Stranger Things Soundtrack: Season 1 Episode 1 - The Story of White Rabbit, Africa and More!

When the Netflix show Stranger Things was released in 2016 it created a surge in interest for all things 80s including the music. Today we dive deep on the songs included in Season 1, Episode 1: "The Vanishing of Will Byers". The stories behind these songs are amazing! There is murder, suicide, drugs, an attempt to drug the President of the United States, a hang glider accident (it's true!) along with several iconic songs. So put the kick stand and your dirt bike down and join us for the first in our series on Stranger Things: The Music!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, Shirley fans. For the last three years, Jason and
I have been bringing you the stories behind all of
your favorite movies from the eighties. But today we begin
a new series.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
In twenty sixteen, the Duffer Brothers introduced the world to
Stranger Things. This show not only changed the way we
all watch television, but surprisingly also truly impacted the music
we listened to, from Africa to Running Up That Hill.
Stranger Things has brought back songs of our past and
introduced them to a whole new generation.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
So the Surely You Can't Be Serious Podcasts begins a
new series bringing you the stories behind the songs of
Stranger Things.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
All right, d I know we're talking about the songs here,
but I feel like we need to do something to
intro these songs, something to get us kicked off.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
You're thinking, maybe recap Rap?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Could Doctor Fresh show up today?

Speaker 1 (00:53):
I think we can get Doctor Fresh out of his hole? Yes,
all right, let's bring it. Recap Rap Chapter one, The
Vanishing of Will Buyers fires.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Our story d gins in eighty three The Boys Up
Late play a dn D. Will, Lucas, and Dustin are
all at Mike's Fuck the Gout Ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Home on the old school bikes. Okay, here's the hook
of the feature. Will is snatched by some mystery creature.
Next day, Mama Joyce calls the low.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Cool Copper, a big old boy named Chief Jim Hopper.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
The search is on, but it's the worst. She fears.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Brother Johnathan is shedding tears. Will is gone and the
guilt Hey bears hold up. One kid missing and another appears.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
The new one's a.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Girl named yet unknown, tattoo shaved head and a psyche ward.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Down a psyche board down. Beimy catches our girl stealing
some fries.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
We can't get her to talk no matter what, each
except one clue that she is given.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Her name ain't a name, Her name's eleven.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Meanwhile, Nancy, Mike's older sister is mooching upstairs.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
With her brand new mister, Steve Harrington.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Steve Harrington, Harrington, Steve Herrington. An agent appears and Benny
gets killed, but they can't stop Eleven.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
This girl is skilled.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
The boys go searching out in the rain, and suddenly
they find their friend.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
No wait, it's a girl, not their body. Will. What's
her name, don't know? Let's call her l Let's call
her El.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
That was awesome.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
D thanks man, I mean Doctor Fresh lit.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
I mean Doctor Fresh obviously.

Speaker 4 (02:48):
Right, Okay, let know, okay, everybody, we're back for the
Surely you Can't Be Serious podcast. We are recording not
only audio, but we're recording video today because we're going
to start the YouTube channel officially. If you have been
our loyal podcast listeners, be sure and go over to
YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you
are joining us for the first time on video, go

(03:10):
check out our podcast. You can find us by searching
up Surely you Can't Be Serious podcasts on whatever your
favorite podcasting platform is.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Right, We're on Facebook and Twitter at Shirley Podcast. We've
got an Instagram page. We're all over the place.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
We've been talking to each other for years now, and
I can talk to you like this really up close
and personal because you don't have nose here. Thank you?
Are you using anything in particular?

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Actually, I have this great product by Manscape. It's called
the weed Whacker. Turn it on, you stick it up
your little nostrils, cuts all the noshares, gets rid of them.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
I don't know. Manscape has stuff for your nose.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Manscape's got stuff for your nose. It's got stuff for
your balls. It's great stuff.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
That's actually what I use my Manscape stuff for. It's
good for trimming down there. But they also have products
for smelling good down there. I use the Manscape stuff
on my face too. Hey, listen, these guys to make
any comment about the fact that I use Manscape stuff
on my balls. And hey, Manscape makes great products.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yes, and this is like a gift that you can
give for your wife, right taking care of yourself looking good,
looking trim It's just like getting a haircut.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
You want to look good for your wife. Guys, you
gotta remember draft looks taller on the planes than it
does on the forest. And as a special treat for
listeners of our show, when you go to manscape dot
com and you find what you want, if you just
put in the promo code Serious twenty, then you'll get
twenty percent off of whatever you order, which can be
a sizable savings. It's some of the stuff that they have,

(04:34):
but let me say all worth it.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, these products are stuff that you need, your wife
wants you to get, and we're offering you a twenty
percent discount.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
High quality stuff that we have tested out.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Multiple Times product, Let's talk Stranger Things. Are you ready
to do this?

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Or let us jump in and talk about Stranger Things
music For everybody who is used to us talking about movies,
We're not gonna be talking about the episodes other than
to tell you where you can confined this piece of
music in the particular episode. We'll have discussions about the
awesomeness of Stranger Things later on, but today we're talking music. Guys,

(05:09):
if this is your first time to join us, we
are super excited to jump into all of the songs
behind the Stranger Things episodes. We will be talking about suicides,
we will be talking about serial killers, we will be
talking about LSD, We'll be talking about all kinds of
crazy things, and it's literally nothing to do with the
show itself. These are the stories of the bands and

(05:32):
the musicians behind the music. So this series of episodes
is going to be killer.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
That doesn't even include a crazy hang lighting accident and
an attempt to poison the President of the United States.
It's going to be amazing. The stories behind these songs
are crazy crazy.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Before we get into those stories, we need to say
thank you to our executive producer of this episode, Miss.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Jill McCormick, who is a really a good friend sort
of a friend of her friend. She is friends with Mingle.
Remember Melissa Mingle from our Duran Duran Rio episode. Melissa
came on and expressed her on Dine love for John
Taylor and then also helped us with the Rio episode.
If you haven't heard her, go back and listen to that.
But Jill McCormick sort of found us through her and
is now our executive producer for this episode. Jill, thank

(06:17):
you so much.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Thank you, Jill. If you want to be an executive
producer of our episode, it's so simple. You go to
patreon dot com, backslash Shirley podcast that's s U R
e l y podcast and for as little as five
dollars a month, cup of coffee if you will for
Jason and I to split, you become an executive producer.
There are more tears after that, and you can get
fun exciting prizes. Would you like to model our cup? Oh? Yes?

