"The Simpsons Sing The Blues" with Alan Siegel

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
It's major label debut.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is the podcast about major label debuts, and I
am Graham Wright. It may not shock you to learn
that I am fond of the Beatles, and the way
that I first became aware of the Beatles not simply
the first place I heard their songs, but my entire
introduction to the fact the Beatles existed at all. And
what that all meant was that when I was a kid,

(00:31):
I had a cassette tape of the Beatles music performed
by Charlie Brown and his friends, the Peanuts Gang, and
they sang the songs in character. There was dialogue and
little skits between the music. As time has gone by
and I've become a devout Beatles acolyte, I've really come
to think it's so beautiful that my introduction to them

(00:52):
was not because someone said to me, Hey, this is
the most important band that's ever existed. Here is a revolver. Instead,
it was that I heard like Linus singing, do you
want to know a secret? And so I just experienced
it purely as music rather than as some you know,
stone tablet handed down from on high. And I'm really
grateful to Charlie Brown and his friends for that, and

(01:15):
I guess also to my parents for buying that tape
in the first place. The reason I'm bringing all this
up right now is because the subject of today's program
is another instance where a titanic musical phenomenon was introduced
to a wide swath of young people via a cartoon

(01:36):
in a sort of strange, roundabout fashion. I'm talking about
The Simpsons Sing the Blues. Yes, America's favorite yellow family,

(02:01):
the Fab Five. They have a major label debut. It
came out at the height of Simpson's mania. When they
were looking to cash in any which way. They decided,
let's make a CD, and a funny name for the
CD would be the Simpsons Sing the Blues. Then they
sort of wildly took that joke seemingly way too far
and made the whole CD almost all blues music. And

(02:24):
so you have literally BB King playing guitar while Homer
Simpson sings. As a cultural artifact, it is mind boggling.
As a record, It's not what you might call good,
but it is certainly incredibly interesting to listen to and
think about and talk about. And it exists right at
the intersection of art and commerce, where this show also

(02:46):
loves to hang out and look around and draw wild conclusions,
and so today on major label debut, I am so
happy to be joined by Alan Siegel, pop culture writer, journalist,
and author of the new and amazing book Stupid TV
Be More Funny, which is a history of the golden
age of the Simpsons. It's a story about how this

(03:09):
immensely important, humendously influential, and successful cultural force was first born.
And Alan talked to almost all the people who were
writing on the show and working on the show about
not just what happened to get the Simpsons off the
ground and get it going in the first place, but
what it felt like to be one of the human

(03:29):
beings who was there doing it, who was stressed out,
eating shitty food in the writer's room all day and
all night long, just trying to come up with funny jokes.
They came up with funny jokes. The jokes were so
funny that it fueled this multimillion dollar phenomenon, which Allan's
book also does a wonderful job talking all about, as
well as the cultural context that the Simpsons was born

(03:51):
into and how inseparable the origin of that show is
from the moment in time when it came out, I am.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
So delighted to have been joined by Alan.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
We had a great conversation about The Simpsons, about Alan's book,
and of course about the wonderful, strange, unforgettable and really
totally unique selection of music that is the Simpsons Sing
the Blues. So, without further ado, here's my conversation with

(04:22):
Alan Siegel. Alan, thank you so much for doing this.
I had a really fantastic time just chugging your book
thinking about the Simpsons. You know, for guys like us
in our generation, it's such a pleasurable thing just to

(04:45):
immerse yourself in the jokes, the concepts, the characters, the
entire thing.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Growing up, my Simpsons diet was that after school, once
my parents allowed me to start watching it, there was
Simpsons on it five five point thirty and so in Ontario, Canada,
on three different channels, so you could watch ninety minutes
of Simpsons a day, and I did, and.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
We all did.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
And since then I've talked to a lot of Americans
even who have sort of looked shocked at how conversant
in the Simpsons that myself and my bandmates were. From
that ninety minutes a day Simpsons diet. So I was
wondering what your once you were allowed to start watching it,
what your Simpsons diet was like as a kid when
you started watching.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
So you hit on something that I think is an
underrated part of what made the show huge, which is syndication.
So when that show kind of became replayed every day
twice a day in the States and in Canada and
around the world, like it got even more in our
bloodstream basically, or like the way we started to live
and breathe it like if we missed episodes and we

(05:49):
were kids, like I'm forty two, like you missed them right,
Like they would come on maybe once once or twice again.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
But syndication is.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
What really drove it for me, Like we would, like
like you, we would watch every day, and that's how
you start quoting it even more, like when you see
an episode once, like yeah, you remember jokes, but you
really get them ingrained if you start watching over and over.
And I have a friend who used to tape the
episodes off of TV, and so that became like his
like dog eared paperback, like he would give the tapes

(06:18):
to somebody else. He became a teacher and he gave
it to a student once, maybe ten or fifteen years ago,
and it's gone and he never got it back, and
that is like his prize possession.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Well, it's amazing that in as you discuss in the book,
you know, the Simpsons. It's so quaint now to think
there was a time when the Simpsons were like scary,
dangerous counterculture. But in nineteen ninety two, the idea of
a teacher giving Simpsons on a tape to a student,
that sounds like a fireable offense. That sounds like it
would be in the news, you know.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
I mean that's again, like now the Simpsons are like
on US postage stamps and they're in museums and it's
like this institution. And back then, like Bart Simpsons saying
hell and damn and talking back to his parents like
that just like didn't happen on TV. You had sort
of this like precocious archetype of you know, young young
male characters. But none were as sort of transgressive as Bart.

(07:10):
But it seems insane to think about now, but it
was true.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, I mean, the President of the United States repeatedly
attempted to use the Simpsons as sort of a cudgel
with which to beat the Democrats, and we all know
how that wound up.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yeah, I mean, there's a speech writer who dropped George W.
Or George H. W. Bush, the line about, you know,
we need more families like the waltonshich is the seventies show,
and less like the Simpsons. And again I think that
that was sort of born of ignorance, Like the speech
writer who dropped Bush that line just sort of thought

(07:45):
the show was crass and snarky, which it was and
some level, but it really it was totally counterbalanced by
the wholesomeness of it, like this was a typical American family,
and I think a lot of adults, you know, I'm
talking about a all ripes crossing political spectrum, didn't realize
that at first, and eventually they did.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, I mean I remember, and I'm sure you had
a similar experience. One of the great ways that when
you were a kid lobbying your parents to that you
watch The Simpsons, one of the great ways to get
them to agree was just to get them to watch
it with you, because even you know, parents who were
more conservative or more church going or whatever, would pretty
quickly realize that this was something more than just you know,

(08:26):
South Park to me always seemed like what everyone thought
The Simpsons was just you know, sort of crass and
boundary pushing, not just for the sake of boundary pushing,
but without perhaps without as much of the heart or whatever.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, I mean, it's funny.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
When I was a kid, it sort of felt like
The Simpsons was one of the shows that parents didn't
want their kids to watch. But I would say, like
ten twenty years later, it became the only show that
a lot of parents wanted their kids to watch. It
was so intellectual in a way that again was ignored
at the very beginning. It was just this phenomenon. But

(09:03):
it's just so funny to watch that change.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
It's my wife has a son and he's almost old
enough for The Simpsons, and we're start we're pushing it
on him, you know, We're like, maybe we can put
an episode of The Simpsons tonight, and he doesn't want
to watch it yet, and I'm realizing we better slow
our role or we're gonna make it seem like some stodgy,
old educational thing. So as soon as I found out
that you were a friend of the podcast, I just

(09:28):
wanted to have you on to talk about The Simpsons
in general, because, as I say, it's sort of like
one of the main cultural influences on my entire life,
you know, and my sense of humor and my way
of seeing the world. I mean, this whole podcast is
about art and commerce and how these things push and pull.
And I feel like just the way that I look

