MLD's First Birthday and Year in Review with Graham, John Paul and Josh

It's been one year of MLD! We discuss lessons learned, our fav highlights from interviews, and dive in to our very first mailbag for some listener questions! Thanks for joining us on this journey and hope you enjoy the next year of MLD!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
It's Major Label Debut, the podcast about major label debuts,
and the podcast about itself. That's right, I'm your host,
Graham Wright and joining me today are both producers of
Major Label Debut, John Paul Bullock and Josh Hook.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Don't talk yet.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
I'm still introing because Major Label Debut is celebrating our
first anniversary. Not only do we manage to actually start
a podcast, which for the three of us and the
kind of schemes we tend to have, is a real
accomplishment in and of itself, but we kept the podcast
going for one beautiful year and it's never been better,

(00:42):
and we've never been enjoying it more. And so we
thought that in lieu of our usual scintillating, in depth
news making, viral going artist interview, we would interview ourselves
and each other and just sort of take stock on
where we're at after one year, where we're going, what
we've learned, earned, what we maybe have forgotten, and all

(01:03):
of the friends we made along the way. John, Paul, Josh,
thank you for doing this podcast with me. Congratulations on
one year.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Congratulations to you, Graham.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
Congratulations to you both that this is an amazing accomplishment.
I feel like I genuinely feel great about it.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah, it's how you know you're like real parents, right.
You kept it alive for a year after that. No
jury in the world can convict you. So the following
is our list of confessions. We started the podcast because
while we were looking for something to do together. You know,
Josh and I were one year ago, Josh and I
were deep in the Tokyo Police Club farewell tour.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
We were busy, we were distracted.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
We were coming to the poignant conclusion of something that
defined really, you know, our twenty years of our lives
longer than that, And in part we were just looking
for something to do with our creative energy. We were
looking for something to do with our friendship energy, I think,
and because Josh produces podcasts and I have some broadcast experience,

(02:14):
and John Paul is a great music thinker, about writer,
about compiler of We've talked a lot about your playlists.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Recently and I continue to salute you for them.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
And then so obviously I was like, John Paul, I
got it, we should do a movie podcast. And you
were very sweetly, you humored me very kindly, and then
gently nudged me towards the possibility of maybe, instead of
adding to the incredibly tall pile of movie podcasts by
people that don't know anything about movies, we should do

(02:46):
a podcast about something we do know a lot about,
which is music, and we sort of have the bona
fides to talk about it. And I had this idea
for major label debut as a podcast title, sort of
kicking around my notesapp. And when I said it, you
got excited, and then we like zoomed Josh into that
call and the rest, as they say, is one year's

(03:07):
worth of history.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Has a podcast turned out like you were expecting?

Speaker 4 (03:11):
John Paul, Well, First, I like the idea of zooming
Josh and more like conned Josh.

Speaker 5 (03:15):
Into doing this with us.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
Second, yeah, it's gone much better than I imagined. Quite frankly,
I feel like we have done so much awesome stuff,
and we have so many great interviews that have yet
to be broadcast out into the digital ether, and it's
just it's growing in such an interesting way where we
were meeting all these new people and doing, you know,

(03:40):
the kind of show I hoped that we would do,
and it's not been without ups and downs. But I
do think that the time that we've spent has been
worth it for both us as people who make things
and then us as friends. I really have enjoyed more
more than anything. My heart leaps every time I see

(04:03):
a text on our chain, and it truly is, you know,
just a great use of our time.

Speaker 5 (04:10):
I really believe it.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
I really agree, And it is so true that my
most active group texts are just projects that seem to
like Girl from Material the Band, seems to be a
project that exists solely to support a group text. And
I wouldn't say that about this podcast, but it does.
The group text is kind of the best part of it,
and it does. It is pinned on my phone and

(04:34):
it's a source of constant joy for me as well.
And I really like, you know, throughout the year, we
sort of started phasing in these bi weekly MLD news episodes,
which sometimes are literally about news and increasingly are about John,
Paul and I just sort of talking about whatever interests
us to talk about. As the news itself becomes less
and less palatable to discuss, we're sort of going madly

(04:56):
off in new directions. And well, I think it's the
dream of every podcaster right is to say, sort of,
you know, wow, this conversation. We would have over four
pints at a bar if we were to have it
very slightly more coherently. Maybe there's an audience for it,
and I think we've demonstrated conclusively that there is at
least an audience for it, maybe singular, but nevertheless still extant.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
And I'm really grateful for that.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
And of course we should really really say thank you
to everyone who is listening, to everyone who has listened.
It's also I get really immediately embarrassed by any notion
of like, I love to talk, and then I finished
talking and instantly think, why did I waste everyone's time
saying that this is so humiliating? But people keep seeming
to listen to the show and to like the show,

(05:44):
And I'm just so grateful that there are ears out
there who are willing to accept our bantering, you know.

Speaker 4 (05:51):
I mean, it's truly amazing, just the thousands of people
who've listened, and the hundreds of thousands of people who
viewed the social content. It's just the fact that this
is even possible is a weird miracle. But thank you
so much for listening. I really appreciate all your time,
and I hope that you're getting at least some of
what we're getting out of this because it has been

(06:14):
incredibly valuable.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
To my life and to mine.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
So, you know, we solicited listener questions and we got
a few, which, frankly, again, I'm just humbled and delighted
by the fact that any came through that weren't from
like Graham's mom at rightfamily dot Org.

Speaker 6 (06:31):
Not real.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Don't email, please don't email whoever that.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Is thinking it's my mom, And maybe we should start
answering some questions and see if that takes us on
a voyage of conversation that will you know, reach bold
new frontiers.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
How does that sound? Guys? Great?

Speaker 1 (06:48):
We didn't script this shit. I'll tell you one thing
I've learned since one year ago. I was spending like
hundreds of hours preparing for every conversation we had, and
one thing that has evolved is my preparation, which is
gone down a lot, just the.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Way I like. It's like how Tokyo please love it?

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Ever practiced, we just just wouldn't rehearse because we try
and like, I don't know, we know these songs.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Let's go get lunch. This is a similar similar setup. Yeah,
save the magic for the stage right. That's right off
the cuff.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
So this here it comes, authentic, unfaked, barely prepared for
the MLD mail Bag, the first ever major label debut
mail bag. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions, Josh,
we'll be reading them off.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Just going to go down the list.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
First question from Vicky von Vicki asking how is the
podcast going?

