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November 6, 2025 • 15 mins
Graham and John Paul talk about songs and records and songs vs records and also what is in the pipeline for Year Two of Major Label Debut.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Major Label Debut. This is the podcast about
Major Label Debuts. My name is Graham Wright. I host
the podcast about Major Label Debuts, and joining me today
is the producer one of the producers of the podcast
about Major Label Debuts, which again is known as Major
Label Debut. That's my friend, John Paul Bullock. How are you,
John Paul.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello, Graham, I am doing quite well.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
You're hearing both our voices today, where typically in our
usual rhythm, this would be like an interview slot, simply
because due to scheduling, we're moving our next interview to
next week to make sure it is nice and well,
well cooked up and finished for you. So we're jumping
in here in the usual interview slot with just like
a quick check in on where we're at with MLD
and where we're going, and then I have some philosophy

(00:47):
to unspool after we finish up with that. But John Paul,
we just did our one year anniversary celebratory episode and
now we are in We are in year two of
major Label Debut. We have entered it already. How is
it feeling for you so far? What are you looking
forward to?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I'm feeling victorious and I'm looking forward to all these
great interviews we've got coming up to drop, including next week.
Spoiler alert. I guess Chris Stammy from the DB's a
North Carolina legend, indie rock legend, a producorial legend, a
man who's been involved with a bunch of different scenes

(01:23):
and is super cool and someone who I was fascinated
to hear talk with you. So I'm really excited about
that one.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, it was really cool talking to Chris. He is
matter of fact and thoughtful, and at least outwardly, it
seemed to me pretty unsentimental about all that he has
done and learned. And you know, if I was him,
I would be patting myself on the back and waxing
rapsodic about all my great stories all the time, as

(01:51):
I frequently do on this podcast. And Chris is just
kind of sitting back in the cut, and he's wearing
a nice shirt, and he's sort of speaking in measured
tones about the most amazing things. And it's such a
lot of these brilliant people we've talked to have sort
of surprised me in that similar way, and it was
really cool just to like listen to him gently explain

(02:12):
his incredible career and a lot of is really good
and I thought, you know, illuminating thoughts and feelings just
about what it means to make records both as an
artist and as a producer. And he wears both of
those hats very elegantly. And it's a great episode and
you're going to really enjoy it when it comes next week.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Very also excited for we have We Are Scientists coming.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yes, our old one of the most contemporary two Tokyo
Police Club bands so far to feature on major label debut. Really,
they sort of felt like we were we never toured together,
and we start the conversation off another spoiler alert by
sort of trying to figure out if we ever shared
the stage so much as one time, and we couldn't
get to the bottom of it. But I really think
we never did somehow, So finally some version of Tokyo

(02:58):
Police Club and some version of We Are Scientists are
together on the stage that last podcast.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, tons of really cool stuff coming and I'm just
very excited. I'm looking forward to We're booking guests right now,
so if you have suggestions and you're listening to this hit,
please put your suggestions in the comments. We are going
out to all sorts of really interesting people, and I
don't know, coming into year two with the fire in
my belly and ready to make this podcast bigger and

(03:29):
better and more exciting and more interesting and tackle all
sorts of subjects. I know that when we had originally
talked about doing this episode, you had described some idea
of doing like a here two manifesto, that this is
like a redoubling of our efforts, like, but I don't know,
I don't even feel the full need for that at

(03:50):
this point. I feel like I have the power inside me.
I've got the glow. If you're for fans of Bruce
Lee Roy, if you're a Barry Gordy is the last
dragon person.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
They're out there amongst the fan base. One of the
things I love about Major Label Debut, and that has
been such like a delightful surprise for me personally, has
been that the manifesto of it all has been presenting itself,
I think to me and to us as in real
time and sort of every conversation we have, whether it's
with a Chris Stammy or with a Dan Mangan another

(04:22):
forthcoming guest, you know, all these people are hi, Dan
are coming at it from different angles, and the more
we talk, the more I feel like I understand not
just them and what they have done and what they're doing,
but the entire project of this podcast, And like why,
at least to me, it is such an interesting and
worthwhile endeavor, as you know, yet another tentacle of my