(09:49):
at that and the cynicism, but also the appreciation that
I bring to it, I really see that reflected in
The Simpsons. And I'm sure it's not a coincidence that
for a generation of cultural commentators and people who are
interested in talking about the art and the commerce that
we've spent our lives swimming in the Simpsons is like
our touchstone piece of art.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
It's funny because a question that I've understandably gotten a
lot is like, what is the Simpsons impact on America?
Like how would you describe it? And I mean you
can you can go a bunch of different ways. You
can say it inspired this adult animation boom, every adult
cartoon for adults, you know, post Simpsons, you know, wouldn't
be there without the Simpsons, right, And you can talk

(10:32):
about its influence on comedy and how we quote it
all the time. But I think, really, like my favorite
way to put it, I think is that it's sort
of shaped our worldview. Like you mentioned this, and I'm
going to steal a line from one of the writers,
George Meyer, who basically said, you know, the Simpsons, especially
in the early days, their worldview basically was that the
world is a crushing, unforgiving place, but it's still worth living.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
And when anyone.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Sort of criticizes the Simpsons for being too nihilistic to
cynical about the world understandably, like about politics not working,
about the world not working, infrastructure not working, I go
back to what George Meyer said, and I think, again.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
It's true.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
It's like things suck, but it doesn't mean we should
give up.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
When producer John Publick texted me with your name and
everything and it started, I literally was listening to you
being interviewed on Chapout Trap House, and I was like, oh,
that's really you know, just the notion of you know,
the elephant stampeding through the Republican and Democrat conventions and
both of them are getting pilloried to a similar extent,
just that notion of having healthy contempt for the entire

(11:39):
political system rather than just one side or the other.
Feels not like something the Simpsons invented. But before I
was old enough to know anything about politics, the Simpsons
was kind of telling me this is they're all clowns.
You can just you know, looks like those clowns in Congress.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Are at it again.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Yeah, I mean the show is very left leaning, progressive,
like it's very obvious, like not in a not in
a rat sense. But there were no sacred cows, and
I think that's something that the show was governed by.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, and something that I mean, to me has stayed
really important. You can laugh at all of it, and
the more you love it, the more you can stand
to mock it or poke fun at it. That being said,
the commerce of it all. The beauty of the Simpsons,
of course, is that while they were making fun of
the great American eating mouth, they were also feeding it

(12:25):
to a great extent, and maybe never a greater extent.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Than in nineteen ninety nineteen ninety.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
One, when they released their literal major label debut on
Keeffen Records, The Simpsons Sing the Blues, And as the
resident expert here, I was hoping you could sort of
set the scene in terms of what The Simpsons was
as a cultural force and as a merchandising force on
the precipice of this record's creation.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Sure, So The Simpsons premiered in nineteen eighty nine, in
the winter of nineteen eighty nine. It was with a
Christmas special, and almost immediately, I would say within a month,
the show was a consumer phenomenon. So to give a
little bit of context, this was sort of right around
the time when studios were just exploiting the hell out

(13:14):
of their properties. So you had teenage mutant Ninja Turtles,
you had the Tim Burton Batman movie, which were sort
of built on the back of Star Wars, right like
of these merchandising machines, and every studio was sort of
looking for the next big money maker, And it was
really funny. Around nineteen ninety, before The Simpsons took off,

(13:34):
the prediction was that Disney's Dick Tracy movie was going
to be just like this phenomenon of merch and I
remember being in Disney World and they sold so much
Dick Tracy shit that probably no one bought that was
on I ended up being on Remainder or whatever. But Fox,
which was a fledgling network, was trying to use The
Simpsons to really explode, you know, like a rocket ship.

(13:57):
And so the phenomenon really stared with Bart Simpson t shirts,
which you know, you have a good one on right now,
Like they sold fifteen million alone in the first year
of the show. They had you know, toys and breakfast
cereals and video games and a Burger King tie in.
So they were doing anything they could to make a

(14:19):
buck off the Simpsons, which again is sort of the
ultimate irony because the show is like anti capitalistic in
a lot of ways, or at least sort of making
fun of the obsession that we have with consumer.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Goods in America.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
And an album idea came up, and it seemed kind
of obvious at the time, like novelty records were still
a thing, like it sort of was like a weird
al concept album, like it was like the best version
of a gimmicky album. And you know, they enlisted David Geffen,
who you know, had the biggest record company in the world.

(14:51):
And Geffen was like, how do we do this, and
so he enlisted this producer, John Boylan, who was a
very very serious producer who you know, worked on Boston's
debut album, he helped the Eagles form. He managed Linda
Ronstadt and Boilin like had a good sense of humor,
but he knew like, okay, like if we're gonna do this,
we should do it at least semi seriously. So he

(15:13):
started enlisting like series musicians, and that is sort of
the genesis of it.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
And it is a murderer's from You got bb King
playing guitar on this record. You've got John Sebastian from
Love and Spoonful, You've got Joe Walsh, You've got Doctor
John playing piano. You know, BB King is playing beautiful
BB King guitar, trading licks with Homer Simpson singing Bored
under a Bad Sign, Born.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
Under a Bad Time, coming down, David Budget Buck bad Lug.

Speaker 5 (15:52):
Young.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
I wouldn't have no luck at all.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
When I first listen refamiliarizing myself with this record for
the podcast, my jaw kept dropping wider and wider as
every new song came on. And it's to Homer Simpson
singing Born under a Bad Sign, and he's singing it
pretty straight, like it's such a bizarre document. It's not
totally funny, it's not totally even jokey. A lot of

(16:22):
it's sort of strangely really played straight.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
It's very earnest, which is weird, which is weird, But
like those voice actors are so good, like they can
do anything. They can sing, they can act, they can
be silly, they can be serious, So like it kind
of fit. And I mean, you know, we haven't even
gotten to Michael Jackson yet. I mean, like, so, so.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Well, let's start. Let's start there.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Listen, a complicated legacy, to say the least, with the
understanding that Michael Jackson did other things beyond this record.
Let's talk about Michael Jackson's involvement in this rec Yes, so.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
I'll I'll just start with, you know, the allegations, the
very very serious, horrible allegations against Michael Jackson. Child molestation
allegations had not come out yet, so I just think
that should be noted.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
I noted that in the book.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
It's you know, it's horrible, but you know, this was
like he was the biggest pop star in the world
at the time, Like that's undeniable.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
So it's crazy.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
So that the news breaks in like September nineteen ninety
that Michael Jackson might be involved in this new Simpsons album,
which is absolutely crazy. So I was looking at my research.
The article where the news quote unquote breaks was by
an LA Times writer name Ryan Murphy, who I couldn't
quite confirm it, but I think it's the Ryan Murphy

(17:42):
who made Glee and American Horror Story and all these shows.
Like he was a he used to cover entertainment in
the early nineties. I remember when I was doing the book,
I was like, I needed confirmation and the publicists wouldn't
return my calls.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
So that's a little bit of inside info.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Anyway, there is news in his article that Michael Jackson
is going to be collaborating on this new Simpson album,
and Mack raining is quoted that the creator of the show, like,
you know, Bart and mj are gonna team up and
it's gonna be like Batman and Bart's gonna be like
the Joker, and it was really funny. And then a
couple of weeks later they released a statement that basically

(18:15):
was like, no, you know, Michael Jackson's really.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Not He's not involved, like like.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
You know, mack Rainey kind of walked it back and
was like, yeah, I told a reporter and I was
only kidding, which seemed like complete bullshit, but it was
another time.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
So so the story basically goes is that Jackson was
like working through a brand new giant contract with Sony,
and even though he wanted to record stuff for this
Simpsons album on Geffen, they realized, or he realized, like,
that could screw up my contract. So he kind of
is like a ghostwriter on Do the bart Man and

(18:49):
maybe some backup vocals, but like his involvement in the
project is like a little shaky.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
The science.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
The Scientist.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
I remember, you know, not quite.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
In nineteen ninety because I wasn't quite old enough to
notice it yet. But as soon as this record crossed
my desk, kids were buzzing about, oh, maybe it's Michael Jackson.
There's a rumor it's Michael Jackson, and kids would all
say it with great confidence, whether they said it's definitely.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Him or no, it's definitely not him. That Matt Grating
said that it's not him.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
I feel like it was only a few years ago
that I received not official confirmation, but canonical confirmation, like
you communicate in the book that it seems like he's
definitely involved in it, but perhaps not as heavily as
some of us thought amazing.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah, like everything with him, it's like hard to separate
fact in fiction. I mean you when he was in
an episode a little bit later than that as a
guest voice, there are all these stories about how it
was his voice but not his singing voice for the
same reason he wasn't on the album. So you know,
there was a table read and his like chosen impersonator