(06:40):
Oh nice? Yeah, Shirley can't be serious tumbler, so be
sure and check out our Patreon page. If you can't
do that, be sure and subscribe to the podcast. If
you're on the YouTube channel. Be sure and subscribe to
our YouTube channel as well. Leave us a five star
rating comment below. I've got another surprise that I'll say
for later on the show for those people who are

(07:00):
joining our YouTube channels.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Awesome, awesome. Hey, we're not asking for free money here.
We actually have value. We release a podcast a month
on one hit Wonders. We've done the seventies, we've done
the eighties, we've done the nineties. We think it's really
cool and some of our best work is over on
the Patreon.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, those are exclusive episodes for Patreon members only, so
if you want to get into that content, definitely subscribe
on our Patreon. Fantastic And if you are listening to
us for the first time on YouTube and you want
to subscribe to the podcast, we will put a link
for you down below. Okay, so we are jumping in
November sixth, nineteen eighty three. This is season one, episode

(07:39):
one of Stranger Things. Interestingly enough, when we started looking
at this, I didn't get a whole lot of eighties music.
I was surprised. I was like, okay, wait a minute,
what so I'm gonna take you back because we've got
songs from the sixties but I'm gonna take you further back.
I'm gonna take you back to the fifties. Okay, I'm
not gonna take you back to the nineteen fifties. I'm
gonna take you back to the eighteen fifties. What I'm

(08:02):
gonna blow your mind here, my friend. Okay, now listen.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
For those of you who are on YouTube and don't
know D very well yet, D likes to chase and
follow down rabbit holes. He is the white Rabbits.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yes, yes, do you remember? Do you remember the matrix?
That's the very first scene with Neo follow the White Rabbit?
You got the girl with the tattoo? Important. But before
I get to that, let me tell you about eighteen
fifty three. This guy who's a photographer, his name is
Charles Lutridge Dodgson. He's out taking some pictures of a church.
And this is the eighteen fifties. So these little girls

(08:34):
see him and they're fascinated by a camera. I mean,
nobody's seen cameras back then. This is an incredible thing.
So they go over and they start talking to him,
and he befriends them, This twenty something year old man
and these ten twelve year old girls, okay, And he
becomes friends with their family, and he starts taking photographs
of the girls. He just happens to have clothes and
costumes for kids at his studio. Yes, I know, it

(08:55):
sounds a little weird, okay, And he stays friends with
the family. Fast forward a few years to eighteen sixty two.
He and the girls are on a boat ride together.
They're going from Oxford to God's Boat okay, and the
girls are bored, and so he makes up a story
and he uses one of the little girls as the
character in the story. Her name is Alice Liddell. And

(09:19):
she's so impressed with the story, little ten year old Alice,
that she encourages him to write it down. And so
what Charles Lutledge Dodson does is he takes his first
two names and he rearranges the letters to create a
new name. And that new name is Lewis Carroll, and
the little girl Alice becomes Alice in Wonderland.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
You're blowing my mind already. We're ten minutes in. You're
blowing my mind.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
And we haven't even gotten to the twentieth century yet,
I know, right, Okay, Well, let's jump forward to the
twentieth century. Nineteen fifty three may author named Aldus Huxley.
Have you heard of him before?

Speaker 2 (09:53):
No?

Speaker 1 (09:54):
So he's he's got a book called he Alice. Yes,
he's got a book called Brave New World. It's kind
of a dystopian future book. Okay. But he's got another
book that you probably have heard of. It's called The
Doors of Perception. You think you've heard of that before.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
Sounds familiar.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Okay. We may touch on that here in just a
little bit. Okay. So in fifty three he comes across
this guy, the scientist named Humphrey Osmond, who has been
doing tests with hallucinogenic chemicals found in peyote, and so
Alvius Huxley corresponds with him. They get together, he takes
some of the mescaline from the payote and has a

(10:28):
hallucinogenic experience, which he then writes about in this book
called The Doors of Perception. Humphrey Osmond, by the way,
is the guy who first used the word psychedelic to
describe the feeling that you get when you take these drugs,
and Alvis Huxley was the first one to use the
word in print, and The Doors of Perception later inspired

(10:49):
a band to take their name, and that band was
The Doors. So psychedelic becomes very important in the sixties,
and there's an entire movement of music called psychedelic rock.
And for the first several songs that we have on

(11:11):
Stranger Things, it's psychedelic rock.

Speaker 5 (11:14):
It is.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
That's for sure, Yes, good much. By the way, for
the record delly Man that I have ever heard of
with the name Alice is Alice Cooper.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
School's out for summer, my friend, I said, Aldus, Aldus Huxley. Okay,
all right, okay, So we're gonna go track by track
through this episode as the music appears. Except the very
first song that you're gonna hear is actually the theme
of Stranger Things, which was composed by Kyle Dixon and
Michael Stein, and we will talk about that song, but

(11:49):
not today. There are far too many songs in this episode.
We'll talk about those guys. We'll talk about the music
supervisor Nora Felder later on, but today we've got so
much music to cover that we have to just dive
in to the first song, first needle drop, if you will.
The diegetic music, the music that we hear as background
music in the episode first song out of the Gate

(12:11):
Can't Seem to Make You Mine?

Speaker 2 (12:23):
I'm okay.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
So this song is by The Seeds, off of their
debut album, which was also called The Seeds. At this
point their garage rock. They would eventually become psychedelic rock,
but this one is still more in the garage rock realm.
This song pops up in the episode at sixteen minutes
and thirteen seconds when Hopper arrives at the police station

(12:49):
and everybody is busting his balls.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
You know what mornings are for, d Right coffee and contemplation. Right,
coffee and con in place, there's a kidnapped child in Loguit.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
So this band formed in La in nineteen sixty five.
That album, The Seeds, was released in nineteen sixty five,
but it didn't chart until they re released it in
nineteen sixty seven, which is about the time that psychedelic
rock is really starting to take off. That's right. The
lead singer for the band is a guy named Sky Saxon.
He wrote this song. The band would later change their

(13:36):
name to Sky Saxon and the Seeds after certain members left,
but this song is really very subtle in the background
of this kind of hilarious scene Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
So this is the first song that the Seeds recorded.
I thought it was interesting. They played this song late
at night on AM radio stations and it became like
a sixties cult classic.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah. People would stay up late just to hear this song.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yes, and it didn't really even become a hit until
after their song Pushing Too Hard became a hit, and
that was psychedelic rock.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
I've got some stuff I want to talk to you about.
Sky Saxon, Tell me about Skysack. All right, So the
lead singer of the Seeds is this guy named Sky Saxon.
They don't really know how old he is because quote
unquote age is not important. Right, We're already getting into
the flowery stuff already.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Honestly, that was one of the conclusions of Aldous Huxley
and his books The Doors of Perception. It's kind of crazy.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
There you go, right, keep on going, keep okay. So
here's the deal. So in nineteen seventy three he becomes
a member of this religious group called the Source Family
Religious Group, and it started by this guy named Father Yode.
He also went by the name Yohoah. Okay, okay, all right,
sound like a word you may have heard religious leader
from Yeah, yeah, it's yes. It's a little bit like

(14:47):
Jehovah yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Or yeahweh yeah or you know Yoda. So yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
So anyway, you have this group called the Source Family
Religious Group. It's born out of this guy and even
father Yode, who had this health food restaurant on the
Sunset Strip. It's organic, it's health food. It's kind of
the hot new thing. And he wasn't just nobody. He
had regular clients like John Lennon and Marlon Brando. Okay,

(15:14):
I mean these are legit people, right. She is Seeds
for the elite exactly exactly. So they start this religious
group in the Hollywood Hills. They have a commune, right
and Sky Sackson jumps right in and he joins in
nineteen seventy three. Okay, Now, the funny part is not
that this lead singer of the Seeds joined this religious group.