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Thanks guys. Vicky von Vicki a Toronto area band featuring
my friend Mike Win and one of my most one
of my last two solo shows was opening for them.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
That was like eighteen months ago. That's how often I.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Play John Paul, you want to you want to feel
that one? How is the podcast going? I think it's
going great. I mean I really do.

Speaker 4 (07:58):
I the I'm just learning a lot about musicians I
admire and getting to hear these stories in such an
in depth way. When we originally envisioned the podcast, I
think we thought it would be shorter, and I find
myself at the end of lots of these conversations thinking, oh,
it would have been really cool to have gone in

(08:19):
another hour in this direction, or to ask these five questions,
you know, but the episodes have stretched out in such
a organic and kind of fascinating way. And it's really
just a tribute to Graham. Your ability to be on
the mic and engage with these folks and be Josh,

(08:44):
your ability to cut out the stuff that isn't interesting.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
That's not that much, that's not interesting. You do a
great job. The cutting room floor is pretty tidy around here.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
I really at the beginning, as you guys certainly can
attest to, was I really thought that we had a
strict set of parameters, and I had a really clear
sense of what I thought the conversations should be about
and needed to be about, and the kind of rails
I felt it needed to stay on. And I think
we discovered really quickly that was too It was way
too constraining, and none of us had any interest in

(09:19):
being constrained by it. And the show kind of evolved
into being a broader like major Label Debut started as
a very literal title and has sort of broadened into
kind of a more metaphorical title in terms of being
about just the dissonance of art and commerce and the
harmony of art and commerce and what the commercial end
of the arts looks like and what it means day

(09:41):
to day for people to do these jobs, mostly the
jobs of the artists. But as you know, we had
Brendan Burkhan to talk about the job of the publicist.
We had Morgan Naylor on recently to talk about the
job of the songwriter.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Morgan also as an artist.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
I don't mean to suggest otherwise, but there's this sort
of careers part of it as well that I find
endlessly interesting. And it's like we're sort of not that
it's this strategized, but there's sort of this like taxonomy
of the music business as a whole that's slowly beginning
to emerge just out of these conversations we have, and
I know that it's well, it's so fun for me

(10:14):
because it's satisfying my personal curiosity directly. This is exactly
the resource or the you know, entertainment product that I
have always wanted to.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Pull back the curtain.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
And actually, if I may submit a question to the
mail bag, I have long, like since I was a
little kid and first got into the mythology of rock
and roll, I wanted to know how it worked. I
wanted to look behind the curtain and really get inside
of it. And I wanted to be in a band
partially because I just wanted to like be in a
recording studio, and I wanted to be backstage at a concert,
and I just wanted to enter through the artist story,

(10:49):
you know.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
I wanted to be with the band.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
And there have been points in my career variously where
I've sort of stopped and thought, oh, geez, mystery and
remove are really important things in like the history of
rock and roll mythology. They're not very popular anymore, you know.
Everyone is now showing everything all the time because of
the necessities of the content machine. And we're here on

(11:13):
MLD like ripping the curtain open with a big spotlight
looking around, and it's very much my natural tendency. But
I'm curious how pulling back the curtain has felt for
you guys, And if you ever have like a voice
in your head saying, oh God, maybe we should be
like shrouding things rather than shining a light on them.

Speaker 5 (11:33):
What do you think, Josh.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
I think a part of this that has really been
eye opening and something that we've had interest in for
a long time is kind of the artist.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Advocacy side of the music industry.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
And I'm remembering the Colin Newman interview hearing from other
people what they went through and how they'd navigated their
own creative landscapes. Has been sort of a nice debrief
for me personally, coming out of, you know, one phase
of the music industry into whatever the next phase may be.

(12:08):
But it's been it's been nice to share it.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
I do, I do feel like that idea sort of,
I mean, because I do think most people who are
doing this podcast so far have done a lot of
press already, and they understand the things that they do
want to share and the things that they don't want
to share, and sometimes it's it's been kind of a
challenge to get them out of the fear based position

(12:36):
that most artists I've encountered as a journalist are in
when you start an interview, where they, you know, are
used to bad questions, They're used to repetitive questions, They're
used to people asking inappropriate things. And this the idea
of creating an environment where people are comfortable to share

(12:58):
and people are comfortable to expand a little bit on
their personal mythologies is really I think desirable to me
and and a healthy thing where we can advance good
art into the universe a little in an incremental way
that doesn't remove entirely the mystery of it, you know,

(13:22):
doesn't make it bland or kind of common or cheap.
That it makes you realize that every single one of
these people has, in one way or another, triumphed over
incredible odds to make a career as an artist. And
it's really just you know, I use this word earlier,

(13:42):
but like miraculous that they're able to do this and
still be able to talk about themselves in this kind
of bizarre like, I mean, so many people have have
gone through the process that I've sort of watched YouTube through,
which is processing out these traumatic changes in their lives,

(14:07):
especially the older guests that we've had who've had these
twenty thirty forty year long careers, Like a person like Colin,
who's been in many different scenes, has you know, contributed
all this work to all these other people's lives and
still manages to be someone who I want to know
more about, you know, and someone who still keeps his secrets,

(14:30):
you know, I don't know. I mean, I find myself
at the end of almost every single one of these
conversations still wanting to learn more about these people, still
wanting to revisit their music, still wanting to consider their art.
I hope that they also feel that way, that they
feel like that what we've done is serve them up,
you know, just a big fat softball that they can

(14:51):
smack out of the.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Park absolutely, and they seem to be hitting the home runs,
so we must be doing something right. And I really
agree with what Josh said as well about I remember
back in the day when when WTF with Mark Marron
rip was sort of newer or newly emerging into the mainstream,
and I was listening to it and I was complaining
to a friend of mine about how, you know, the

(15:13):
interviews are interesting, but the podcast always starts with this
long rambling you update on his life and him talking,
And my friend, who himself is a great broadcaster, said,
you know, you got to listen to it, like this
is like a story about a guy who didn't make it,
who's trying to make sense of that and come to
terms with that by talking to people who did make it.
That's no longer really applicables Mark Marron via that podcast

(15:36):
did end up making it. But I feel like in
the wake of Tokyo Police Club ending and beginning to
sort of rebuild my sense of where I stand in
the music industry, around the music industry, this podcast has
kind of been that voyage, and I don't expect people
to like listen to it as my story, but for me,
one of the things that I've loved so much about

(15:57):
it is is getting to sort of process those feelings.
You can hear it in the interview I did with
Greg from Tokyo. Obviously we really get into it, but
with everyone, it's sort of these different aspects of what
it means to make music and what it means to
endure making music. You know, guys like Calling, guys like
Bob Barry Hill, or guys like Dave Alvin who have