(20:15):
was there singing for him, which is absolutely insane but
sort of fitting with Michael Jackson.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
And yeah, I mean it's the kind of you can't
make it up stuff that sounds like it's a gag
from The Simpsons that Michael Jackson will come in to
do voice work for a character that isn't Michael Jackson,
but when the time comes to sing, only his favorite
Michael Jackson impersonator will do right, And he.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Voiced in the episode that again is no longer available
on Disney plus a three hundred pound patient in a
mental hospital like they I think a lesser show would
have been like, oh, we're just gonna have Michael Jackson
as Michael Jackson, and it didn't happen like that.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
And indeed, the Simpsons would later frequently go to the
well of celebrity guest stars and musical guest stars, which
I want to talk about. But after we finished talking
about the double platinum record The Simpsons Sing the Blues,
I thought it was really funny do the Bart Man
the song that Michael Jackson participated in the creation of,

(21:15):
And apparently there was one. Now I can't memori if
I if it was in your book or in another
article I read, but they said that Michael Jackson contributed
the line if you do the Bart, you're bad like
Michael Jackson, which is, you know, is a great line.
So if we give them credit for that, I'd say, yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
I'm not sure exactly who wrote that, but it sounds
about right.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
But there's at the beginning of the song there's some like,
you know, dialogue schmutz. I'm not sure if it's pulled
from the show or just recorded in the studio, but
the first words out of Bart's mouth on the record
are I didn't do it, which of course is also
the name of the in universe shitty cash In single
that Bart records during his fifty Minutes of Fame, which
I thought was just another beautiful example of the Simpsons.

(21:58):
You know, the Mobius strip of comedy and earnestness and
truth and fiction.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
Yeah, and it was sort of like a you know,
version of you Can't Touch This, you know, like it was.
It was a little bit later than that, but that's
sort of what they were tapping into.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
We don't need to go like track by track on this,
but I really wanted to highlight Deep Deep Trouble a
number one single in Ireland. The Irish loved The Simpsons
so much that even the second single from the Novelty
CD went to number one, just by DJ Jazz Jeff
And well, it kind of goes hard musically. There's a
part where all the beat drops out and Bart's just

(22:34):
going on his own, and then the past fire sucking
comes in under as like as the beat.

Speaker 5 (22:39):
No mom and dad are home, The kids disappear, and
I'm all alone. Everything silent except for my moan and
the low bluesy tone of a sax of phone. They
look at me, then they go into a huddle, get
the sink and sensation I'm in Deep Deep Trouble.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
What a sample.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
I raised both my arms and triumph when I first
heard that, But it's also oh, you know. Then I
listened to it more and more, and it does. It
tells a story in the lyrics. It's sort of like,
you know, a Simpsons story of Bart screwing up and
getting in trouble, and it's it's not very good. The
thing about this record is it's kind of, you know,

(23:16):
it doesn't quite hit the level of excellence that we've
perhaps come to expect from The Simpsons. And I think that,
you know, everyone involved in it seemed to sort of
share that opinion pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
Is that fair to say? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (23:29):
And I mean I will say, just like back up
a tiny bit like that might be like peak Bart,
like that song, like it was like late nineteen ninety
he was the breakout character of the show and it
was like, holy shit, this like little kid can sort
of spawn a single that's like in the top ten
in America too, or maybe top twenty five. But the
writers who worked on the show, like they kind of

(23:50):
thought it was a joke.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Like I remember Jeff.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Martin, another again a great writer on The Simpsons, was
sort of like, yeah, we couldn't quite get it to
the level of the show. It just wasn't happen, like
but I don't know, they look back on it fondly.
But at the same time, like you know, it's like
on the New York Times Worst Pop Music of the
Year list, Like, yeah, any kind of novelty record is
going to it's easy to sort of critically dump on it,

(24:17):
you know what I mean, especially because it's so popular.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yeah, and it's not even performed by you know, it's
not like the Drew Carey Show made to CD and
there's there's Drew Carrey with the accordion. It's like these
are cartoon characters. And the thing that surprised me I
had sort of had it in my mind that this
was I think I thought The Simpsons peaked a little
later than it did, especially in terms of the merchandising.
This record came out around the same time as the

(24:40):
second season of the show, right yeah, I think it was.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Late nineteen ninety is when it came out.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah. Like again, I.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
Think what what shouldn't be understated is like The Simpsons
was incredible for like a decade, right though, like phenomenon
of it was only really a year. And I'm talking
about like peak pop reularity, like merchandise craze. The album
like it burned really brightly and then it sort of
settled into like again, the best show on TV. But

(25:10):
that first year it was like red hot in a
way that it never was again. But the album is
probably peak like merch.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, I mean, it's such an artifact for so many reasons.
All just like nowadays, if you were trying to cash
in on something, you wouldn't make an album out of
it first, But back then you could. If you put
the Simpsons name on it. Kids had to buy it
if they wanted to hear the songs, and so that
way you could just easily sell tons of millions of
CDs and tapes.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, I'm just imagining, like do the bart Man like
people doing the dance on TikTok or something like, like
they make fun of an in Portland. Yea, but yeah,
I imagine it would be. It just would be in
a different form.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Now, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Maybe the Simpsons thing the blue Hooves will be carved
up into bite sized chunks and redistributed for a new generation.
But the thing about it being so early in the
run of the show is that you know, you go
back and watch those episodes now compared to the season's three, four, five, six,
whatever your preferred golden age is, and it's pretty protean.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
You know.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
The Homer's voice isn't really there yet. The characters are
a lot simpler.

Speaker 5 (26:16):
You know.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
There's this amazing song on this record, look at all
those idiots, which is mister Burns sort of doing I
guess a rap duetting with Smithers bitman by the cooler
drinking water is if it's free. Oh that's Homer sentence, sir,
I'm drawn from sector seven.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
G is cool.

Speaker 6 (26:35):
The simps into my office and stay towards the funny
if he's six feet that he hinties two feet When
I'm done, it brings a way of sunshine to my
unhappy life to make him feel before me can slowly
twist the knights.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
Boops.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
It's funny, and I mean it's it's more great content
from the America and Scrooge, but it's also it's pretty
one note.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
You know, there's so much more.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
There's none of the old timey dialect or any of
the things that really came to make mister Burns such
an indelible character. And I think that's true really across
the board. Even you know, Homer doing born under the
bad Sign gets to do his nickname stick at the
end which is pretty funny, maybe the best laugh on
the record, but it's also it's not the Homer that

(27:26):
we came to know and love, and so it's really
cool in a way to have that era of the
Simpsons frozen in the amber of this record.