(15:34):
The funny part is how this guy, father Yode came
to his unfortunate demise.

Speaker 5 (15:39):
Okay, you with me.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
So the religious groups in California for a while, and
then he decides he wants to get out of California,
so he moves to Hawaii and then on December twenty sixth,
nineteen seventy four, The day after Christmas, Father Yode decides
I would like to go hang gliding. He's never been
hang gliding in his life. Okay, so go ahead and
go off the highest cliff. So he goes off a

(16:02):
thirteen hundred foot cliff, crashes his hang glider on the beach. Boom.
It's like, I'm totally hurt.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Right, how is he?

Speaker 2 (16:13):
So they haul him off to the hospital. Nine hours
later he is dead. So Father Yoda passes away day
after Christmas nineteen seventy four from a tragic overzealous hang
glider accident.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
More like Father chowed. Okay, are we done with Are
we done with the seeds?

Speaker 2 (16:33):
I am done with the seeds?

Speaker 1 (16:34):
All right, let's keep rolling. Song number two that we have.
We get to introduce a band that will be very
important a little bit later on. Okay, and this band
is Jefferson Airplane. So Jefferson Airplane was founded by a

(16:56):
guy named Marty Bayley. Yes, here's the cool part. He
was very business savvy about the way that he did this.
He has this band. He knows that bands have to
play some good clubs to get notoriety. So he starts
his own club. He gets like three other investors to
pay three thousand each and they start this club. And
it's like the club for the musicians to go to

(17:18):
and see other musicians. And so you have bands like
the Grateful Dead, you have bands like the Steve Miller
Blues Band. You have bands like the Doors that come
in there and play. And one of the bands that
came in there and played was the band called the
Great Society, and they had this really groovy chick singing

(17:41):
for them. She had started this band with her husband,
but she was really above and beyond where that band was.
And so a little bit later on Jefferson Airplane loses
their lead singer, their female lead singer. She decides that
she's gonna go start her family. Yeah, she is not
going to be a lead singer for this ban anymore.
So they are looking for another female lead and they

(18:04):
really said, there's only two options, Janis Joplin or Gray Slick.
They're the only two women who are out here singing
in San Francisco right now. And San Francisco is the
hub of the world at this point. If you're going
to San Francisco, sure you're gonna see lots of flowers
in your hair, right, yes, And so they go to
talk to Gray Slick and within minutes she says, yeah,

(18:28):
I'm in. I'm leaving my husband's band, right. And she
brought two songs with her, one of which we'll talk
about it in a little while. The other one Somebody
to Love, written by her brother in law for the
Great Society. She brings that over with them and it's
the band's first really big single.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah for sure.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
So this song she Has Funny Cars is the first
song on the first album with Gray Slick, and they
had also gotten a new drummer named Spencer Dryden, who
was a huge force in the band. By the way,
half nephew of Charlie Chaplin, get out of there. I'd
like to blow your mind with these tidbits, right, okay.

(19:07):
So this song she Has Funny Cars is the opening
track of Surrealistic Pillow, one of the very first pioneering
psychedelic albums, and it appears in our episode at twenty
one minutes and forty one seconds where we get the
introduction of young eleven.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
You can do whatever you Yes, I've got to throw
this out at you. This is what blew me away
A Jefferson Airplane. You know this, nore my gosh, okay, no,
tell me, you're giving me new information. I'm excited, all right,
I'm on the edge of my seat. This is what
a Jefferson airplane is, so you ready. So it's a

(19:54):
match wooden match that's split in half in order to
work as a roach clip so you can hold your joint.
That's a Jefferson airplane. Okay, I did not know that
kind of makes sense, right, Yeah, I got something for
you on Marty Balen.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
Marty Balen is the guy who wrote this song she
has funny cars.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
He's also the co lead singer of Jefferson Airplane. He
had a song in nineteen eighty one. Okay, do you
know that song?

Speaker 5 (20:20):
No, I play it for you right, Yeah, I know
that song.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yes, one hit Wonder from nineteen eighty one. Marty Balen
going solo after breaking out of Jefferson Airplane. With the
song Hearts reached number eight in nineteen eighty one.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, he was. His departure from the band had to
do with the cocaine that was being used and it
was too much for him.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, he couldn't take it. Yeah, by the way. Another
claim to fame by Marty Balen. Yeah, he managed to
get punched out during the Altmont concert, the giant free,
three hundred thousand people concert in California.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Ah, the one where the guy got stabbed.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yes, a young man who got angry and tried to
storm the stage, and the Hell's Angels with their motorcycle
chains and weighted pulques did not take very kindly. The
Hell's Angels were working security at this concert. They hired
the Hell's Angels, yes, to be security. Yeah, and who
would have thought violence broke out?

Speaker 1 (21:29):
That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
They were paid five hundred dollars worth of beer. Well,
you get what you paint, you get what you paid for. Yeah,
and Marty Balen managed to get punched out by one
of the Hell's Angels.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
All right, we are going to talk more about Jefferson
Airplane and just a little bit when we get to
a slightly more well known song.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Before we leave this song, I want to throw this
at Jack. When was the last time we talked about Jefferson.
I think it was Starship at the time.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Jefferson's Starship. We've talked about him a couple of times, Okay,
I talked about Sarah in our very first episode Michael
Jackson Bad versus Thriller. By the way, guys, if you
want to go check that out on the podcast. Great, Yeah,
a great couple of episodes. Yeah, but that was were
they were they in that atrocity from nineteen seventy.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
You got it. Yes, when we and the guys from
the thirty something podcast got together and we talked about
the Star Wars Holiday special.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
There are a few things in life that I like
better than getting together with the guys from the thirty
something Movie podcast. Be sure and go check those guys out.
They are a barrel of fun every single time. But
that is one of my favorite episodes to go listen to.
And yes, cloud City, we built this Cloud City on Rocket.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yes, because Wookies and Han Solo and Prince Lea means
Jefferson Starship.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
Guess okay, sure does?