(04:46):
rock and roll octopus, as I reach out to try
and understand this thing that has defined my whole life.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
I think of you as a rock and roll octopus.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
I'm glad rock and roll Octopus is a good that's
going to be my children's toy music toy store. Come
to rock and roll Octopus.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
I mean, octopus is garden. Come on. Like, although I'm
not sure I would send my child into any place
that was called some something's garden or someone's garten, I
just it seems like doom is inside that place for
my child, my fictional child.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
So I wanted to speaking of fictional children, I wanted
to burr another of my theoretical children for you. Really briefly,
I just I kind of got on this train of
thought the other day when I was out for a stroll,
and it felt really of a piece with what we're
talking about here. And I wanted to bounce it off you,
John Paul, and then you the listener, to see if
it illuminates anything like it did for me, for anyone else.

(05:42):
And it's the difference between a song and a record.
And I remember being a kid, I suspect that most
of our listeners will at least recall the Grammy Awards,
even if they don't still pay attention to them. And
the big award at the Grammys was always Record of
the Year. I was always confused because I thought a record.
One of my friends and I talked about records we met,

(06:04):
like record albums, an LPA collection of songs, Okay, computer
is the new radio Head record or whatever. But the
Record of the Year award would always be given to
a song. And I slowly came to understand that they
meant it in the very old fashioned way of like
a record is a recording. It's short for a recording
of a song. And thinking about that the other day

(06:26):
really set me down this path of feeling like, oh, okay.
Everything about the industry that we talk about here that
has defined the direction of music as an art form
in the twentieth and now twenty first century is born
out of the notion of records, and when recorded music
became possible at that same moment, to the notion of

(06:49):
selling those records to people became possible, or spinning them
on the radio, or taking this music that previously was
available to you in live performance, whether that was a
concert or someone singing to you in your home or
whatever else, or as sheet music which only people who
could read sheet music could consume. And now instead, all

(07:10):
of a sudden, someone can make up a song and
then capture the song, and then millions of people globally
can hear the song, and it changes how a song
is conceived. And I think that now a day is
because of the methodology by which music is made and
distributed in the way that all of those things are

(07:31):
like here on your phone, the record and the song
are like merging in a very interesting way. And I
really realized that, oh, I love songs, obviously, but what
I really love are records. And it's not just the
music and the lyrics, you know, the melody and the harmony,
it's the tones and the textures, and every single choice

(07:52):
becomes part of this really interesting whole which is in
part a song, but in another part sort of not
only the arrangement, but the culmination of all the choices
that are made when taking the song and capturing it
and committing a definitive, canonical version of that song to

(08:14):
proverbial tape, be that literal tape or one sinceroos or
whatever else. I think. I realize that as a musician myself,
I spend most of my time conceiving not of songs,
but of records. And even when I'm sitting there with
my acoustic guitar writing a song in the more traditional
sense of just coming up with the intellectual property of
music and lyrics, I'm still on some level considering it

(08:37):
as it's going to be recorded. And even if that's
as spare as just a guitar and singing, it's still
there's a whole context that's added by the very process
of recording a song and then putting it out into
the world. And it's a little too oversimplified to say that,
like the song is the art and the record is
the commerce. In the art and commerce that I love

(08:57):
to talk about here, but thinking about it from the
angle really turns my brain on to like more ways
to think about the music that I listened to and
here and we were just watching the baseball playoffs, and
hats off to the Dodgers. You guys did it.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Thank you. I appreciate it. I feel personally responsible.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
You should. I think that your fandom really pushed them
the extra mile. Everyone at those games is singing seven
Nation Army all the time. And I think it's really
interesting that the White Stripes are a band I really
think of as a records band, and so much of
like the tones and the textures and even the meta text,
which was the awareness that, oh, Jack White only uses
old fashioned recording equipment. You know, it's all very mannered

(09:38):
and deliberate. But then out of that record y process
comes this melody, you know, this baseline that is maybe
turning into the single most enduring melody of like the
last fifty years. It's starting to feel like like it's
left behind its identity as a White Stripe single and
has become a sports chant, this elemental like human noise

(10:01):
that is made. So it goes in both directions, and
I have no final point or thesis for this. I
just find that to be such an interesting line of inquiry.
And I know that going forward as I listen to
these records, that we talk about here and consider the
process by which the songs are turned into the records,
which are then turned into the career. Having this difference
and also the similarity between those two concepts close in

(10:23):
my heart is going to help me continue my inquiries here.
So that's sort of my musings. Does that make a
make sense? John, Paul and b do you have any
further thoughts on that concept?