Speaker 5 (27:33):
You know.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah, I mean Homer at the beginning was Walter Mathow.
Like Dan Castelnetta, who voices Homer was doing Walter Mathow
and it like screwed up his voice and he was like,
I can't do this anymore and sort of having the
lighter tone really like broaden the comedy, like you know,
you could do a lot more with sort of his
own natural voice. And yeah, and I mean it's funny

(27:57):
like those I would say, like the first season season
and a half, like the bones of it are there,
but you know you can sort of see it grow.
I mean, there are some amazing second season episodes for sure,
but it definitely, like we talked about it feeling quaints,
like it really does feel quaint those first that first
season or so. It's just the world is very small

(28:18):
compared to what it used to be, like Springfield.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
And it's in rough shape. The thing that really strikes
me watching this first and second season is that Springfield
looks like shit, Like the baseball stadium is just crumbling
mose Bar really, I mean, it never looks nice. But
the dank has never been danker than in those early
seasons with the air conditioner above the door and everything.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
Yeah, and it's very mac Graining, Like you know, Mack
Graining was an underground cartoonist, or rather an indie cartoonist,
and like Life in Hell was his strip and very rudimentary,
but in a good way. Like A big reason I
think of that that show appealed to kids was it
was very simple visually and like a lot of primary colors,
like and kids could recognize like Bart, like Charlie Brown,

(29:01):
like you could. You could see his silhouette and know
exactly who he was.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
I was really surprised by many of the things I
learned from your book, which I won't I'll try to
share all of them on this free podcast, but please
feel free. The notion that all right chapter two, The
notion that MATC. Greening originally assumed and wanted it to
air in black and white like his drawings and the
yellow of the Simpsons was actually picked by the animation

(29:28):
house by someone who'd been told to just like go crazy,
do something weird.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
Right, Yeah, So there was a colorist who basically just
wanted to give it a shot and she did and
it was like, it sounds so obvious, but it was
like kind of revelatory, right. So, like the Gabor Crupo
who Classky Cupo that was his animation studio. Like his
reasoning was basically like when you're flipping through the channels

(29:53):
and you see this like yellow palette, like you stop,
You're like, what the hell is this? And obviously there's
way more to it than that, but that's like an
interesting entry into the show.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Well there's nothing else that looks like that on television,
and there they are with the you know, Bart's spiky
head and Marge's blue beehive, and it's all I mean
is it's so funny to talk about it now because
it's so iconic and immortal that it's amazing to even Well,
one of the things I loved about reading the book
was learning about this moment where it was new and

(30:27):
in a way, I mean, that's kind of what is
exciting for me about doing this podcast in general, is
I'm talking to bands who are typically reflecting on records.
They made it like an inflection point of their career,
whether it's their first record ever or their first record
with a big budget, or their first record with a
big audience, and that electricity of possibility and like every
morning you wake up and there's new good news for you,

(30:48):
and you know, the disco sales are just are rocketing
up and up. Forever, I'd never thought about the fact
that The Simpsons went through the exact same sort of thing,
except probably much bigger than almost any band.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah, it's like you in TV, you sort of read
about shows that needed to hit their stride, like Seinfeld
is a great example, Like it took a couple of
years for them to find an audience.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
People didn't really get it.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
But if you go back and read the Simpsons reviews,
it is instant. Like I'm talking the pilot, the or
rather the series premiere, which is a Christmas episode. Reviewers
were like, this is funny, this is like nothing else
on TV, and that is rare, Like they they got
it even before the public, like they were really on

(31:32):
the show.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Like that's how different it was.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
And I think again, people don't realize now that it
was revelatory in that way.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
I'm wondering if you have, if you've had the same
experience as me, where these early seasons and that episode
in particular, I've really found as I've gotten older, they've
resonated with me more and more. And I mean, I
think I'm now older than Homer. And how old are
Homer in March? I think, and they're supposed to be
in their late thirties. Eight thirties is crazy. I'm thirty eight,
so I'm right there with him.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Yeah, I'm forty two.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
So maybe it's just that simple. But we watched The
Simpsons Resting on an Open Fire, the Christmas Special, first
episode of The Simpsons last Christmas, and I found myself
very emotionally moved by it. I mean, and I think
as a younger kid, you look back and it's it's
not quite as straight up funny as the few seasons later,
and the animation's a little wonky, and Barney's hair's the

(32:23):
wrong color and everything, But that earnestness that you're talking
about that's at the heart of the whole thing is
very much present and very much on the surface, and
it seems almost bold of them to do it like that.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yeah, I mean, there's a reason, like James L. Brooks,
who like me, is a Jewish guy. Like he he
was like, they need to go to church every week, right, Like,
like what other shows did that showed that, Like shows
that were quote unquote more conservative or sort of leaning
that way or more traditional didn't even do that. And
I think at the beginning they really leaned on the

(32:55):
wholesomeness of it. And as the show went along, even
like in the next couple of years, like kind of
drifted into more snark and they would always pull it
back with like sort of family togetherness. But at the
very beginning, that's what they focused on. And you know
in the in the first episode, like Bart gets a tattoo,
I mean, but the whole like it ends with them

(33:16):
sort of bittersweetly adopting a dog, Like they don't get
a lot of Christmas presents, but they adopt a dog.
And that's sort of the the ethos of the show,
which is like togetherness beautifully put.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
And I found as I was listening to the Simpsons
sing the Blues, I was laughing and my jaw was dropping.
But the most surprising feeling I had was that I
found myself genuinely emotional about these songs, and particularly there's
the the Randy Newman song I Love DCU Smile that
Homer and Marge are duetting on and it's just so,

(33:50):
you know, it's like a sweet love song does what
it says on the tin. And you know, Julie Kavner,
I think sort of was the cast member who was
the least musically in going into the record, But she
does the Marge voice and he does the Homer voice,
and I just found myself, Oh, there's Homer in Marge
and they do love each other, and that is you know,
the truth of their relationship has always been so strong,

(34:11):
and hearing it in that music it got me. It
brought a tear to me eye.

Speaker 4 (34:17):
Tad without a budget.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
Like a watch without a dial?

Speaker 1 (34:27):
What would I do if I didn't have you? I
Love Deceive You.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
So is that the first Randy Newman animation collaboration.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Well, you know, it may be, I mean, nineteen ninety.
I can't think of one before that, not that I'm
the Randy Newman X.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
She's really funny.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
I don't know, I'm just thinking about it that like
he created these like iconic songs for animated movies into
the first one was a duet with Marge Simpson. It's
like very funny to think about.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
You know, they're a marri because mom and dad absolutely
who better to embody that feeling. I haven't even asked
you if you had this tape CD LP.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
When when you were a kid.

Speaker 3 (35:11):
Yes, it was one of the first albums I owned.
I think it was like the Wayne's World soundtrack and
this album. And as I got a little older, I'm
trying to think of what else, you know, like all
the all the grunge records of course, and you know,
and the Simpsons sing the Blues.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Because I didn't have it. I had friends who had it,
but we didn't. We listened to Do the Bartman and
that was it. And I'm curious what you what you
made of the record, which is sort of like three
funny songs and then seven straight down the middle, you know,
blues or blues adjacent numbers.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
Oh, we definitely liked Do the Bartman in Deep Deep Trouble,
and everything else was like I couldn't tell you, Like
I think I didn't know that the songs until I
started revisiting it to write the book, Like that's how
that's how forgettable it was, But I'll also it should
be noted that they had music videos for the big hits, right, yes,
for do the bart Man in Deep Deep Trouble that
premiered on the night of Simpsons episodes, which is such

(36:11):
a relic that like a video release would be huge.
Like I remember when when the Black or White video,
the Michael Jackson Black or White video premiered. I believe
it was either after or before in Living Color on Fox,
and this was like an event. And I think again
it's such a relic of the time that The Simpsons

(36:32):
was producing music videos.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Not just not just episodes.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yeah, the notion of the music video, not just the
cash in single, but the associated cashi in music video
as like a serious commercial driver for these entities. I
remember when Star Wars episode one, the Phantom Menace was
coming out, one of the first things they released was
a music video for that, you know, the Duel of
the Fate song and had so it's a footage from

(36:57):
the movie in it, and we all it was appointment viewing.
Me and my brother and my cousin all went down
to the TV when we knew it was going to
come on and we watched it. What a time to
be alive.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
I think it was sort of similar with when like
Mad Magazine was culturally relevant, which you know, wasn't that
long ago that it was still huge. They would have
these movie parodies that were like point by point taken
from the actual movie. And that's how you learned about movies.
And you know, nineteen ninety one, sometimes if you didn't

(37:26):
have the Internet.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Oh yeah, And I mean I think I learned about
movies before the Internet, largely from the Simpsons. And you
talk about in the book how they would, you know,
be sending PA's down to the archives to pull stills
from movies that they could get their references, right.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
I mean, anyone that spends a lot of time in
the Internet, like should marvel at this concept. Like we
can we can pull screenshots from any movie, you know,
within reason from the last one hundred years, just with
a Google search. But when they were parodying like Psycho
and two thousand and one in Space Odyssey, they couldn't