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (22:58):
All right, So we will talk more about Jefferson Airplane
a little bit later on when we get to their
more well known song about this City, not that one, okay,
and we and we will give a little more detail
that it will be fun. But for now, let us
move on to the next song in the episode is

(23:19):
called I Shall Not Care by Pearls Before Swine. This
one appears at twenty six minutes and forty eight seconds
into the episode, where Benny is grilling a burger and
grilling Young eleven, trying to get her to answer some questions,
but she has remained totally silent up until this point,
given them both the grilection. Okay, So this song I

(23:45):
Shall Not Care comes off of the album One Nation Underground, Okay,
and it's this Pearls before Swine is a quote from
the Bible.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
It is It's hoss full of Matthew I believe.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, it's an interesting quote from the Bible that we
don't necessarily need to get into it here. But the
band took that name. The record company is ESP. This
is ESP's most successful album, with somewhere between one hundred
and two hundred and fifty thousand sales. This is probably
not a band that you've heard.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Of as not a band I've heard of, right, So
still psychedelic, but this is more like psychedelic folk.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
And we're still definitely in the sixties right on this album.
Other than I Shall Not Care, we have a couple
of other songs. One of those songs is called Oh

(24:41):
Dear Miss Morris. Okay, oh Dear Miss Morse. It is
a banjo and an organ and Morris code, and the
Morris code spells out f you see this is radio friendly.
So I'm not going to say what the last letter is,
but I bet you walk in guess so in North's code.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
In Mort's code, yes, so like in a banjo, Moore
is like yeah, I don't.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
Yeah, all right, okay. So the album cover for this
one is a scene from Bosh's Hell, and as I mentioned,
it's called One Nation Underground. I don't really know that
the air as biblical as their band name may sound. Okay,
but this particular song was based upon a poem by

(25:29):
Sarah Teesdale. Sarah Teesdale was a Pulitzer winning poet, and
the poem that this song is based on is thought
by many to be her suicide note. Okay, interesting, interesting,
you got me nineteen thirty three, she overdosed on pills
and because of the lines of this poem, everybody believed

(25:52):
this was her suicide note. And that's what I Shall
not care is based upon.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Wow, you're blowing my mind right there. That's fantastic, and
that is all I have on this band and this song,
and I have nothing else to contribute. Well, that's okay,
it's minor. It moves on, Okay, let's move along. So
the next song in the episode is Jenny May by
trader Horn.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Hey, Jenny May, I have coming out to play trader
Horn again, another psychedelic folk. We're still in the sixties.
Four songs in and we're still in the sixties in
this obviously eighties throwback series. What's going on?

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Right?

Speaker 1 (26:42):
All right? I don't know, but let me tell you
about trader Horn. Okay, all right. Trader Horn is a
British duo composed of Judy Diibel and Jackie McCollough. They
only made one album, which is where, of course this
song appears.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
That one album is called Morning Way, released nineteen seventy.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Nice good job. So it's not quite sixties. We've moved
on to the seventies, but were still a far afield
from the eighties. And so trader Horn, you like this.
This is a deep hole. This is a rabbit hole.
I followed the white rabbit down this hole. Okay, okay.
So that trader Horn is named after DJ John Peel's nanny,

(27:23):
whose name was Florence Horn. Okay, you remember who DJ
John Peel is. No, we talked about him when we
did our def Leopard episode. He was a DJ in
the UK that was very popular and at the time
was very into punk and new wave, but he thought
def Leopard was great and so he played their EP

(27:43):
over and over again and is probably a key to
them becoming famous.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
So his nanny the Horn. And there was also an
actual explorer named Trader Horn who used to go like
he went down to Africa and tried to free slaves
and a princess that was being held captive. It's very
secondhand lions swashbuckling stuff. Mario, Yeah, right, so this song appears.

(28:09):
This is such a great part. This song appears when
Benny is making a call and Eleven fixes a broken fan.
She does.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
She's very handy though.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
She is just This comes in at twenty eight minutes
and fifty eight seconds. She is chowing down on some
French fries and there is a squeaky fan and she's
unhappy with it. It's annoying. She stares and suddenly the
fan doesn't work anymore.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
It's our first inkling that she has some sort of
supernatural powers again. This is episode one of Stranger Things,
so we're learning all about this universe. There's something special
about this girl.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, And at this point when the fan does stop
in the song Jenny May, it cranks up this haunting
verse that Judy Daibel is singing, and it's very creepy
and beautiful at the same time. Very impactful moment just
from this pretty well unknown song from a very un
known band. Right, So I looked a little bit. They

(29:03):
were making their way. They toured with Humble Pie and
Yes and Genesis. They set up a music festival to
like launch the band. They had made their album, and
then just before the music's festival was about to happen,
quit the band. She quit Judy Dible quit the band Okay,
and she went to go make music with her husband
and they did that for a little while, and just

(29:23):
three years later she retired from music. Didn't sing another
beautiful haunting thing again for over three decades, and then
she came back out in two thousand and four. What Yeah,
So she had several releases since two thousand and four.
She just passed away a couple of years ago in
twenty twenty, and some of those old Trader Horn songs

(29:45):
have grown in popularity over the years. The singles are
considered by some to be collector's items.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
At this point, fantastic, good job, thanks blow my mind.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Okay, so we're four songs in and we still haven't
hit the eighties.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
What's the deal?

Speaker 1 (30:00):
I don't know. But what we have now is young
Nancy in her room getting ready to study. Steve the
tool at this time is sneaking up the fire escape
and we hear Nancy listening to the song that sounds
very eighties. It's called Every Little Bit by Jackie James
and Ian Kernow. The only problem is it was made

(30:24):
in the twenty first century. What So this scene pops
up at thirty eight minutes and nine seconds and we're
well over the halfway mark and just now hearing an

(30:47):
eighties sounding song. It sounds like Madonna almost, but it's not.
It is this new song by Jackie James and Ian Kernow.
You got any info on it?

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Okay? So here's what I got on this, Okay. Yeah,
So when you and I were talking about this, we
agreed both to us it sounded like Madonna.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
When I was doing some research, I found a bunch
of people who said Budge of UK and European people
who said sounds like Kylie Minogue.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Kylie Mino was the she. I mean, she had a
very Madonna kind of sound.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
She did.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
She was engaged to Michael Hutchins. Michael Hutchins of Xcess.
We talked about that. Be sure and check out are
Xcess versus George Michael Faith Versus Kick episode on the podcast.
But please go ahead, Kylie.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Here's the deal with Kylie Minogue. Okay, she was a
TV star beautiful.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
And I was a fire griver.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
My goodness, so she followed the sort of Madonna tremula, right, Yeah,
of let me be as sexy as possible, also make
good music, and I'll say a ton of records, and
that's what happened.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Right.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
So you and I both thought it sounded like Madonna.
A lot of other people thought it sounded like Kylie Minogue. Well,
it turns out that Ian Kernow worked with Kylie Minogue
and so there's a definite connection there. So. Jackie James
is a Scottish singer, songwriter and keyboard player. She wrote
a song called Heartbeat for a group called Steps. Okay,