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Well? As as a I know we said we weren't
doing a season two manifesto, but it is kind of
a nice way of thinking about the general shape of
most of these conversations and how they're becoming more elaborate
and more specific and more interesting. And I think there's
so many different hallways you can walk down as you

(10:59):
discuss a song, a record, a career. It makes me
my heart full of blood and love for this project
because I do think that there's so much more to
talk about, and there are so many different choices that
are made when people make art and so many different

(11:21):
choices that are made when people make money. And how
how those two things co mingle is the thing we're doing, right,
So yeah, I like that you're thinking about it this way.
It's when we started this. I'm not sure we fully
understood what we were doing. Obviously, we did not understand.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
What we're doing in my life, and I don't think
we understand what we're doing right now either, But I
think we're getting to understand things, parts, pieces of what
we're doing a little bit better.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
And I like watching you think this out in real time.
I like to I like that image of you stalking
around Toronto, mumbling into myself, yeah, talking to yourself and
just repeating art and commerce over again.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Much as I'm sure there are listeners who are like, yes,
let's stroke the chin, and other listeners who are more
interested in just hearing about, you know, tell me about
playing the guitar in the studio. The musicians we've talked to,
there's been a healthy mix of people who are interested
in thinking through it and philosophizing and analyzing, and others
who are really a lot more just action based, and

(12:37):
you know they're they're just in it, doing it, And
I find that they both have so much to teach me,
and hopefully to teach you, the listeners and you jump
public and all of us as well, And I hope
everyone will come with us as we continue our inquiries
into the heart and the soul of music. It's here too,

(12:59):
It's here too, here too, granted, come along with us
on this fantastic journey. Yes, and get in touch with
pitches for people we should talk to, or if you
have questions about any of this philosophical stuff or what
it's like working in the music industry. This is a
pretty wide open shop at this point in terms of
what we feel empowered to talk about on the show.

(13:20):
So if anything piques anyone's interest for any reason, get
at us on any of the social media's or whatever,
and we will. We'll probably talk about it at some point,
because the content mouth is hungry and it needs words
to feed on.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, and if you want to do live event, if
you want to do another movie club, if you want
us to make new merch, if you want us to
do any of these things, we will do it. We
are making this thing as we speak.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Hell yeah, and thank you for listening and enabling us
to make it in a way that feels not like
we're just whistling into the wind. That's what I have
to say about major label debut and music and my
ratings this week. So I think that's lovely it's great
you saw with you as always, I am too, thank you,
thank you, glad to talk to you too. All right, Well,
that's your major label debut for this week. We will

(14:08):
be back next week with Chris Stammy of the DBS
and other great bands and of his own solo career
and major label debut, all of which we talk about.
It's a great conversation and in the meantime, feel free
to check out the archives if you're a more recent listener.
Some of the early episodes with people like Rob Schnapp
and Glenn from Totewetz, Sprocket and many more are likely

(14:31):
Yes favorite love talking to Brenda Fashtybunyan. The list goes
on and is available to you wherever podcasts are casted,
so check those out and we'll talk to you again soon.
Major Label Debut is produced by John Paul Bullock and
Josh Hook. Our theme music is by Greg Alsop. Yes
we love you, Greg, He's the greatest.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Love you.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Our listenership is provided by you, the listener, and we
appreciate it very much. We'll be back next week with
more tales and chin stroking philosophy from the intersection of
art and commerce. So long.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
Year two. Come get some, come get some.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Here we go

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Hm.
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