(16:18):
been doing it and doing it are just so there's
so much wisdom there, and I'm so glad.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
And privileged to get to like steal it from them.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
Next question, that's a great all right Now, I'm not
going in order anymore. We're going to shake it up
because I feel like this segues. How have these conversations
changed the.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Way you write music? Who sent that one in? That
is from dud Guacamole.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
That's right, Instagram user friend of the show Anna Hyana,
we love you. If she listens, she might just follow
me on Instagram. Well, I would say that doing the
show has really changed the way I think about my
music in that I feel increasingly freed from my own
self imposed like industry and commercial shackles. And that's a

(17:02):
really tricky thing. And this is one of the things
that the podcast is kind of designed to analyze, is
the way that like the outer critic becomes your inner critic.
Like you, when you work as a professional musician, you
are obliged on some level to take into consideration the
audience and the you know, like the consumer base for

(17:25):
your music. And I was thinking about this this morning
for some reason. It always intrigues me when you hear
artists evaluate their career in a way that just so
happens to exactly match the public conception of it.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Rivers Cuomo is a lot like that.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
I heard an interview with Bono recently where he was
sort of talking about their you know, pop and the
early nineties you two sort of like Left Turn, and
he was really articulate about it. He seemed very analytical
and very clear minded. But the point of view he
was articulating was exactly where that record already sits in
the public consciousness. And I simply cannot think that that's

(18:01):
just a coincidence or that it's like, oh yeah, everyone
was just right. There's like a right and a wrong answer,
and everyone was right, and Bono agrees. I think that
those voices just almost inevitably get internalized. And a lot
of the smartest and wisest seeming people that we've spoken
to on this show have been pretty clear about chewing.

(18:22):
That I shouldn't use that word because I can never
say it right, but it's the word I want. E
s c H E W ing that and I myself
have begun to feel freed from it, and then that
bleeds into my writing because I'm just like letting my
freak flag fly, and I'm following a different north star
than I think I was. You know, two years ago,
when I was writing songs, I had a different sense

(18:44):
of like what my music needed to be, but I
didn't think of it that way. I thought of it like,
this is what I like to do, this is what's cool,
this is what's good to me. And then you know,
you start to clear the clutter off the shelf and
it really changes your perspective, and of course your perspective
then changes your art. So that's that's how it's for me,
John Paul, How has this affected the development of your

(19:04):
forthcoming masterpiece?

Speaker 4 (19:07):
You know, it has gotten me to buy a lot
more gear, that's the truth of it. One of my
other favorite text chains I'm on is a Gear text chain,
And I just got a Chroma console, which I'm very excited.
I literally in my calendar there's an appointment for three
hours today for me to sit in this room and

(19:27):
play with that Chromo console and teach myself how to
make good music hopefully with it. And even this morning
I had to stop myself. I really really want to
Base six and I have no reason to own that object,
but it will be mine, and I yeah, I feel

(19:52):
like not just in terms of me making music as
a hobbyist, but in terms of my work, I all
my writing, all the music writing I've been doing. It
really has taught me a lot about interviewing and what
you want to get out of an interview and how

(20:13):
like you were talking about earlier, about preparation and the
kind of like embracing kind of jamming with people and
the fluidity of these situations often leads to better results
than we do a lot of research, a lot of
pre tape conversations about the people we're going to interview,

(20:34):
We listen to the records, we you know, are digging
through books and articles online. But at the end of
the day, I think the magic of what happens in
the moment is very real on this podcast. It's also
very real in most creative situations that I have really
benefited from, and trying to get to a place with

(20:56):
all this gear where I can be creative and moment
and not be so analytical.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
As you said, Yeah, it's funny because this is such
an analytical project and we spend so much time thinking
and chin stroking, and then the upshot of all of
that is to try and come up with pure creativity
rather than analytical creativity, which is kind of like you got.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
All that from a whole bag of oranges situation.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
But I've always been a very much It takes four
hours to do one hour of creative work, and I
don't understand any other way to make things other than that.
So I'm trying hard not to punish myself nowadays for

(21:42):
that process, just to hopefully when I'm in those moments
where everything all cylinders are firing to really enjoy it
and lean into it and get what I can get
out of it in that moment, not really thinking too
much about the end result of any of it.

Speaker 5 (21:58):
Amen.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
I think the thing that jumps out to me too
was the nice reset of the conversation with Morgan and
her talking about writing with Kim Deal and just Kim
Deal's banging on a drum for two minutes and then saying, Okay,
go put vocals on it. And that was such an
interesting way because you find this path normally when you're

(22:21):
writing a song, or I find myself falling into the
same traps of all, right, there's this layer.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Now I got to put a guitar on it, and
now I.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Got to make all these decisions, and you're kind of
limiting your options as you go and hearing or just
being reminded again that you can start a creative journey
from any point with any set of ingredients, and the
vocal that you put on just some drums is going
to have much different weight than the one that you
put on with a ninety percent finished song. So that

(22:49):
was a it was a fun lesson to relearn.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, that was a great anecdote and listen to the
Morgan Naylor episode of major label debut for that story
and more.

Speaker 6 (22:58):
Like it, because that's a great one.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
I'm gonna start.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
I'm gonna start selling episodes throughout.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
What's Next Patrese as Crocs.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
I've never known how to say it, longtime follower, Patrese,
we salute you.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Even though we've never said your handle out loud.

Speaker 5 (23:13):
What's up, Patrese?

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Which album would you most like to cover in the future,
John Paul, you start.

Speaker 4 (23:19):
I'd love to talk to Ben Gibberd about death Cabs
moved to Atlantic from Barsouk. I think that would be great.
I'd love to talk to teaking in Sarah, Canadian legends
teaking in Sarah. I'd love to talk to anyone from
Rim or related to Rim as a kid and still today.
They're one of those like I think Arim is to

(23:41):
me as Radiohead is to you, Graham, and maybe the.

Speaker 5 (23:46):
Strokes are to you, Josh. I don't know, Like.

Speaker 4 (23:50):
I don't know if that can speak for you about
those foundational bands, but there's something about I just went
on Sunday to see the B fifty two's and Dive,
and both of those bands I would love to have
on this show. I heard from a friend that Mark
mothers Ball was at least aware of this podcast, and

(24:12):
if he is listening to it now, dude, we would
love to talk to you. But yeah, also, any of
the people from the B fifty two's, Yes, those bands
were foundational for me. Also, I would love to do
more of the nineties grunge stuff, you know, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden.