(32:23):
so apparently This was huge in the UK was a
number one hit, million seller. By the way, the B
side of that single was a remake of a song
called Tragedy by The Begs. Go back check out our
Beg Saturday Night Fever episode.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
Now, I was just sitting here thinking, how Kylie Minogue
the A song that I remember is the Locomotion do.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
The Local Motion? Yeah, big hit in nineteen eighty eight
for me, Kylie Minogue is Can't Get You out of
My Head that video. Okay, So, but anyway, Ian Kernow
is a partner with her in this powerhouse music. So
Jackie James writes and sings. Ian Kernow he writes and sings.
But he was a keyboardist in an eighties rock fand
that you may have heard of called Talk Talk.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
I don't recognize that.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
They had one humongous hit called It's My Life. Oh yeah, yes,

(33:26):
nineteen eighty four, big hit It's My Life. Gwen Stefani
actually redid it and it became a hit again. Yes,
So I and her now keyboardist for Talk Talk.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Okay, good back to Jackie James for a second. Okay, okay,
So Jackie James has written songs for Kylie Minogue okay,
super hot, Jennifer Lopez okay, super hot yea, and Celine
Dion not.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
She has her days. No, just as long as she's
not covering ac DC.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yes, that was the worst. I loved how Ian Kernow
he's on Twitter. He's active on Twitter. We maybe need
to tag him in this one, he says. According to him,
making music is the greatest job in the entire world,
except maybe Formula one racers. Okay, there you go. That's
all I got, every little bit a modern song made

(34:19):
to sound like the eighties and they pull it off.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
Okay, yeah, love it all right, moving on to move on?

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
So now we're back with Jefferson Airplane once again, and
this is probably their most well known song of all time.
I would have told you had I not gone back
and looked at it like I did, that this was
like one of those epically long songs. It's less than
three minutes long.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
Really.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah. Okay, So the song that we're talking about, second
song by Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit one.

Speaker 5 (34:53):
It makes you Larger, makes you soon.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
And the ones mothers don't do anything glass. Okay.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
So we talked about Alice in Wonderland. We talked about
Alvis Huxley and the Doors of Perception, talked about the
idea of psychedelic and psychedelic rock and how Alvis Huxley
took this mescaline with Humphrey Osmond and had this hallucinogenic experience.

(35:31):
So part of the hallucinogenic movement of this time was
this new drug that had been discovered called lysergic acid
dithalamide better known as l s D. Chest Now, how

(35:57):
does that relate to this song? First, I mentioned earlier
that Gray Slick had written this song while she was
still with the Great Society. Well, she had decided to
try LSD and this song was written as she was
coming down off of that high. Wow, and you sent
me something as far as the first lyrics in this

(36:18):
song go, that really drive that point home.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Yes, So in the lyrics it says one pill makes
you larger, one makes you small, and the one that
mother gives you don't do anything at all, larger, small,
don't LSD?

Speaker 1 (36:38):
I love it. I would have never gotten there and
that is fantastic information. Love it.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
So, of course this song is completely based on Alice
in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll that we talked play and
some people even think, oh, did Lewis Carroll drop acid? No,
it hadn't been invented for like fifty years later. You know,
it was not going to be around. And he was
a deacon at an Angelican church there. He wasn't doing drugs, right, Okay,

(37:06):
he just wasn't. All right, He's taken photographs of little girls,
but he was not doing drugs.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Once LSD was discovered, they started using it for medicinal purposes.
They tested it with military, tested it with the FBI.
They used it to try to cure certain things. I mean,
it was treated as a drug, but the psychedelic effects
soon found their home in the counterculture that was going
on in the sixties. One of the guys that was

(37:32):
pushing hard for his students at Harvard to try the
drug was a guy named Timothy Leary. Yeah, I've heard
this guy. Yeah, So he became enemy number one as
far as Richard Nixon was concerned, which brings us to
another interesting story that we'll tell in just a minute.
But because Richard Nixon decided that this lysergic acid dithalamide

(37:56):
was bad stuff. He enacted the Controlled Substances Act thirty
something years ago, and all experimentation and scientific research on
the drug stopped until recently and they started doing stuff
with it again, using it in microdose forms, and it
has actually been effective in curing things like ADHD and

(38:18):
depression and other mental illnesses. So I don't know that
that's what everybody was using it for back then, but
it's just an interesting history on this particular drug.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
So you're telling me hyperactive kids, if they get a
little bit of this and they start watching the walls
melt and stuff happen, then they chill out. It makes
still the heck out. It makes still the sense. So
this song was written in December of nineteen sixty five
by Grace Slick. It was released June twenty fourth, nineteen
sixty seven. She wrote it on a piano she bought
for about fifty bucks. Right it was missing keys in

(38:52):
the upper register. She said it didn't matter because she
could hear it in her head.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
It's awesome.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Parents thought that this is like encouraging children to drugs.
She wrote it as a slap at parents for reading
us these stories like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan
who sprinkles magic white dust on everything to make everything better.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Wizard of Oz. They fall asleep in the Poppies, right.

Speaker 5 (39:15):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yeah, Marty Balen calls this Grace Slicks masterpiece.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
It absolutely is. Let me just talk for a minute
about the makeup of the song itself. We haven't talked
to actual music stuff, so I'm gonna nerd music on
you for just a minute, okay, and then we can
get back to just how awesome this song is.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
How boykay.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
So there's a piece called Ballero by a composer named Ravel.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yes, and I've seen that Bo Derek movie.

Speaker 6 (39:39):
That's okay, my kids are gonna watch it. I was
a Cannon movie, by the way, I know.

Speaker 7 (39:50):
Right.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
So this song, the rhythm and the chord progression and
the scale in the song is based upon Revel's Ballero,
and it's got like the militaristic kind of drum beat
behind it, and you've got a Phrygian scale, which is
more Latin music. That was kind of the thing with
psychedelic rock is they were taking things beyond just the

(40:15):
blues influence of standard rock and bringing in stuff by
Robbie Shankar, who is bringing in the sitar and Eastern influences.
George Harrison was big for bringing that in as well.
But they have a definitely different sound to them than
just a standard rock song. And so you're listening to
this Phrygian scale with this Latin sound, and you would

(40:37):
expect this minor chord to come in, but what he
does instead is he plays a major chord, which is
not what you expect, and so it's unsettling, it's weird.
It makes you feel unusual. It's almost as if you're
in the upside down and Will the cheshire Cat is
smiling at you, but there's evil behind his smile. All

(41:00):
songs that were popular at this time would have a
standard build and then you slow down, build again, have
a break, and it gives people this little release. This song,
there is no break it one build, build, build, just
like Ravel's Ballero. It just keeps on building and you
almost think it's going to break, but then the song

(41:20):
ends and it is entrancing, amazing, mind blowing, and when
they go and they perform it, it would stock. You
can go watch the video on this and I told
you after I listened to it, hair on my neck
and arms were standing up and I was like holding
back the tears. It is incredible what she does with

(41:41):
her voice in this song. Incredible, Grace Slick. I think
I failed to mention that this song comes in in
this episode at thirty eight minutes and fifty seconds and
the little part I like to call ice cream and guns.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Ice cream and guns.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
We lose poor Benny.