(38:00):
just do it off the top of their heads, although
maybe some of them could they were that sort of
well versed in it. But it's remarkable if you watch
the episodes, like the faithfulness that they show towards these movies,
and the reverence is really incredible.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
You talk to just about every you know, Golden age
iconic Simpsons writer absent your Swartzwelders, And you didn't.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Talk to Graining either, right directly.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
No, Graining and Brooks are very sort of understandably protective
of the show, and they really for books. They don't
really talk much, you know, because it's sort of their
thing and they want their stamp of.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Approval on it.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Reasonable and I'm sure Matt Graining's answered enough questions about
the Simpsons to keep them going. How do they feel
about this record now, with the benefit of hindsight and
the benefit of, you know, the whole context of where
it sits in the show, as Cannon.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
I think that they view it as just like this
goofy thing that was a product of the show's popularity. Like,
I don't think they look back on it with shame.
I don't think they look back on it all that
fondly either. Like like Jeff Martin, who is this amazing
writer who wrote a bunch of the songs on the show,
you know, like that he helps like write the monorail song,

(39:17):
for example, might stretch the walk crack and broken time
mom the mon I've spoken Mono don't He kind of
was just like it was dumb, it was silly, like
it wasn't up to their comedy standards. But I don't

(39:41):
know they they look back on it kind of like
with amusement.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
I'm not really sure how.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
Else to put it. It's not something that's either bad
or good.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
It's just sort of it was.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, well, it's such an interesting middle ground because you know,
as you say, it's kind of like the the the
pinnacle of the merchandise saying moment. But they didn't have
writers from the show designing the T shirts, you know,
they did they they didn't have the animators drawing new
cartoons for the mugs or whatever, as far as I know,

(40:12):
but they did kind of have to create. There's some
writing involved in this, and there's some like Simpson's storytelling
involved in it, and so these guys did sort of
have to moonlight as if they weren't busy enough, you know,
banging out this show.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
I mean, I once did a big oral history of
Walk Hard with John c Riley, And what was crazy
about that movie that a lot of people don't know
is like they had songwriting teams writing like hundreds of
songs to get this right. And I bring this up
because it's really hard to write a funny song, especially
when like cartoon characters are involved. So the fact that

(40:45):
it worked at all is kind of remarkable at a
testament to those the Simpsons writers for making it work,
and also like John Boyle and the producer for taking
it very seriously, not taking himself seriously. But he talks
about how when the album came out, his daughter was
so treated him like a hero, and he was like, yeah,
she doesn't know who the Little River Band is like

(41:08):
or Boston like that, you know, but she knows the
Simpsons and like he was a hero in her eyes.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
You know.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
The Simpsons album that I knew better was Songs in
the Key of Springfield, which is like a compilation of
all the songs from the show, which is just so
much funnier, better, more memorable than than anything on Simpson's
Sing the Blues. And what do you make of like
the role of music in the Simpsons over the years,

(41:37):
because it does, you know, there's a musical element to
that show that's really important.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
I think it sort of helped it transcend everything else,
like some of the things I quote all the time,
Like I am always singing the song that Homer sings
when he gives up Booze, and it's a parody of
it was a very good year, the Frank Sinatra song,
and you know he sings that. Let's see if I

(42:01):
I don't know if I can. It's like when I
was seventeen, I drank some very good beer. I drank
some very good beer I purchased.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
With a fake idea.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
My name was Brian McGhee.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
I stayed up listening.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
To Queen when I was seventeen.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
That was perfect for the record.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Now I can't sing very well, and I didn't know
that that was a parody of a Frank Sinatra song,
But it's an example of how brilliant that show was
to just like pull these references out of nowhere and
make them funny. That would be funny if I didn't
know the parry, if I didn't know what it was parodying.
Yet it was hilarious. Like the Mono Rail song Conan

(42:54):
O'Brien came up with like he was obsessed with the
music man and it was just an example of like
all these writers' obsessions that were allowed to like percolate
and come out on the show.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
And yeah, I guess that's part of and this is
discussed in the book about how the animated format one
it seems like one of the key realizations of The
Simpsons was this animated format frees us. We can make
a sitcom and we can treat it like a family sitcom,
but then we can go to locations of sitcom could
never go to, and we can break you know, doing
a musical number on Friends would have been prohibitively difficult,

(43:29):
but for the Simpsons, you just draw it and then
the actors can you know, do a few takes and
edit them together, and yeah, and I mean then you
have the mono rails.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
So one thing that one here's an episode that I
love thinking about and talking about, is like when Milhouse
and Bart go to a Spinal Tap concert, Like I
didn't understand that Spinal Tap was a fake band, and
they go to like this metal show and you know,
and I think spinal Tap like eventually like quote unquote
reunited and started like touring, you know, and playing actual shows.

(43:59):
But that that's just a good example of the writers
taking their obsessions and you know, Harry Shearer was in
Spinal Tap, so it worked. But they were able to
do things yeah, like no show could have done that
except the Simpsons. No show could have you know, had
a fake music festival with all these artists that came
later like like a Lollapoloo's a parody.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, And that Spinal Tap episode, which I think is
was my introduction to Spinal Tap when I saw it,
you know, before I even knew the movie existed. They
also because as I'm sure you've heard from other people
in bands the Spinal Tap movie when they watch it,
you know with our wives and girlfriends, is they're laughing
and we're sitting there straight fac saying like that's real,
that happens. That happened to me, that exact thing hiding cool.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
I don't know if oh, sorry to interrupt, Like was
it Ozzy Osbourne rip like he did? He say, like
watching Spinal Tap was like disturbing because it was too
real or I'm.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Not sure if it was him, but it wouldn't surprise
me because that is how I feel about it. And
the Simpsons got in another iconic spinal Tap true joke
with good Night Springton there will be no encore, which
I can tell you is a phrase that we said
between each other and the band, between the main show
and the encore, probably more nights than we didn't, because

(45:10):
that's just the language we speak, right.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
It's like a way to bond.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
I've talked about this, like there are water cooler shows,
you know, like Sopranos, Mad Men, where you watch you
talk about it the next day. But I think The
Simpsons is sort of like a secret handshake show. So
you know, you watch it, you inhale it, you it
goes into your DNA or something. And then when you
meet someone and you reference the show and their eyes

(45:35):
light up and it is like like it's like instant friendship. Yes,
and it cuts across you know, demographic lines, age lines
like and that I think is like another thing that
makes the show special.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Have you seen Mister Burns a post electric play?

Speaker 1 (45:50):
No, but I know exactly what it is.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
I mean, it's yeah, if anybody hasn't seen it, it's
sort of like a post apocalyptic play where involving a
Simpsons gag that sort of gets you know, like a
like a myth gets passed through generations and turns into
something else. It's sort of like a pro too, like
the meme culture, right, like like yeah, like we take

(46:13):
all these Simpsons things now and we remix them and
we you know, put them together, and yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Yeah, and I just found it so again moving this
notion that oh yeah, these are the things that end
up mattering or the things that we talk about in
the languages that we share speaking. If we lost everything else,
we would still have our memory and be able to,
you know, to reconstruct word for word the scene from
Kpere where Sideshow Bob says, so I'll stay away, all right,
stay away forever. And I like what you said about

(46:40):
it being you know, a secret handshake almost, because as
I really learned from your book, the Simpsons itself, especially
those of those golden years, are the product of a
bunch of people doing that, of coming together with this
bizarre shared reference set and synthesizing that into like this
new apotheosis of.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
An American culture. Almost.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
It's kind of like the good side of watching too
much TV. Like these writers were glued to it like
we were.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
I was.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
And they didn't just watch the good stuff. They watched everything.
They watched good, bad in between, and like that gave
them such an understanding of the medium that it allowed
them to both embrace it and make fun of it
in a way that no other show had.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah, and all of a sudden, it's not that it's
the only TV show any of us watched, but it
started to feel like, gee, that you could just watch
this and you'd kind of get at least it for
a while. There, get everything you need a squeezed out
of this culture, all that from a whole bag of oranges.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
I was very worried that when I was doing research
for the book that I would get sick of the show.
And I've talked about this before, but like my wife
would come home watch me watching these old episodes and
like dying laughing, And it did occur to me in
the moment, like oh, I'm never gonna get sick of this.
But at the same time, I don't even want to
risk it. So I've been trying to cut back a

(47:57):
little bit recently.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
But it's hard. It is hard.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah, I'm on the opposite tip where it's just sort
of a it's summer. When we get a free hour,
we just watch two episodes of The Simpsons.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
We used to in the van.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
We just put a laptop on playing it, and if
you were in the front seat and couldn't see it,
it didn't really change your experience.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Because you knew it so intimately.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
When you were singing the Brian McGee song, I was
just I realized in my mind, I was watching that
whole sequence unfold with great accuracy. What was the hardest
part about putting the book together?