(24:33):
Those bands were such a huge deal for me. And
jam bands, the surviving members of the Grateful Dead or
Jefferson Airplane or bands from the sixties, seventies.

Speaker 5 (24:44):
Eighties that you know were the.

Speaker 4 (24:47):
Things that I listened to as a teenager. I feel
like so many of those things are rooted in my
early music experiences. My desires to like explore people's careers
come from that, like age ten to age eighteen, before
I was a college radio nerd.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yeah, it's this.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
I think we love music in a similar way, and
I'm sure this resonates with a certain subset of our listenership.
You love it so much, and especially when you're that
age where it's not enough just to listen to it,
you want to rip it open and crawl inside of
it and see how every little sinew of it functions
and connects, and like, you can never know it intimately

(25:27):
enough to satisfy the feeling it gives you.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
And I think that's you know.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
That can lead you down some demistification roads that don't
always shake out, but it can also really deepen and
enrich your appreciation for it, especially because all of us
in our own ways have made a life out of
loving music, and we live behind the curtain in a
certain way, and so there's a demistification that's just taken
place existentially. You know, I can never listen to music

(25:53):
anymore the way I listened to music before I was
in a professional band, or before I picked up a
guitar and tried to write my own music for better
or for worse. That's gone, and so I might as
well enjoy my behind the curtain existence. And to answer
that question, all of those you said are extremely on
my list.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Certainly Plans by Death Cab.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
And then for me, my white whale is getting someone
from Interpol to talk about our love to admire because
not just because I think it's a fascinating music story
of this band coming out of nowhere with this very
you know sort of even in the scene that they
were lumped into of the rock is Back New York
guitar scene. They kind of had their own thing going

(26:32):
on and it was sonically different, esthetically different, it was
just like had a different manner to it entirely. Everyone
in Tokyo Police Cull was a huge Interpol fan, perhaps
needless to say, huge influence on me and on us,
and they were only a few years ahead of us,
so they were really like we were kind of at
the beginning of our career in the same arena as them.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
And then they signed to a major label.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
They got this big deal, they got this big producer,
they made this big, splashy album. We were on tour
on a bunch of UK festivals the summer that album
came out, and they were headlining a bunch of those festivals,
so we saw them play that set night after night
after night, and that.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Album was not a smash success.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
And Interpol's career, looked at now kind of goes like
the first album, Holy Shit, the second album, Oh my God,
the third album oh and then it starts to drift
and they've made a lot of great music since then,
and they've done really well and they see, you know,
in like Mexico, for instance. They are humongously gigantic, so
it's not as though they went away or flopped or

(27:35):
anything like that. But this seemingly unstoppable ascent kind of
slammed into this major label thing, and it seems like
a situation where maybe making that leap was not the
best idea, and even if it was, it definitely changed
their trajectory in like a very clear measurable way. And
I would love to hear what their perspective is, both

(27:56):
on how they went into making that record and what
they expect and what they hoped for and what they
were told and promised, and then what it actually felt
like to go through that process and how they look
back at it now. It's tough because Interpol is a band.
They're making records right now. They are still active, and
I understand same thing with Ben Gibbards, same thing with
like Colin Malloy from The Decembris. They're not necessarily going

(28:17):
to want to go on a podcast and have the
kind of conversation I want to have warts and all
about like how these records didn't necessarily go according to
planner or whether they think they did or not. But
That's why I want to have those conversations. I think,
to me, that's like, that's the first bands I wanted
to talk to when we started this podcast were like
Death Cab and Interpol and so they're still out there.

(28:38):
So if anyone knows Paul Banks, send him my way.
I like the record. I like the record. I'm not
going to talk shit. I just want him to talk shit.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
I mean, also, just I'd like to do more interviews
with label people, particularly indie label people like Discord and
Merge and Matador and sub Pop and Arts and Crafts
and all the eight indie labels and just kind of
you know, showcase the incredible output that they've had over

(29:07):
the decades, and.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
You know it.

Speaker 4 (29:10):
I think we've got some other industry people lined up
that are coming on to do other things other than
making music or releasing music. But I'd like to have
a lot more women on the show. I'd like to
have a lot more people of color on the show.
I'd like to go back through the thousands of records

(29:31):
I have and find some kind of people who don't
often do podcasts and hunt them down and shame them
into going on the show.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Well, it's also it was so cool to talk about
like the Surfaris or to you know, to talk to
some of these people who were in a version of
the music industry that does not exist anymore, and a
lot of the people who are around it aren't around anymore.
And it feels like getting this incredible information that is
disappearing and isn't necessarily recorded that many places, and even

(30:07):
just as sort of like a Lomax style archival project
of stories of what it meant to be in a
rock band in nineteen fifty six and signed to a record,
what a record label was in nineteen fifty six. I
just I find that stuff endlessly fascinating.

Speaker 4 (30:24):
I know that, Josh, I'm very curious if you have
one artist that you just like, this is the person
I'd love to hear talk about their career.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
I'm riding Graham's coattails because Interpool has to be number one,
and I think Graham mentioned it just because we traveled
in so many of the same circles early on. Our
manager at the time used to work with somebody who
worked with Interpol. We recorded our second record with Peter Caatis,
who also did Interpols first two or maybe just the

(30:55):
second Records too. When we were making that record, we
traveled to see them play at Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
And there was a whole thing there on that record.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
There's like this meta I'm saving it for when we
do that episode so I can use it in the intro.
It's an amazing story that I'm just teasing now, so
look out for that.

Speaker 4 (31:12):
I'd also really like to have Liz Pelly on to
talk about her book about Spotify, which to me, has
been the most important piece of music writing I've read
this calendar year.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
The mood Machine, the rise of Spotify, and the costs
of the perfect playlist.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
Liz, if you're listening to this, or if anybody knows Liz,
we're going to reach out to you for sure. But yeah,
there's all these other books like Meet Me in the
Bathroom and sell Out and that sort of look at scenes,
and similar to the interview we did with Dan and
Nate about their incredible book about Orange County, I'd like
to use the podcast more to explore scenes that have

(31:50):
not been like as in everyone's face and talk about
you know, great music like I mean to me, the
like I was saying about like Athens in the late
seventies early eighties or Midwest emo or whatever you know.
I there's all this stuff I want to talk about.
And one of the things that I've found so freeing

(32:12):
about this is that we have not been tied to
any specific scene. We've talked to people who put out
records in the early nineteen sixties, and we've talked to
people who put out records this year.

Speaker 5 (32:22):
And it's no rules, baby.

Speaker 6 (32:26):
No rule, that's right, no rules.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
Next question viz for Vraun asks when are we interviewing
Josh hook right? No right, no proof booth backstage, bron mate.