Speaker 7 (41:56):
Ah.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
I like Benny.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, Benny and eleven are having a conversation while she's
eating ice cream. She's seeing that people can be friendly
and a social worker shows up, except it's not a
social worker, and Benny gets shot on the head. Yeah,
And it's this moment that suddenly we eleven. Here's the
gun shots that you get the climax of the song

(42:20):
and it cranks up the volume and it's remember what
the dormouse said, feed your head, Feed your head. And
she's escaped out of the back.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
This is her transport to Wonderland essentially.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
Yeah, and before she gets out the back door, she's
confronted by a couple of guys with guns, who within
a few seconds we see lying dead on the floor.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
More supernatural powers from eleven. Yeah, so I got some
stuff for young Grace Slick Okay, I got some Gray
Slick stories which I thought were hilarious. Yeay, all right.
So in nineteen seventy one, after she had been married
to Jerry Slick, who was a member of the Great
Society Band, she's in Jefferson Airplane and she hooks up
with Paul Canner okay, and he plays guitar in Jefferson Airplane.

(43:02):
They have a daughter together, and when they're in the hospital,
the nurse comes in and says, oh, little girl, congratulations.
What's her name? And Grace sees a cris fix around
her neck and she says God, and the nurse says,
what was that again? She said God, but we use
a little g because we want her to stay humble.

(43:23):
So the nurse is like, oh my gosh, so she leaves.
She calls the San Francisco Chronicle and says, Grace Slick
just named her daughter God.

Speaker 8 (43:31):
This is before Hippa, apparently exactly patient privacy here. Turns
out it was just a joke. Her daughter's name is
actually China. So anyway, Grace Slick story number two, you're
ready for this, Yeah, Grace Slick gets an invitation to
go to a tee at the White House.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
Oh yeah, because she went to school with Nixon's daughter.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
She's actually ten years older than her, so they didn't
ever attend school together. But she was a Finch College alumni.
Oh okay, and she got an invotation, but the invitation
was addressed to Grace by her maiden name. So Grace
and a friend hatched this plan that they're going to
go to the White House and they're going to put
LSD in Richard Nixon's t Yes, but when she gets there,

(44:14):
they won't let her boyfriend in because it's women's only,
and she finally just says nope. So Grace Slick was
going to attempt to drug the President of the United States. Also,
Grace Slick is credited with being the first person to
say the old mf or on national television.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Was on The Cabot Show. Yes, by the.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Way, White Rabbit reaches number eight on the Hot one hundred. Yeah,
there's a whole bunch of songs that I've never heard of,
so I'm not going to go through this list for you,
but number two was a song called I Was Made
to Love Her by Stevie Wonder, and the number one song.
On July twenty ninth, nineteen sixty seven, the week that
White Rabbit reaches its pinnacle of number eight, is a
song called Light My Fire by the Doors.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
It comes full circle. I'm really glad that you meant that,
because the Doors took their name after the Alvis Huxley book.
They also played at Marty Balen's club that I was
talking about earlier, right. Another group that played at that
club was the Steve Miller Blues Band, who had a
member that went on to form his own solo band.

(45:18):
His name was bos Skaggs.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Oh Boss Gags. Flashback to our Saturday Night Fever episode.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
And the guys who played as his backing band when
he toured would go on to form the band Toto,
who give us our next song, the first actual Eighties
song in the episode, last song on the list. It
comes in at forty one minutes and ten seconds when

(45:49):
Nancy and Steve are studying. Yeah, there's a little bit
of a makeout scene there. And we talked about in
our Toto for episode, and we weren't sure how Africa
had suddenly become popular again, and a lot of our
fans said it had to be this episode. It's right
around that time that this song really took off again,

(46:10):
over one billion downloads of this song. Now we have
covered this song in detail and Toto in detail on
our Toto for podcast episode. And so what we're going
to do because we don't want to try to capture
lightning in a bottle. We want to just throw it
back and let you guys listen to that here.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
All right, are we finally there?

Speaker 1 (46:33):
We could do an entire podcast series on the song
that's about to come up? Are you ready? Shirley Fans.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
One of the best songs of the nineteen eighties, one
of the best songs of all time, songs called Africa.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
The beat is on mistake. It's incredible. So for this song,
they had Sony come in and help program the keyboards
that Steve Percaro is playing right, okay, so the marimbas
that you hear are that Sony programmed keyboard marimba sound.
Before they even get there, they say, we got to
have this perfect beat. So they record an entire tape

(47:19):
of just Jeff Pacaro and Lenny Castro play in the
drums over and over, same drum beat, over and over
and over and over and over and over right, and
once they've done it for a full tape, whatever that
might be. They take one measure. They listen to it
all and they find the one measure that's perfect, and
they put that on loop.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
That's the one right there, this one right here.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
This one right here. And now keep in mind this
is before computer recording. So when we say on loop,
that means that they took the tape. They took that
one measure, cut the tape out, then put it on
the tape recorder, ran it around a MIC's stand, around
a chair, around another mike stand, and onto the next
part of the recorder, so that the tape would just

(48:01):
rotate in a circle. And that is the way that
you have this perfectly synchronized, incredible drum sound for the
entire song.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
Once they got that loop that they liked, David Page
and Jeff Piccaro laid down the drums and the pianos
one take, one take, but.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
They build off of it, you know. They this is
a pyramid song, and it is starting with the drums,
and then we're introducing the keyboards, and then we're introducing
the vocals, and it just builds and builds and builds
into this amazing collection of music.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Hey boy, let's wait in the field.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
And let's talk about how the song was conceived. Right, Okay,
So David Page wrote this song about Africa. Yes, he'd
never been to Africa, never been there, went years like
I don't think it was like twenty first century before
he ultimately got to go to Africa, right, And they're like, hey,
this is such a wonderful song. When did you come
to Africa? And he's like, actually, this is my first time.
How's everybody doing good to see it?

Speaker 5 (49:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (49:27):
I mean he went to a Catholic school and he
had learned about missionaries, yeah, and had a subscription and
national geographic.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
You guys can remember in the eighties when the UNISEF
commercials would come on and they would tell you, these
children in Africa need your help. Right. Well, he talked
about how when he was a kid, those missionaries would
come and talk to it at his school and they
would talk about how they blessed everything, which I don't
really understand, may be a difference between a Catholic and
Protestant thing. But they would bless food, they would bless experiences,

(49:56):
and when it rained, they would bless the rain. And
that's how you get that line, Oh, I bless the
rain down in Africa. But man is a fantastic.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Line, doesn't matter. It sounds so wonderful, Okay. So in
addition to this concept of blessing things, one of the
other things that the missionaries talked about was the difficulties.
And obviously difficulties of seeing people in these deprived conditions
was a huge thing. But the other thing that was
difficult for them was being alone and celibate out there.