Speaker 3 (48:26):
The hardest part, I think was the scope of it,
like trying to figure out how to write a book
about the Simpsons in a way that was digestible, that
wasn't just like needlessly completest. And I think the way
I sold the book was just sort of realizing that, like,
what do people care about about the Simpsons? And that's
the early days, So figuring out that, you know, nineteen

(48:49):
eighty nine to around nineteen ninety eight was what people
wanted to read about. Like that's what people quote, it's
what they talk about, it's what they reference.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
So I think that was the hardest part.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
And also sort of trying to figure out, like what's
a cover in a way that like didn't feel like
a rehash and you know, and then there was this
realization that like, maybe I'm into the show a little
bit more than the most people, so covering things that
I already knew was it was kosher, it was okay.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Right, I know, getting ready to do this conversation, I
was having the exact same thought. She's like, oh, gee,
I'm really you know, doesn't everyone already know all these things?
But maybe not everyone knows all these intimate minutants. I
was a production of a cartoon from thirty years ago.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, and I think, like, for people that don't know
the show at all, I think, or I hope that
the book sort of explains to them why it was
so funny and important. And for the people that know
the show already, I was trying to really get into
how it got that way, and I, yeah, those are
my two goals.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
And one of the things that shouldn't have surprised me
but did was it's always the answer. I you know,
I've spent so much of my life loving music and
television and movies and you know, art in general, and
wondering what it's like behind the curtain, And the answer
is every single time, it's well, they worked really really hard.
They worked How did it get so good? How do

(50:06):
you make something that's so superlative? And excellent. Well, you
work your ass off at it and you don't settle
for just good And I should have known that, but
it was amazing to me. The book really makes clear
that these guys were they were destroying their lives, They
were running their bodies and souls into the ground for
the sole purpose of making funny television.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
I mean they were sort of set up for it
in an interesting way, like they were mostly single, or
if they were not single, they didn't have kids yet,
so they would spend like twelve or fourteen hours on
the Fox lot, just like thinking of punchlines, going over scripts,
and like cod and O'Brien, who really was on the
only on the show for a couple of years, Like
he had a funny comment about this basically that like

(50:49):
people always ask him, like, take me back to this
magic moment of like when you created this thing, and
he's like, it was a lot of fried food, it
was writing longhand it was driving my four Taurus into
the studio lot.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
On a Saturday.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
Like the magic comes later when it comes out or
when you're looking back on it. And I think that's
just a good lesson for anybody making anything creative. It's
like there's a quote that's sort of attributed to Dorothy
Parker that's like, I hate writing, I love having written,
and it's very true.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
It's like it is a huge.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Ego boost when that thing gets out in the world,
but before that, it is like crushing every day you're
working on it.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
And yeah, that's I've always had to struggle with that creatively,
because I got into this racket because it looked like
fun on TV. And then you do it and the
first time it's not fun. You're like, wait a minute,
I must be doing it wrong. Because the monkeys all
lived in the same house together and they were always
having a great time. And I don't live in the
house with any of the guys. We don't have a
firepole anywhere.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
And I think maybe like the lesson that, including myself,
we wrongly take is that like you need to bleed
for it for it to be good. And so like
you cycle through this and you know, you pull your
hair out trying to at something right, and then like
you do well, and then you assume that you needed
to have done all that awful stuff to get it good.

(52:07):
But really, like it's in spite of it in a
lot of ways.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
I talked to my therapist about this. Sometimes this notion
is like, I can I know about all the work
I have to do to be creative, and I the
discipline that sometimes I'm good at and sometimes I fall
short of. But then whenever the reward comes, the idea
or at the solution at the end, it always seems
like I stopped the work and then there's a mysterious

(52:30):
gap and then the idea came and it had nothing
to do with the work. It just happened after the work,
and I have to assume the work had to do
with it, But it never really to me. It never
feels like I'm getting a payoff for my effort. It
feels like my effort was wasted and if I just
sat around all week, I still would have had that
idea on Friday. Probably not a good lesson for any
kids out there.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Yeah, it's hard because, you know, we talk about creative
work sometimes, especially with like iconic artists, like the biggest
artists in the world, like as if they were sort
of gifted this talent from God or something like that,
which is probably true in a lot of ways. But
you know, creative work is still work, like for sort
of normies that are doing it, not you know, Prince

(53:08):
or Michael Jackson or whatever. And yeah, I mean I
think that's the lesson that, like, even guys as smart
as the Simpsons writers had to grind and grind and grind,
and obviously they're incredibly talented, but like they would spend hours,
like the animators Rich Moore, who's one of the animators
I interviewed who went on to win an Oscar he

(53:29):
made Zutopia, Like He's like, it took years off my life,
like being there for so long, and like it would
feel like a blur, And then you would ask them
about certain things and they be like, I don't remember
what you know writing that joke. I was on two
hours of sleep that day.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Something that to us is, you know, if I wrote
just that one joke, I would be the most satisfied.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
Person in the universe.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
And they're like, I don't know, I had the worst
day of my life, and in between bites of my burger,
I guess I pitched that.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Yeah, And I think again, it's a testament to the
show that the writers were sort of encouraged to always
try to top each other and talk. The last episode
which created like an impossible standard and that's what kept
the show good, but it also made their lives pretty
difficult at times.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
And it made future Simpsons kind of impossible to be
anything other than what it became, which is, as we
were talking about, before the mics came on, something that's
looked at with a little more amusement. But backing up
a bit from that, as I alluded to earlier, the
Simpsons have had a great number of famous real life
musical guests come through Springfield, and I wanted to ask

(54:30):
if you have a favorite or a most beloved or
memorable Simpson's musical moment in general.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
I love Peter Frampton appearing on homer Palooza. So it's
an episode it's like a U Lollapalooza type music festival.
The whole episode is incredible. It's like basically about like
the idea of being cool and aging and how like
Homer and Marge are not cool anymore and like what
butting up against youth culture. But like Peter Frampton got

(54:59):
a call from this is the nineties, so like he
was not a punchline, but he just like wasn't really
in the zeitgeist anymore.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
In any way.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
I mean, he made some incredible songs, but I don't
think he was quite appreciated like he is now. And
the casting director was like, yeah, like, we want you
to play a guy who's an older guy who's on
a music festival with like Smashing Pumpkins and Cypress Hill
and these you know, current artists, and he's like he
immediately was like, wait, so you want me to be
the washed up guy in the episode there? And she,

(55:28):
the casting director was like yes, and he was like,
fuck it, this is funny. And you know, the rumor
was that they really wanted Bob Dylan and which you
know would have been interesting, but Peter Frampton would have
been like Peter Frampton told me when I interviewed him,
He's like, Dylan would have been great, but I was better,
Like I would have been funny, and he embraced it

(55:50):
and like that was sort of the first time I
understood or heard the bit about his guitar talking like
I didn't get it. I didn't understand like I didn't
get it. I mean there's a line too in that
episode where I think at Lisa's like, yeah, it smells
like Auto's jacket in here and it's like like the
Weed like that was sort of like when Weed was
was like a little more taboo to talk about, like

(56:10):
an insturm TV show.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
And it was great.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
I mean, Billy Corgan's really funny in that episode as well.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
That Billy Corgan smashing pumpkins Homer Simpsons smiling plightly is
just that's the kind of beautiful, tight joke we love
from our Simpsons. Yes, I also I don't have a
question about this, but I feel like I simply must
shut out the b Sharps episode, which is sort of
like as we talk a lot about like narratives on
this podcast, right, I'm really into that idea of you

(56:36):
know what, how were my expectations.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Of being in a band formed?