Speaker 4 (32:41):
Josh, how are you handling being torn between your home
city of Toronto, Ontario and your adopted city of Los Angeles, California?

Speaker 5 (32:51):
In these trying World Series times?

Speaker 2 (32:53):
It's Blue Jays all the way. Oh but no, this
is wonderful.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
I'm looking forward to great baseball.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Josh as a former, picture yourself? What is the solution
for show?

Speaker 5 (33:05):
Hey?

Speaker 2 (33:05):
How do you solve a problem like Otani? Man? Just?

Speaker 3 (33:10):
I don't know what. How do you get in his head?
The guy's so solid. I don't know if you can
solve them.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
I think you have gambling related heckles allegedly that.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
Certain fan behind Home Play just has to put like
some odds on his shirt.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah show, Hey heard about a really good parlay there. Man,
just come over here real quick, real quick. So there
you go. There's our interview with Josh Hook. We're going
to carve that out into a separate episode of MLD.
I will say, as a longtime collaborator with Josh across
a wide variety of bands and projects, starting in Grade
four and continuing until both of us are deep in

(33:47):
the cold ground. That well, josh is a man of
few words. He obviously is the beating heart of this
podcast and of every project I've ever worked on with him,
and also the best driver ever known. So that's the
Joshua experience me. That's the mystery. We're pulling back a
lot of curtains here, but there's one curtain that will
ever be shut, and behind that curtain is the.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Truth of Joshua Hook. But we love him and we
salute him.

Speaker 5 (34:14):
We truly.

Speaker 4 (34:16):
I think that the person who cares the most about
this the person who is most responsible for its quality,
the person who is doing the work day and day out,
is Josh. I cannot thank you enough for everything you've
done for this so far and everything that you're going
to be forced to do for many.

Speaker 5 (34:37):
Years to come.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
I just want you and your family to know that
I am thankful for us taking you away from your
children and your wife and your career, your real career, to.

Speaker 5 (34:50):
Slave over.

Speaker 4 (34:52):
Removing my deep, heavy breathing and weird noises.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
I'm supposed to remove it. I've been amplifying it. That's
on a separate paid only feed.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
Yeah, check out MLD plus more.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
If you tilt the plus on its side, it's an AX. Sorry,
all right? What else do we have here?

Speaker 3 (35:13):
From Justin Nichols? What is the best pre MLD song
used in a movie and why?

Speaker 1 (35:22):
As a very specific question, I think he must mean
a song by a band who did eventually make a
major label debut but had not yet made it when
the song that was used in the movie was recorded
from that subcategory, what's the best example?

Speaker 4 (35:37):
Well, thank you Justin for the awesome question and for
being an awesome dude. And I'm not sure I think
that it's. Yeah, obviously it pre major label debut. But
the song I think about the most is mud Honey's
Touch Me I'm Sick. That was then used as touch
Me I'm Dick in the nineteen ninety two Cameron Crow

(36:00):
film Singles, which in itself is like a document of
a scene, and that scene that I was talking about
wanting to get deeper into where the band, the fictional
band that Matt Dillons in is like members of Pearl
Jam and Sound Garden, and that there are all these cameos,
like Chris Cornell cameo and just kind of like investigation
of Seattle in the late eighties early nineties. But I

(36:23):
always thought it was a brilliant way to not only
kind of skewer some kind of self serious music, but
also to.

Speaker 5 (36:35):
You know, like point out.

Speaker 4 (36:36):
The kind of dude dominated world that those guys were
in that that movie is so much about, you know,
these relationships between men and women.

Speaker 5 (36:44):
And it's also kind.

Speaker 4 (36:46):
Of like a great Dick joke that sits really firmly
in the center of that film. And I love Camera Crow,
and I love particularly that era of Camera Crow, like
leading up to Almost Face and which is you know,
another movie that's packed with great songs.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
And maybe we should get Cameron Crow on major label.

Speaker 5 (37:07):
He would be great.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
I mean that's another thing is like more of these
music film people. I think would be really cool. I mean,
he is like the music journalist that defines my life,
you know. I think very specifically about often about an
interview he did with Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder, specifically
in from I believe it was in Spin or Rolling

(37:30):
Stone at the peak of their you know, white hot popularity,
and how it was such an informative It was like, Oh,
this is what music journalism is.

Speaker 5 (37:40):
This guy really cares.

Speaker 4 (37:41):
And he's also you know, made that Pearl Jam twenty
movie with them and has made a ton of great
movies and I'd love to we should try to get
him on That would be great.

Speaker 5 (37:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
Is the Velvet Underground and Nico a major label record?

Speaker 5 (37:57):
Yeah? Definitely.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Well, then I can't use that trying to think of
needle drops.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
I'm aware I can remember in this moment Wipeout, which
is on a major label debut, but maybe there's a
recording of it that predates their major label debut.

Speaker 5 (38:10):
Definitely, like the first singles.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Not special shout out to its use in the Simpsons
episode Cape Fear, I think where Sideshow Bob dedicates it
to Bart with the message I'm coming to kill you
and we were just talking about how surf music is
associated with Halloween strangely often. That's a great example of
sort of like the maniacal laugh at the beginning of

(38:32):
Wipeout being used as the maniacal laugh of the Killer
Side show Bob. So that's not a movie. But that's
my answer.

Speaker 4 (38:40):
What's so funny because this podcast, I think really is
defined by like the first intro to the first episode
is about Elliott Smith and the Oscars, and then we
just recently, you know, had the singer from Say Ferris
who talked about being in Ten Things I Hate About You,
And I mean almost all of the musicians that we've
had on the show have had some success in Hollywood

(39:03):
getting syncs and licensing, and that's such a big part
of the musicians making a living. I'd be great to
get a music supervisor on one thing I wanted to say,
for when we have Ben Gibbert or someone from Death
Cab on is. I met early in my career Alex Potsavas,
who's like a very influential music supervisor, and she did

(39:25):
all those soundtracks for the OC and Death cab you
know famously was featured on the OC, and that really
helped elevate their status. And I am in the crowd
in those scenes although're not on camera, I don't think.
But it was like I was at another job working
on the TV show Medium and I was introduced to

(39:48):
her and she was.

Speaker 5 (39:49):
Like, we're filming over there. Do you want to come
and be in the show?