(50:26):
And so this song is about a guy who's waiting
for a girl to arrive to meet her. Right, yeah,
her plane is coming in, right and he's twelve thirty flight,
twelve flights ready to meet her. And so's that's the
underlying story of the song. And he meets a man
to get some more music, and then the man is like,

(50:47):
it's waiting there for you. And then we jump into
this course and just before the chorus comes on, I
gotta say this. We love this course and it seems simple,
but listen to it.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
This way, all right. The first life I bless the
grains down in Africa is it's a very simple melody.
Right when that second line comes in, you add a
second harmony behind it, different notes, and you can hear it.
You can hear the distinct notes that the two people
are saying the same words different notes. And then the

(51:19):
third we add yet a third layer of different notes
which are extremely complicated. You go from simple to complicated
over these three lines. And the magic when you have
that two part harmony behind the very simple underlying chorus
and melody is is magical. I mean magical.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
Hey, listen, David Page said God gave this to him.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
We've talked about how there are some songs that are
divinely inspired.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
I think Jonathan Kane on the Journey Frontiers albums head Faithfully,
he felt like that God gave that directly to him. Yes,
David Page is the same way God inspired. He says,
I'm talented, but I'm not that talented. God gave this
to me. Now, then keep in mind, particularly after hearing
the song waiting for Your Love, Steve Lucather said, this
is the worst song on the album. Yeah, if this

(52:07):
is a hit, I'll run naked down Hollywood Boulevard.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
So what they would say to each other whenever they
didn't want a song on the album is they would say,
maybe you should save this for your solo album. That
is exactly what they said to David Page about this song.
Maybe you should save this for you even solo album. David, Yeah,
I cannot believe it. It's shocking, talk about not knowing
your own stuff. Now.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Steve Piccaro didn't like this song either. I saw an
interview with him. He said, David Page was really into it,
and their agreement was, when you have a song, we're
going hundred percent for you. Because when I bring a song,
I want everybody in on mine. And so they said
that doesn't mean we didn't kill ourselves in this song,
but nobody believed in it.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
Right. At some point we mentioned that they've delayed touring
and they went and worked on thriller for this before
they started touring in this one, right, at some point
when they come back, this is this is kind of
like the run DMC story that we talked about with
Walk this Way. They come back and David Page gets
a call and they're like, man, they are playing the
heck out of your song at all of these dance clubs,

(53:09):
and he's thinking Rosanna, He's thinking, make believe you know
one of those? Right, It's like what song? And then
they're like Africa And he said really. Yeah, he couldn't
believe it. And then Africa gets released as a single
and it is their only number one.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
So it's the third single. It's released October of nineteen
eighty two. It's their first and only song to hit
number one on the Hot one hundred. Let's talk about
the video for a second, Okay, So the video is
sort of Raiders of the Lost arkish. He's looking through
some books sure in the library. He's wearing that pith hat.
I'm telling you, Raiders the Lost Ark was impactful at

(53:47):
this time because Hungry, like the wolf of that video
is definitely impacted by ra Yeah. Yeah, so, and then
they're all kind of miniatureized. They're on a stack of books.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Yeah, they said that the stage is really weird. It was. Yeah,
they painted it all to look like they're standing on
top of these books and it looks like he's looking
for a map or something in the library.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
He's got a torn paper and he's looking through the
book and it's like the biggest dog ear, not very mysterious.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
And then you get you've got this African American lady
as the librarian, and then suddenly there's a spear being thrown.
I wouldn't say that this video would not pass must
at in the day's world, right, I'm just I don't
think it would. So you've got David Page singing and
then also he's singing the first part, and then of
course Bobby Kimball comes in with the second part. And

(54:33):
can we talk just a second about his freestyling at
the end of the song. Yeah, holy cow, it's amazing.
I talked about that build that they have on the chorus,
and then when he throws in that freestyle, let's listen
to it.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Now.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
I'm stealing your info here, okay, because we talk, we talk,
and this is so I'm gonna steal you. Said that
Bobby Kimball has an amazing voice, but just not all
the time, right, And so if you watch the live show,
it's a little cringy. Yeah, you're like, you're missing you're
missing here. Yeah, but when he would hit it was
so good. So these being studio musicians, they knew how

(55:16):
to go up, do it again, do it again, do
it again. Ah, there we go.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
That's the one word.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
That's the bat word. Yep, that's the one we need.
And man, they wove it together in an amazing tapestry
and to bring it full circle. I love this. Yes,
Joe Pacar, the guy who said to David Page, need
to meet my son Jeff. Yes, he's playing the marimbas
in the chorus.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
That's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
It is fantastic. So this song was a huge hit
embyer one surprised to everybody in the band. Yep, lasts
for a long time, and then, as all any songs do,
it falls out of favor. Now I can remember with
absolute clarity, twenty eighteen. That's four years ago. I walk
in to the kitchens almost nineteen now. So she's she

(56:02):
would have been fourteen or fifteen at the time, okay,
and she is rocking out to Africa.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Now.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
I've given her a lot of good songs, right, you know,
I molded her musical education. As I mentioned, she's a
big Metallica fan thanks to me, bon Jovi fan, thanks
to me. But I'd never played Africa for her. I'm
not this huge Toto guy. So when I walk in
the kitchen and she's jamming out to Africa, I'm like,
where have you heard this song? And she's like, it's

(56:28):
just around. It's awesome, Dad. I'm like, yeah, it is awesome,
but how do you know it? And then I find
out somehow this song is becoming incredibly popular again.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
It's viral. Yeah, And have I looked.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
At my old text from like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen,
and I could talking to my brother about this. I'm like,
how is it this song is becoming big again? It
doesn't make any sense to me. And people try to say, well,
it was the Weezer thing, but that was after that
was after.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
That, that was in response to its popularity exactly.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
And I, as deep as I have dug, I cannot
figure it out. Something happened. I know it is Japan,
I know is China. I don't know what happened. But
somehow this song hit that tipping point again in the
last five years and suddenly it was everywhere again. I

(57:21):
guess I don't get it. And so there was a
fourteen year old girl who developed the Twitter handle at
Weezer Africa.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Yes, I love this story.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
And her soul mission was to get the band Weezer
to cover the song Africa right, And so she gets
so much exposure she becomes viral with this thing that
Weezer to troll her records A version of Rosanna.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
This is hilarious.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
Me too.