Speaker 2 (56:41):
That influenced how I approach being in a band, And
it's always, oh well, it's these it's what Walkhard that
you were talking about parodies.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Is these.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Pat tidy simplified rock and roll mythologies that were all
so fond of and before Walkhard came along to pillary
that stuff.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
The beh episode really.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Does like an amazing job in twenty two minutes of
telling that story in a way that is earnest and
moving but also is hilarious and gets a few good
digs into the Grammys.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
Yeah, but before I get into that episode, like it's funny,
Like I remember when I wrote about Walkhard, like jud Appatao,
as a producer, said that these music biopics are so
funny because it's like every time someone new walks onto
the screen, they're like the most important person in the
band's life, and like that's what it feels like in
some of these depictions. But my favorite detail about Homer's

(57:34):
barbershop quartet is at Disneyland, there's an a cappella group
called the Dapper Dance, And at disney World and Disneyland,
you know, different versions of the group will sing songs
like they'll perform every day. And Jeff Martin, who was
again the Simpsons sort of resident little songwriter who's incredible,
incredibly funny, said he once talked to the Dapper Dance,

(57:58):
you know, he was talking to them and they said, like,
the number one request they get is baby on Board,
which is a song from the Simpsons episode that they
cannot sing because of licensing issues.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
It's my Nice page trips to Nice with my bad.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Like if you talk to people from like age thirty
to sixty about barbershop quartets. They will reference that episode
of The Simpsons, like that's.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
How baby on Formative might be the most famous barbershop
song of the twenty first century. And I think that's beautiful.
There's also something I always think about in Lisa the
Simpson when she goes to listen to the violinist, listen
to the notes of the violinist is not playing, and then
she goes out to the car afterwards, and the violinist

(58:54):
gives her this beautiful pep talk about like staying true
to herself whatever whatever it is, and then Lisa's so
grateful for it and she runs away. Musicians like, damn,
that felt like a sale. H it do be like that?

Speaker 3 (59:06):
I mean yeah, like they always they sort of it.
It's really God, it's kind of cruel. It's like they
when they talk about how like the jazz radio station
only has like a range of I don't remember what
it was, like three hundred feet, and it's like, that's
the that's the longest range of any jazz station in
the United States.

Speaker 1 (59:23):
It's like or the world.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
It's yeah, it's full of truth and I love it
for it.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
I also got to ask about your relationship with modern
Simpsons in as much as you have one by way
of asking about the famous Lady Gaga episode of The Simpsons,
which I frequently here cited as sort of being the
nattier of the show in general.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
A have you seen it? And be what's your relationship
like with it? I've seen it.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
I think it's it's not as bad as people sort
of make it out to be. It's like and maybe
I sound maybe this is a cop out, but I
again I've said this before that the show is a
victim of its own excess. It was so good at
the beginning that everything else pales in comparison to those
first ten years, and it's like you run out of ideas,
like like, at least the Lady Gaga one seemed to

(01:00:11):
be inspired in terms of like theming and visuals and
so and like she clearly loves the show. And that's
an interesting thing too, which is as the show went along,
guests coming on were like super fans of the show,
and at the beginning it was like not really legitimized.
Like for example, like when Dustin Hoffman was a guest

(01:00:35):
star in the second season, his kids loved the show,
but he was credited as Sam Edick, like as in
Semitic like, and that was what it was like. Animation
was for hacks, like, it was not for anyone legitimate
or any sort of a list star. And so it's
really a sign like all these incredible guest stars that

(01:00:57):
again many of them are playing themselves, like it's a
sign of how far The Simpsons has gone or how
it sort of impactful it really was.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Yeah, it's interesting it became in its own strange way
sort of like not like a late night show obviously,
but in the sense where it's like, oh, well, you know,
if you're a big famous celebrity, you got to make
a stop on The Simpsons, you got to swing through Springfield.
And the fact that it became a real place in
a strange sort of way is a real testament.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Yeah, and I think like it used to be like, oh,
the Simpsons got Meryl Streep, They've made it. But now
it's you know, Lady Gaga was on The Simpsons, She's
made it. It's like the Simpsons sort of became the
you know, the Carson or SNL where like if you
are associated with that, then that means you're famous. Or
you're in a list star.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
And I think that's true to this day, where you know,
people are not shy about shit talking modern Simpsons. But
at the same time, if you know, every once in
a while, you'll see someone who gets to go to
one of the table reads. You know, for whatever reason
they get someone likes them, they get an ask to
go to that, or they they get to visit the
studios or whatever. I'll see it on Instagram or I'll

(01:02:08):
see it on the Internet, and no one ever talks
about that. Everyone's still wowed and impressed and awestruck by it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
I mean, just any kind of interview that Dan Castelenetta again,
who does Homer's voice, does, it's like the most hypnotic
thing you'll ever see. And I mean Hanka's area too,
where just watching them sort of laps into their characters.
It just sort of proves like how important these characters
were in our lives. Like I once interviewed Yardley Smith,
who plays Lisa. Her voice is Lisa's voice, So you

(01:02:38):
find yourself sort of imagining Lisa talking about her career
as an actor, and it's like it's a little a
little odd, and I think it is for her too,
like I'm sure, like you know, you're not really You're
not always recognized in public, but when people hear you speak,
they like tilt their head like a dog or something
like oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Yeah, this is weird.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
And Yardley Smith also a great singer and probably does
the has the best moments of sort of just singing
her ass off on this record again in a way
that I found really affecting, because Lisa Simpson feels like
a real person to me, and she I mean, she's
obviously an indelible, wonderful character, and on the show she
has all these artistic aspirations that are often frustrated, and

(01:03:19):
so I would hear her singing God Bless the Child,
and you know, Yardley Smith is like belting in ways
where there's a certain level of quality singing where you
no longer sound like a cartoon character, let alone an
eight year old girl just rises up.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
It's like her singing jazz Man in a later episode,
like yeah, yeah, Like it doesn't sound like Lisa, it
sounds like Yardley And like, okay, here's a weird comparison.
Like you ever seen the video of the guys doing
the chilies baby back ribs, Like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
I Want my Baby BACKAVI. You know the song.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
There's a video of these guys and they are crushing it.
They are like belting out this jingle like behind the scenes,
and I remember people were like, ah, it's funny, and
it's like no, no, no, this is like this is
what professionals do. They are in it like musicians. They
are in it one hundred percent in a way that
is like, maybe not emotional, but it's like affecting. Yeah,

(01:04:11):
like you don't. They don't fuck around, even if it's
for a jingle, and I think, yeah, it just makes
your respect creative work in a way, even if people
don't think like voice work is acting like.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
It is absolutely and that I mean I think the
Simpsons sing the Blues. Is it a great record? Perhaps not.
Is it a critical text about the Simpsons?

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Maybe not.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
But it is a really interesting example of exactly what
you're saying across the board. The voice actors, they really
bring it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
Nancy Cartwright is rapping as bart about as well as
I think you could possibly do. And so too do
the musical guests who had every reason to a say no,
like bb King didn't need to do this, but he
showed up and he did a professional job. And so
two to all of the anonymous, you know, session players
that are on there and the producer and everyone, I

(01:05:00):
think that it's really the Simpsons are professionals. As we
saw in the Behind the Laughter episode. They are solid
professional entertainers and this is a polished professional statement from them.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
And you can never stop them there. They'll always keep going.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
And I mean, like the Simpsons.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Yeah, and I think, like maybe we talked about this already,
but it sort of is the best version of a
novelty record, like like imagine like if you know, like
maybe there was like a Ninja Turtles album, you know,
like like there's there probably was, but you know it
wasn't It was going to pale in comparison to The Simpsons.
Like the Simpsons was going to make it as good
as possible, and yes, there's a ceiling to that, but

(01:05:38):
it's still the Simpsons.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
It's still the Simpsons, and I'm so glad it exists.
All I can say is I wish there was a
Millhouse song, but there wasn't much mill House in season
two yet. You know, I don't even know if you
had blue hair, So maybe maybe someday it's not too late. Well,
I don't want to take up too much more of
your time. For you, I'll make it a two part question.
We always finish by asking what the artist in question

(01:06:02):
ate while they were in the studio making the record.
So first I'll ask what you ate well writing this book,
researching this book, if you had a particular go to
source of fuel, like the writer's room had their you know,
their their burgers.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
So if it was the writer's it was probably butterfinger bars.