Speaker 4 (39:52):
And I was like absolutely yes, and just told my
boss was like, I'll be back in six hours or something,
and he was like, okay, all right, So yeah, we
should get him a music super on to talk about
place in it and sinks like there's I know, there's
a there's this great company called bank Robber, Rumma, this
really nice band named Lyle who who he has had
an independent company where he has done film and TV placements,

(40:16):
and yeah, there's just so many. Almost every single band
we've had on has had a song prominently on a
soundtrack to a movie you know or love.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Good question, all right, Himmelfarb, Friend of the show. Friend
of the Show.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Asks, what's your biggest takeaway after doing all of these interviews?
My biggest takeaway is that he still hasn't come on yet.

Speaker 5 (40:39):
Steven.

Speaker 4 (40:40):
If you're listening to this, we know where you live.
We do we've all been to your home. You're going
to have to come on this podcast at some point
in time. Car show up every waiting outside. It'll be
like Graham chasing you down the street, and then Josh
waiting in the alley, and after that we'll record the podcast.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
My biggest takeaway, which I thought, I think I alluded
to a bit earlier, and I knew when I was
saying that I was probably stomping on a later question.
But it's it's from talking especially to the people who
have been around for a little bit longer, who have
sort of, you know, made a not just like a living,
but a life in the music industry. Time and again,

(41:23):
they keep coming back to, you know, a pretty It's
one of those notions that I think seems so obvious
that it's easy to discount until you hear someone who
has acquired the wisdom about it say it, which is
simply that the only reliable, true thing you can do
as an artist is to follow your own muse and

(41:44):
to be as true to yourself and as honest in
any moment, any given moment, as you know how to be.
And you know, we talk obviously a lot about the
way that the industry and the commerce of it all
influences the music. But you got to fall something, you know,
you got to know which way north is, and regardless
of the detours you take along the way, you got

(42:05):
to remember there's a path you're coming back to. And
hearing that over and over from these people who are
impossible to ignore, you can't ignore what Colin Newman says
about making art. You have to listen to him because
he's Colin Newman. And that's really been a lesson. Not
only that it's been great to learn, but for me
that's been like really important and very timely to learn

(42:26):
because I'm popping out the end of this, you know,
twenty years of professional music pedling into an uncertain future,
and it can be really easy to lose track. And
I sit there with my guitar sometimes just sort of
lost like Burgin's ass, and I feel like my own
understanding of why I'm doing what I'm doing and what's

(42:47):
actually important and meaningful about it for me, has been
sharpened to a great extent by doing this podcast, and
more than anything, that's what I'm grateful for about having
done it. That's a selfish takeaway, but I'm a selfish guy.
I'm still an artested heart baby, John Paul, how about you.

Speaker 4 (43:02):
I think it's just to keep making stuff even when
things don't go the way you want them to, even
when things seem like your career is over. The good
part about this and the only important thing is that
you keep your output going and it can come over
a longer timeline or in the wee hours of the night,
for yourself, for your friends, for your family, just to

(43:26):
not stop. Because so many of these people we've talked
to so far have managed to do that. And every
time I hear the kind of stories of resilience and survival,
it is inspiring to me. And it's the biggest thing
I'm reminded of too, is that, like obviously when we
all started our careers.

Speaker 5 (43:46):
We didn't think we would be doing something like this
for part of our job.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
And just the fact that we've done so much of
it now, I mean, we're approaching fifty episodes. We've got
this huge body of of work that we've done now
just in the over the last year. I look back
on it and think, like, I'm just so glad I
did every single one of these things.

Speaker 5 (44:07):
I'm so glad I kept doing it.

Speaker 4 (44:08):
I'm so glad that even in times where we all
had personal commitments or other work stuff that got in
the way, we were able to rearrange trusure through prioritize this.
And now we did it, and it can't be undone.
It exists, and you know it's the life is short,
art is long, you know. I mean, that's the truth

(44:28):
of it, Like that is.

Speaker 5 (44:30):
What it is. Well, I said, yeah, I'll tell you.
I'll take it.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
Thanks, Thanks, great, All right, what do we have here?
From Instagram? Amile Twin asks is Will Curry the same
Will Curry from Will Curry and the country French?

Speaker 2 (44:49):
He sure is. I referenced Will.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Recently we were talking about the omnichord and I was
talking about how the omnichord and also the cassio tone
that I stole from Will were sort of my formative
musical instruments when him and I started a band when
we were in grade eight. Yes, that's the same Will Curry.
We were in a band in high school together with
the other Tokyo guys, and then that band ended. Will
and I were the singers of that band. It was

(45:12):
called Suburbia. We made an EP, you know, we'd get
together and home record. It was like a high school band.
We get together play in the basement. Will's parents. Miraculously,
when we were starting the band moved into a new
house that had a recording studio in the basement. It
wasn't you know, it didn't have gear in it or anything,
but it had a soundproof room that sounded good, that
was in design for making music, and so we just

(45:33):
moved right into it. And every Friday night we'd get
pizza and we'd jam and write songs and play the
songs we had, and we'd rent like an old digital
eight track or whatever the record demos. And like most
high school bands and most high school relationships, it petered
out by the end of high school. And then Josh
and Dave and Greg started this other band that I

(45:54):
eventually joined that would go on to become Tokyo Police Club. Meanwhile, Will,
who continued to be a great song writer, started a
band called Will Crey, the Country French who put out
a couple records on Sloan's label Murder Records, and toured
with Tokyo a little bit and was Sloan some around
a bit. They're inactive now. I'm not sure if they're
done for good or just done for now. Will is

(46:15):
a busy man and a father, and I just saw
him the other night. I was in his town playing
a show with my band Park Life, and we got
to have ten minutes of conversation, and as always when
I see Will, it was like ten of the funniest
minutes of conversation I've had this year. Yeah, The Country
French was a great band. They were a like, not
a cool band by the standards of the moment that

(46:37):
they were making music, and I think that that really
was an obstacle between like to be an indie band
in two thousand and six, but to not be making angular,
you know, post punk influenced strokes influenced like rock music
and instead be sort of doing like piano chamber pop.
It was a tough sell. But the records are great,
and I think they probably sound even better now absent

(46:59):
that context. So anyone listening should check out Will Curry
and The Country French.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
And they had one song.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
That was in like a XKCD or one of those
like big web comics. They made a video and put
one of Will's songs in it. So they do have
one song with like numbers on streaming. That's also beautiful. Yeah,
so that's my shout out to them. Will Curry, I
literally would not be who I am or like a
musician at all without him, So we thank him, slash
blame him.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:26):
I remember Will is a phenomenal songwriter, and I remember
all of the people in that band.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
Were just such great players.

