had, well, that's the question.What was on the mixtape? Yeah, what was it?
Well, definitely Peter Gabriel. That was yourfirst idea, Little Red Rain? You gotta put
In Your Eyes on them because of Say Anything,right? Because Say Anything became the ultimate,
like, romantic teen song. Yeah, and she's like,oh my god, another mixtape with Peter Gabriel.
(23:48):
No. Yeah, you fucked that up. I feel completely...If you would've put like a little Def Leppard
animal on there or something like that, it would'vebeen a whole different story. Or, um, hush
hush. Keep it down now, voices carry. Did youjust tilt Tuesday me? That's a great song.
It's a great song. You agree? Oh yeah, Amy Manningjust, bomb voice to this day. Love that song.
(24:12):
Which is why that ended up on a fuck ton ofmix tapes. Right. Before CDs really, really
embedded themselves. Took off and like suckedyou in and that was it, that's all you had.
Dat. and mini disc. Who had deck players? Nobody.Nobody had a mini disc. No, but for a hot minute,
a few things, a few artists, they put out songson mini discs. Yes, they did. I remember that
(24:38):
the mini disc- It was a format that didn't makeit. And you know why the CDs won? Why? Because
you could fit a lot more in your CD wallet toput in your fucking- That's the other thing.
To then use what you were talking about earlier,which is the cassette adapter for the CD disc.
So we went from the CD player in your car. Doyou remember the visor holder? Oh no, what
(24:58):
do you mean do I remember? You had a visor holder?I held like 20 CDs. Right, yeah, held a bunch
of CDs. So I had. You had to take them out ofthe jewel case and stick them in there. Yeah,
but I had this, so you had way more selectionwith CDs because they're skinny, they're flat.
You could. and they're easy to get to whileyou're driving. Just like my ass. Skinny and
flat. Right, exactly. Yeah. Go ahead, sorry.And I had the cassette adapter thingy-dealy.
(25:22):
So you'd shove that cassette In my ass. In theass. In the cassette butt. It worked much better
in the cassette player of the car. Ah, speakfor yourself. I don't know what you're going
for. Did you have a hi-fi ass? What was thatsound like? Was it stereo? I don't believe
it was. Did you have a stereo butthole? Okay,stereo butthole. No, but that's an invention
(25:45):
you need to work out right now. No, that's aband name. Yeah, stereo butthole. Stereo butthole,
wow. Yeah, it's a punk band. Okay, sorry. Yeah.Visor, CDs. Visor, but the cassette that had,
you would stick this funky cassette in the cassetteplayer in your car and have that wire coming
out that went to the Discman thing. Oh yeah,I had one. And then even then though. It would
jump. It would jump, yes. How many times you'dbe driving, hit a little bump, it would skip,
(26:09):
it would skip. That's so annoying. But still.You had that portability and I had like fucking
50 goddamn CDs in my car. Yeah, so you couldhold more CDs than you could cassettes. Lot
more selection. Right, so our cassettes tooka back seat. Everybody put their cassettes
in a brown box, cardboard box they put in garagesat their parents' house. Oh yeah, just stop
listening to them, yeah. And then they wouldjust sit there. Years later, you go back and
(26:30):
be like, oh my God, all these cassettes, saidI love all this music and I don't have a cassette
player. Yeah, and then you would try, but thenyou would plop, bump into a cassette player
and realize that the fucking. the tape had fuckingwarped and it sounded like shit. That's the
problem. And, but the thing is, is that you,there's no nostalgia around cassettes. There's
no nostalgia around CDs because they don't havethe sound that vinyl records have. And vinyl
(26:51):
records had the artwork. Artwork, they had the-The big artwork. Huge! And even CDs did have
like lyric sheets and stuff, but not like thealbums. No, having a 12 inch square that you
could look at artwork and open a pamphlet oran insert that had a fold out photo of Mick
Jagger or whatever, David Bowie. I mean, thatshit's amazing. And they tried to replicate
(27:13):
that with the little booklets and the CD players,but it just wasn't the same thing. It was never
the same. And now, with digital media and digitalmusic, there is no connection to any physical
product. music comes via zeros and ones intoour phone and we don't have any kind of connection
just like art. And you know and you know whatyou know what that killed? Hmm. What did digital
(27:36):
radio star no video killed the radio star accordingto the Buggles. Right. Video killed the radio
star in my mind and in my car. That's excellent.Thank you. Because what did we do? Like, okay,
(27:59):
side A and side B was, no, it's okay, I'm goingsomewhere. Oh, I see, I see. It was all one.
You're saying it's one side versus side A, sideB on an LP or a cassette. It was side A, side
B. Okay, that's true, that's a good point. Inever thought about that. And then once you
got to CD, but CDs you were still listeningto a full album. Yeah, still programmatic.
(28:19):
You're still listening to an album. Then whenyou got to MP3s when the whole Napster thing
happened, now it's single. Nobody's listeningto a fucking album anymore. And that's the
problem now. And I remember when it was firstdigitized and you would listen back to stuff
that was digital. you wouldn't get, like therewould be separations between songs where there
wasn't supposed to be a separation, where songsflow into each other programmatically, and
(28:40):
it was problematic to listen to. But now theyfixed that, but that took a while to index
those things properly. But you're right, thatis interesting. I never thought about the fact
that the side A, side B thing went away. Becauseside A, side B really is like act one, act
two of a storytelling experience. record, well,what we'll call it albums. I mean, it's not
(29:06):
vinyl, it's not cassette. The album. was a lotof them were designed that way. Right, programmatic.
Right, where that very, very last song was likethat one weird, like, it was like fucking Darling
Nikki or something off of 1999 or. Or the Beatles,a majesty is a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't
have a lot to say, it's 30 seconds of her majesty.And so on side A, you'd have like a banger
(29:30):
coming right out, but then usually the singlewas like two or three deep. Yeah, yeah. And
then side B, that first song on side B had tobe fucking. a banger again. Yeah, yeah. Blah,
blah, blah. Once you got the CDs. Say it's yourbirthday. It completely changed. You had, the
order changed. Yep. And then after that, itwas like. You're right. Nobody's listening
anymore. I never thought about that before inmy entire lifetime that with CDs you have A
(29:55):
through Z without a separation. Yeah. Song onethrough 10, one through 12. You don't have
act one, act two anymore. Yeah. You've cut thatout. It was very different. And then once you
go all digital. The choice of the order of songswas very, very different because you didn't
have a side A side B. Sequencing was different.You're right. That's true. That's a very good
point. And then with digital, or not with digital,I'm sorry, with MP3s it went away because now
(30:16):
it's just, it's all single driven. Nobody'slistening to the record. And you know what
that killed too, were concept albums. My Butthole?Do you have a concept album about your Butthole?
If you did, if you did, and I'm not saying youdo, but you might. I love it. Because I know
you. What's it called? What would you call aconcept album by your butt hole? I would call
it Flat and Skinny.
(30:45):
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