Speaker 5 (01:06:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
For me, what did I eat? A lot of?

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
I ate a lot of I hadn't just moved to
La when I started working on this book, so I
was eating like a lot of burritos and tacos. And
I live in Los Fela's, So there's a place called
Yuccas that I would always like when I when I
was when I was happy or like, I don't know,
excited that I crapped out a section or whatever, like finished,
I would go get a burrito and they as still

(01:06:43):
have burgers there and I would get that. So like
typical sort of La like quick food that that's great,
and and a lot of like a lot of like
Trader Joe's frozen items, just like the most Like this
is before my my wife who was then my girlfriend
moved down. Like it's like the most single guy of
all time. Yeah, but yeah, that probably something.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
Yeah, I would have just been at E Rustic with
wing sauce crusting into my keyboard.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
Chapter.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
I think those are the best wings around, and I
think they're the.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
Best wings I've ever had.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
I can walk to E Rustic, so yeah, I've been.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
You're a lucky man, you Rustic in shout out to
a bar that has served great purpose in my life.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
Yeah, yeah, hyperlocal La restaurant.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Oh and then most importantly, where in Springfield would you
eat if given the chance.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
I'm a big like Italian food guy. I'm from the
Boston area, so I would go to Luigi's for some
some spaghetti and meatballs. That would be my top choice.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
They only consider you scum next to Krusty.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
Wow, we have the mind meld there. Like that just
shows I was going to make a joke about that.
I thought it required a little more context, but you
nailed it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
I don't bother with the context. That's the Simpsons vocabulary way.
This is just comes out of my body so readily. Alan,
It's an amazing book. I learned new things about the Sims,
which is you know, no mean feat and it's also
just like really readable and reading books for this show
more and more I've come to recognize like the challenge

(01:08:12):
of prose styling, you know, in a non fiction context,
where you're communicating the content of these conversations you've had,
or you're you're doing like exposition dumps on then like
they spent a year working on this thing and I
have two sentences. It can really get clunky when you're
trying to communicate that stuff. And I didn't find your
book had any of those clunk This is maybe a

(01:08:33):
boring thing to end the podcast talking about is like
pro style, but I was really impressed by it. It's
full of really fun, cool information and it's also like
a pleasure to read. And I just wanted to congratulate
you on such great work.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
I appreciate it, man, And I'll say something about that that.
A thing that I did struggle with was I would
often make these references or things about the show that
were like a little too esoteric, and my editors did
a really good job being like why the hell is
this in here, and like can you trim it, and
they did such a good job of like making me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
Whittle down to like the most important information.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
Wow, that I didn't think of that, But yeah, it
would be so tempting to put a Simpson's inside joke
every two sentences and easy to do as.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
Well, right that I had to realize that sometimes I
would have to explain things to them.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
I guess that's what you need a non Simpson's watcher
on the editorial team to make sure as a control group. Yeah,
was there any info you got about the Simpsons Sing
the Blues that I didn't queue you up to drop
on us? But before we go, this is poor quality podcasting.
I'm supposed to guide you to these answers. But if
there's anything in there that you learned or that you

(01:09:39):
were burning to talk about today, the floor is yours.

Speaker 3 (01:09:43):
So I think before they made the album, like Graining,
Matt Graining and James L. Brooks, executive producer, were like,
we're gonna make it the Simpsons Sing the Blues. And
one of the funniest details I read was like they
were like, but we need to like what's the blues?

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
Like like what is the version of that?

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):
And like that's what it's so weird is like it's like,
how do you take this like very soulful genre of
music and like apply it to a cartoon. And again,
I don't know that they completely nailed it, but their
version of it or satirical or parody version of it
was workable.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Well it makes for such an interesting concept because I
read the same thing where someone just walked into someone
else's office and said, the Simpsons sing the Blues, which
is a funny. The sing the Blues construct is like
a kind of album titled joke, and it's just amazing
to me that they felt like they needed to stay
true to the bluesiness of it, even though the you know,

(01:10:38):
the two singles are like hip hop songs. They didn't
have to make it a blues record. They could have
called it that and you know, Marge's hair is blue,
like we get it, it's colors, but no, they made
sure it was a blues record.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
And I think that that's a very immute.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
That's the one spot where they decided to like stay
on the street and there. I think it's pretty fun.

Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
They were committed to the joke, basically, so committed that
it's not a joke exactly so ernest that it transcends that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
Yeah, which I'm sure as time goes by it will
just well, I mean, it's the Blues is also a
humongous American cultural institution that has shaped our society in
infinite ways that were not even capable of ever understanding.
So is the Simpsons. And to have them mashed together

(01:11:24):
like this, it's a very strange brew, but it's one
that is alive. You know, you could write an entire
dissertation I think on this record from like a musicological
perspective that's totally bone dry, but would probably.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
Be really interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
However, I will spare you and our listeners my attempts
at doing so. Now, what everyone came here to see
hard coordinat Alan Siegel and the Simpsons and me. What
a concept. I don't know if you could tell from
the way that I was conversing, like I was stumbling
down a hill, barely keeping my feet underneath me egging

(01:12:00):
from Simpson's reference to Simpson's reference. But I was just
over the moon excited to get to talk to Alan
about the Simpsons.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
And I gotta say I never really thought that I would.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
Listen to the Simpsons sing the Blues. Ever, again, I
was pretty happy to leave that back in the past
when I was ten years old. But I had such
an amazing time listening to it. Like I said, it's
not like good, but if you like the Simpsons, if
you're interested in the Simpsons, I really suggest you give
it a listen, just just once, set aside some time,
put it on. You will be amazed, not by the

(01:12:32):
quality of it, but by the sheer commitment to the
bit that everyone involved with it seemingly possessed. It's really
hard to imagine anything like that being made nowadays, and
you know, maybe we as a society are poorer for it.
Whatever the case, it was a treat to get to
talk about it with Alan, a man who knows my

(01:12:54):
Simpsons references, so thank you so much to him. Please
go check out his book. It's called Stupid TV Be
More Funny. It's a great read. It's a breezy read
thanks to his really good writing. If you like The Simpsons,
or you like pop culture, or you like knowing about
how incredibly important things first came to be, it's a

(01:13:14):
great book to read.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
This one.

Speaker 2 (01:13:16):
If you're watching it on YouTube, you are seeing that
we did this one on video. So I'm talking about
this while looking into my camera talking to myself. I
don't have a script. I'm just going off the cuff.
I don't know if that's becoming more and more obvious
with every terrible word that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Comes out of my mouth.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
So in conclusion, I will simply say thank you for listening,
thank you for enabling us and enabling me to get
to continue to do this show and do ridiculous things
like talk about The Simpsons for ninety.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
Minutes and pretend that it's work.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
I am really really grateful for the opportunity, and I
feel very humble and lucky. Major Label Debut is produced
by John Paul Bullock and Josh Hook.

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
I'm humble and lucky to know.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
Those guys as well. Our music is by the great
Greg Alsop. You know about liking and subscribing and following
and reviewing, but.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
Please let me remind you one more time.

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
The podcast will continue. You can't stop the Simpsons or
Major Label Debut. I'm Graham right, and we'll be back
next week with more tales from the intersection of art
and commerce. Good night, and keep watching The Skis Skys

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}"The Simpsons Sing The Blues" with Alan Siegel

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

"The Simpsons Sing The Blues" with Alan Siegel

Stuff You Should Know