Speaker 5 (47:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
It was five percussion majors and a guitar major. Yeah,
and so they were really tight and the guitar players shredded.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
That person also had a second question, which is, and
this ties back into the early talk about group chats
from Girlfriend Material, are we going to hear any more
independent music from you Graham or Girlfriend Material?

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
I'm so happy to exclusively reveal the breaking news on
this podcast that Girlfriend Materials Christmas album, Hyped for the Holidays,
will be coming out this December. It is literally being
mastered as we speak. Girl from Materials started in like
twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. It was a real different It
was like four bachelors getting beers and jamming and it

(48:18):
was a really beautiful thing.

Speaker 6 (48:19):
In all of our lives at the moment.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
And one of the things I was really excited about
because I am a sentimental guy, and I find Christmas
to sort of be like the sentimental center of the
calendar universe.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
I love the idea of a Christmas tradition.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
I wanted to put out a girl from Material Christmas
EP every year with like a cover of a classic song,
an original or two, and sort of did it for
like three.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Years, and then in the meantime.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
The whole everyone sort of scattered off and went from
being bachelors to being husbands and fathers and moved to
different places. And then COVID happened and the whole project
got a little bit derailed. So I reconceived it as well,
why don't we just take all these songs that I
I have home recorded that sound like dogshit and record
them in a real studio and make it a real record.

(49:05):
And we started that process last summer and had an
amazing time with Nixon Boyd, who are our drummer, Jake's brother.
They both play in Colorado as well. Nix has a
great studio in Aurelia, Ontario. We went out there cut
twelve tracks live off the floor. We put a few
of them out last Christmas, but we didn't have time
to finish all of them, and now just barely we

(49:28):
have found time to finish them, and we just were
approving like track lists this morning and mixes, and it's
sounding to my ears really great and like a real
clear statement of the exact sentimentality that, while I am
trying to leave it behind from like a psychological progress perspective,
is nevertheless a defining part of my personality and my art,

(49:48):
and it is celebrated in full flower.

Speaker 6 (49:51):
Here on the Girl from Material Christmas record.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
So that is coming out, and the next year I
will release solo music or music under a new moniker
or something. I don't know what I'm going to call it,
but I've written like a ton of songs that I'm
incredibly excited about and will release in I don't know, January,
February something like that. Thank you for asking, Thank you
for being interested in my shit. Also, Emily Twin, we

(50:15):
see you in the comments. Thank you for posting and
supporting the show and the way that you have it
means a lot to us and to everyone who's wrote
in questions or has liked stuff or listened to the show.
I mean, it is overwhelming to just feel the love
in this very diffused kind of radiant way. It's truly great,

(50:39):
and I've had so many lovely compliments, and so many
folks who have I didn't even know we're listening to
the show bring up weird details about something Graham said,
or how much they want Josh to be interviewed at
length about his life and every detail of his life
and how he should be on social media. But he's
not very sad that Josh is not on social media.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
I'd also love to thank everybody that writes a review
or rates the show to actually take the time to
sit down and bang out a sentence, whether it's complimentary
or not. You know, the reviews are great. They help
us learn. We can cut this part. But do you
guys want to read some reviews from the last year.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Yeah, that's all the questions, that's all the questions. Okay, great, Yeah,
I think as an ending, let's just yeah, read a
few review highlights because I mean, I don't read them,
so I want to, And let's not cut this out.
Let's leave this ina. I'm fascinated by this. It's a
peak behind the curtain. This is what the show is
a want is there any one star reviews?

Speaker 4 (51:40):
They are like the Amazon like, I hate these people.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
Well the thing there are people that give it one star,
but they don't then leave a review.

Speaker 5 (51:50):
I think those are. Whoever those people are, you're our enemy. Now.

Speaker 4 (51:54):
If you're listening, if you if you've listened to this,
we're going to find you. Like the Jay and Silent
Bob movie where they just go from house to house
to the people who wrote negative comments online.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
And I think it's either people that think there's too
much Taylor Swift or not enough.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
Taylor Swift we have.

Speaker 4 (52:11):
Yeah, I'm bracing for the Taylor blowback or support for
people to come out of the woodwork to tell us
that our cold takes on life of a show girl
are exactly right. I think that's likely to happen.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Jason Kelsey is like.

Speaker 6 (52:26):
Listen, you guys like it either.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
I can't say anything the reviews. Thank you guys so
much for writing them. Love it five stars. Graham Right
is such a great host, very good at interviews and
talking solo, enthusiastic, curious and insightful.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
Oh wow, you know, I haven't had a report card
in a lot of years, and so this is actually
I'm ashamed of the warm, fuzzy feeling that instantly appears
inside of me.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Oh, this one's good. Guards down, interest up. The artist
cy interviews have all been very relaxed and forthcoming. It
feels in the best way, like eavesdrop on what musicians
talk about when the muggles aren't around. The wonderful thing
that connects them all is the love of the art.
That is exactly what I wanted to be.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
That is the idea, right is like musicians get together
and yack about music.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
You know, you meet someone.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
I think about this when I go to talk to people,
especially some of the bands that I'm less familiar with.
I get stressed about it, and I remind myself, if
I met this person at a party, we would have
a lot in common because we're both professional musicians or
we have been professional musicians, And I just want to
engage with it on that level as two people with
a shared knowledge base but with very different experiences of it.

(53:34):
So I'm so relieved that that is coming across.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Yeah, it's not just us to give you compliments.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
There are people out here that I really write this,
and then there's one three star review that says too
many ads. There's a great interview here, but it's buried
in so many ads. The show is a challenge to enjoy.
We heard that we did. We've been running the show
with no ads. We recently started putting them at the
front and the end. The challenge is, how do you

(54:04):
keep it going without ads, without you know, creating a
Paul's Deep Voice MLD plus subscription to you.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Maybe that's the answer.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
That I'm I'm into it an only fans where I
just read like, uh, you know, all of our bank
could be your life illegally to create our own audiobook
of that's I'll do it. I'm here for it. I'll like, yeah,
totally available for a cameo. If you want me to

(54:36):
wish your uncle happy birthday, I will do that.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
We'll start tricking the artists we have on into doing
cameos that we've so plas. Yeah, Paul Banks, great to
talk to you. Just one final question, could just read
it's it's for our sound checking. Could you just read
the words on this card? That's beautiful. That's thanks for
reading those, Josh, that made me feel bad.

Speaker 5 (54:57):
That was aweside.

Speaker 4 (54:58):
It makes me so happy that people took the time
to do that. Thank you everyone who's commented. Everyone who
is listening to this over an hour and now of
us ramble on, this is beautiful.