Speaker 7 (58:00):
They're like, oh, we got the wrong songs so far,
and Rosanna ends up doing very well for them, and
so finally they're like, well, crap, maybe we should record
And sure enough it becomes their biggest.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Hit in like ten years or something like that. They
hadn't had a hit since the early two thousands, and
suddenly their version of Africa is hitting the charts.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
You know who plays the lead singer in the video.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Our best friend, mister weird Al. Yank such a fantastic video.
So they take the Weezer concept that blue backscreen. Was
it the Sweater song? I think it was the Sweater song?

Speaker 2 (58:37):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (58:37):
And so they do. They recreate that exact play of
the video, except that it's weird Al doing the lead
singing in the song. It's great.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Hey, There is some sort of sound installation device in
the Nabib Nabib I, like David Page, have never been
to Africa. So the Nabib desert. Yes, that plays Africa
on loop infinitum, just again and again and again. It
is solar powered out dre in the middle of the desert.

(59:08):
There's Lay in Africa by Toto.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
So all of humanity is going to cease to exist,
and the recording of Africa will live forever. Yes, yes, great.
The Aliens when they come will be like, well, I
do the civilization, but they knew what was good music.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
Once again, Steve Lucather thought it was the worst song
on the album, but he did not dance down Hollywood
Bolivar naked, Steve Lucather, the ball is in your court.
We expect you naked down Hollywood Boulevard. It's been a
huge hit twice in like two different centuries. It's incredible.

(59:45):
It's incredible. One of the best songs of the eighties.
Spike in the Football, It's one of the best.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Absolutely, Hey, everybody, thanks so much for joining us on
this special YouTube version covering Stranger Things in the songs
behind the episodes. As a special bonus, if you will subscribe,
if you will like, and if you will comment on
our YouTube page, you can win this awesome set of

(01:00:12):
Stranger Things socks. They have all kinds of designs meant
and built for any Stranger things. Faan Jason, are you
wearing your Stranger Things? Sucks?

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Close?

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
I'm holding them. Okay, these are really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
We got you got some red ones, some yellow ones,
some some blue ones, and they all have stranger thing
like items on the socks.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
It's quite a sales pitch.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Good job, did I say anything incorrect? They're fancy socks,
they're stranger things. If you're listening to this you love
stranger things, you should subscribe to our podcast page on
YouTube so you can get a pair of these socks.

Speaker 5 (01:00:49):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Let's do it all right Before we go, though, I
got one more thing. I mentioned a club that Marty
Bayalin founded in order to launch Jefferson Airplane. Yes, I
mentioned that other bands like The Doors, the Grateful Dead,
the Steve Miller blues band Boz Skaggs all played there.

(01:01:10):
I didn't mention the name of the club. Okay, it
was called The Matrix.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Get out of here. That is mind blowing right there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
So we know that The Matrix starts off with the
White Rabbit. We know that it is largely influenced by
Alice in Wonderland. We after watching episode one, season one
of Stranger Things, can also see the tie ins here.
I mean, will Byers is Alice. The Upside Down is Wonderland.
It's just Alice in Wonderland. The horror movie if you will.

(01:01:41):
So it was the perfect I don't know if I
don't know if the writers were the ones that came
up with this. I don't know if the Duffer brothers
were the ones that came up with this, or if
Nora Felder, the music supervisor, was the one that said
we should have the White Rabbit as kind of our
climactical song. But whoever, it was pure genius. And they
also use that song on the recent fourth movie in

(01:02:05):
the Matrix series as the key because, as we know,
one pill will take you one place and one pill
will take you another place. There you go. That's awesome. Okay, everybody,
We're going to take a quick break and do our
surely showcase. Today we have an amazing special guest to
give us his opinion on Core versus Dirt. We have

(01:02:26):
mister Ira Fleischer, who is the drummer for a band
called Lounge Fly. That name may sound familiar to you
because it's an STP song.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Yes, lounge Fly is the premiere tribute band for Stone
Tumble Pilots, and our new buddy Ira reached out to
us and wants to give his opinion on Core versus Dirt.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Let's see what he has to say.

Speaker 9 (01:02:46):
Hey, everybody, this is Ira and I'm the drummer in
Lounge Fly, the premiere tribute to Stone Tumble Pilots. So
it's September twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two, and I'm working
at a CD store and I'm the drummer in a
heavy hair mital type of band.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Both Dirt and Core drop.

Speaker 9 (01:03:01):
On the same day, and I'm at work and I'm
there selling these albums to all kinds of people that
want them right away, and very quickly, Dirt resonates with
me because it's heavy and the vocals were insane, and
it was very much what I was used to. It
was a heavy metal album, really, and while Core was cool,
I really knew it more from the singles from MTV
and they didn't really hit me as hard. It wasn't

(01:03:24):
until I listened to Coorr and those heavy, deep tracks
like Piece of Pie and Where the River Goes hit
me hard, and that's what grew on me. I think
the timelessness of the songs, the tightness of the songs
from Core are what really stuck with me the longest,
which is why it's nudged over Dirt for me all
these years later, while both albums are in my heavy

(01:03:45):
rotation to this day. I just really love where Core
has gone and how it's matured for me. Wyland's vocals
on that record are lush and they're complex, and he
does so many different things with his voice. Of course,
Lane's got one of the best voices of all time,
one of my favorites in rock and roll history. I've
really just learned to appreciate how many different things Wiland

(01:04:05):
has done with his voice on all the different records.
So I have to give a little bit of a
nod to Core, but that's just the way it aged
for me, and it was just amazing to be there
when both albums were dropped on the same exact day.
So thanks for listening.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 9 (01:04:19):
Again. This is Ira and I'm the drummer in Lounge Fly,
the premiere tribute to Stone Tumble Pilots. Please check us
out on Facebook and we're at Lounge Fly Tribute. We
play with a Foo Fighters band and we put shows
on all over the place called Nineties Rockfest. We'd love
you to come out and see us, and I'll see
y'll soon. Take care.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
That was awesome. I mean, I can you imagine to
be there in the store, working in the store when
both of these albums drop, and I love that He's
like it was dirt at first, but then Core eventually
won me over, which is probably why he's, you know,
being the drummer in the STP Premiere tribute band right now.
So you know, there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
I remark us down if you guys come to town,
we are coming to see you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
Yeah, let us know when you get to Oklahoma City.
For our fans out there, Shirley fans, be sure and
go check these guys out on their Facebook page. You
can find out wherever it is that they're playing, and
go and get your nineties fill.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
They got some cool stuff on YouTube as well.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Thanks Iver, begin to spall. Okay, guys, thank you so
much for listening to this whole episode. We hope we
brought you some new and exciting information. Be sure and
hit the subscribe button down there. Be sure and hit
subscribe on your podcast app. Be sure and hit the
link to our podcast so that you can get bigger,

(01:05:33):
fuller episodes on many of the albums and movies that
we've covered in the past.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Guys, we will see you back here next week when
we cover Stranger Things season one, episode two, and it
is cram packed with songs major one hit wonder from
the eighties, maybe one of the biggest of the eighties.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Can't wait.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
See you back here next week.