Speaker 5 (55:09):
I'm having so much fun with me too.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
And I should say, my friend Michael, who plays in
the band Good Kid DMed me a question of his
own which is very specific and I would love to
talk about, but I don't know the answer, which was
about how the financial breakdown for a band used to
work before the modern streaming era. I guess because to Michael,
I'm old and have been around for a long time

(55:31):
in the music industry. But Tokyo Police Club, truthfully, when
we started iTunes was already kind of the thing. And
while we did sell CDs in the early days, and
you know, I think Elephant Shell did sell like forty
thousand CDs or something, which is not nothing, although at
the time everyone treated it like it was nothing. I
wasn't paying attention to the financials back then, but I

(55:52):
think it would be a very interesting episode at some
point in terms of, you know, the taxonomy of the
music industry sort of discussed where the money comes from
now and where the money came from in the past,
and just how bands have hobbled together a living over
at this point, you know, almost three decades of real
turbulence and the bottom falling out in slow motion or

(56:15):
maybe fast motion of the music industry. So, Michael, sorry
to not answer that question now or via DM, but
I think it deserves a deeper consideration. And I can
think of a few musicians I know who are paying
more attention to that stuff and are more savvy about
that stuff than me. One of them is Josh Hook,
who I can talk to and we could sort of
put something together on that. So maybe that's something to

(56:36):
look forward to in twenty twenty six. Shout out to Michael.
Love a good pie chart, Love a good pie chart. Yeah,
we got to get a We'll do a PowerPoint MLD tour.
It's a PowerPoint. It's like an up in the air
George Clooney's What's in your Backpack presentation. I'm going to
be doing a What's in your trailer presentation on how
to make money or not as a musician.

Speaker 4 (56:55):
One of the things we talked about also was doing
at least one test of like a live episode of this.
So if y'all would like to come out irl and
see this this thing happen in real time, let us know.
Ideally sometime in the next year we put that together

(57:15):
and test it out either in Toronto or Los Angeles. Yeah,
and that would be super fun experiments. Also there's other
like if you have suggestions for anything, guests, things we
should talk about, things that we should do, anything that.

Speaker 5 (57:31):
You would enjoy more on the show.

Speaker 4 (57:34):
Just hit us up, write in the comments, send us
direct messages. We're in this all day long, every day,
I mean sincerely, so please just reach out and let
us know and thank you for all these comments and
the questions and the love, the radiant love it is.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
We love you too. It's coming back from the side
of the screen or Mike, John, Paul, Josh. First of all,
thank you so much for doing this with me. Congratulate
on a year. Thank you for everything. As you may
be aware, we always end every episode of Major Label
Debut by asking what we think is the most important question,
which is, of course, well you guys disappear into the

(58:12):
inky digital blackness during my conversations with these artists, what
are you eating?

Speaker 5 (58:18):
All right?

Speaker 4 (58:18):
I've got two things to say. One, if it's early
in the morning, I make a terrifying shake from a
company called Simogen. That is, it is made mostly of
rice protein, and it is keeping me alive, literally keep
me alive. If it is later in the day, I will,
before the podcast begins, go into the kitchen, warm up

(58:43):
the oven, and I, as a treat to myself, will
make gluten free chicken nuggets that I will then cut
up like a baby, put into a bowl, cover in mustard,
and then ravenously shovel into.

Speaker 5 (59:00):
My mouth as I listen to you talk.

Speaker 4 (59:03):
I just want you to like, picture that next time
you're mid discussion with when you're talking to Liz Pelly
about how Spotify is permanently devalued repaired music. I want
you to know that I'm just in the darkness, just
shoveling chicken nugget pieces into my mouth that smearing lustard
all over my face.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Well, I will keep that in mind. Uh.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
Most of the time, it's it's some form of breakfast.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
If I'm lucky.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
Today was an English muffin with egg and cheese.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Wow, it's like a real meal. It's not me it's small.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
But the reason that I was scared of doing this
is because I always spill it and when I'm camera
off you can't see that. But today it happened and
I was like, shit, cameras on, so it's just on
the floor here. My dog hasn't got to it yet,
so maybe I'll just edit it out if you can't
see it.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
I like a fool, consume one Ikia bottle full of
water over the first forty minutes of the interview, and
then I always allot an hour mentally, even though our
interviews routinely go ninety minutes, if not two full hours,
And so I spend the entire second half of the
podcast is dying in my chair having these amazing conversations

(01:00:17):
like wow, and that gives me ten more questions to ask,
and we're really getting to the bottom of something. But
also I may die. I may die in this chair
of urine retention. So that's what's going on on maya
end of things. When we make the show, there's no escape.
I should start wearing a diaper. Twenty twenty six. This
is for the only fans. If you pay extra, we'll
give you the camera angle that's below this one.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Oh gosh, it's either that or ads. Okay, you don't want.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
To get recruited for ice, Well, you're gonna have to
look at my diaper.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
I don't make the rules.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
And on that note, oh, shout out to mister Greg Alsop,
who's amazing theme music for major label Debut has defined
the show and kind of like was the first thing
that really made it feel real to me as a podcast.
Greg also is such a great guest. If you haven't
listened to the episode where we had Greg on, you know,
it's two friends who like hadn't talked since their band

(01:01:08):
of twenty years broke up talking for the first time
and we just had like a beautiful, in depth, warm,
loving conversation about our lives and life and art and
making the theme song for MLD.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
So shout out to Greg, shout out to all of you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
The podcast is of course produced as discussed by John
Paul Pollock and Josh Hook, whose voices Hi, Josh, you
heard today and who's handy work you here every week
and I would say to go out, I'm just going
to stop talking and we should just like let the
MLD theme song play for the people to fily hear
and enjoy unencumbered. Thank you so much, guys, Thank you

(01:01:44):
so much. Any final words before I sign off.

Speaker 4 (01:01:46):
Greg has a bunch of other cool yeah yeah, shout
them out. Including a new Ish band called Delta Underground
that's putting out big, cool singles, and he's touring in
a bunch of other bands too, So go to Greg's website. Also,
if you're in PI should go there and learn music
from him drums, and he's got a cool studio and
he produces and does all this stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:02:06):
So again, thank you, Greg. I just wanted to say
that I'm sure you do not get thanked enough for
everything you do in your life. But also I love
you both. Thank you for doing this with me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Thank you for doing this with me, Thank you both
for doing it with me, Thank you all for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
One year down, many more still to go.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Major label debut will be back again and again and
again with more tales.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
From the intersection of art and commerce.

Speaker 5 (01:02:33):
Take care, bye bye bye