December 16, 2024 • 61 mins
In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy discuss Emergency & I, the 1999 album from The Dismemberment Plan. More than two decades later, it remains held in the highest of indie esteem. Find out more about the best rhythm section in indie rock, what Jake feels is maybe THE best song (period!), which band member moved on to work for NASA, and more on this week's podcast.
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While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie.If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerchOr reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com
If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.
See you next week for another episode of CHP.
Sick of hearing all the ads? Subscribe to Soda Premium on Apple Podcasts to get rid of them!Follow @ColumbiaHP on X!
While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie.If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerchOr reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com
If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.
See you next week for another episode of CHP.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
You dig down underground now, through the soil, through the
cooling clay, as the din fades above you. You're moving
your secret. You're listening to the latest episode of Columbia
House Party. Jake, what's up man?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh much? How you doing well?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I'm sleepy and yawnee now because you yawned fifty times
in the green room before we came on.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I feel like I shouldn't be held accountable for you
being tired. I think that's unfair.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yeah, I mean, look, there's at least a little bit
of that. That's my fault.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I mean, yeah, you work harder than I do, so
I feel like that's on you.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Luckily, I have this tea eat in a cup with
a monkey on it, where the monkey's second arm extends
out to be the handle of the mug.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I've always said that warm tea is a good way
to wake yourself up.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
It has caffeine in it.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Still, tea tea is sleep drink.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
No, not for me. Maybe if you drink like the
sleepy tea.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well yeah, why would you drink any other tea other
than breakfast or sleep tea?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Because it tastes good and I've had too many coffees today,
and I don't want to get in trouble from my
body for too many coffees.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I guess that's fair.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
It better be fair.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Ja, I don't really feel that strong about this, being
perefly honest.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, me neither. I just wanted to give you some slack.
I mean, let's give you some give you some flack
rather not slack slack in here.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, we don't use slack. We use email a No.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
The rest of us use slack. You just don't log
into it.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, I probably know it's Dylan.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, because I could just pass on what Clay and
Dylan and Jests put in the in the slack, I
just passed it on to you, who needs to use
slack if you have me as the Gobe absolutely correct. Wow, Jake,
I have bad news for you. As as much as
we're joking around me carrying being this is a very
Jake episode. You're carrying all of this, bad boy, this
(02:15):
is Columbia house party. Thank you for making it through
two minutes of Jake and I taking gigs at each other,
you know, absence and the heart growing fond or all
that stuff. Thank you so much for following along with us,
listening along if you are so inclined, Patreon dot com
slash Columbia House party to support us there. Failing that,
please rate, review, subscribe. Tell Jake just how good a
(02:36):
job he did on this episode, because this is a
research heavy one, A lot of fun background on today's band.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
This isn't This isn't good. It's all on me, this
is rude.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well, hey man, it's a It's a band I wasn't
super familiar with until recently and have gone back and
listened to. So I obviously did my research, but I'm
excited to go through it. Jake, what do you have
for us today? For the essential indie heads?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So today, I have an album that is considered by many,
including myself, to be one of not only one of
the best albums of the nineties, but also one of
the most important indie albums of all time. It's an
album that is extremely important to me personally, even though
(03:19):
it's not my favorite album of this bands, and this
band is extremely important to me. I think it's You
could very easily call this band one of my three
favorites in the world, and that doesn't change rankings. I
love this band. They are everything I want music to sound.
Like they are very much in a genre I love
(03:40):
a lot, and since we're not ever going to do
a Q and Not You episode, probably I figured this
was a good way to sort of bridge that gap.
So today we are talking about the dismemberment plans, extremely
massively amazing album Emergency, and I lost.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
My membership God to the human race. You don't forget
the face because I don't know that.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
I do love here.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Thrown down?
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Then check lest let's see if feelings are good.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
It's honestly is bad.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Keeping inside we're still.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
You a problem?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Well, I guess we got one now. I really don't
know how she's over here?
Speaker 5 (04:28):
You God, damn you want me to say? Why do
you want me to.
Speaker 6 (04:38):
Lea?
Speaker 4 (04:39):
S I do you want me to say?
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Why do you want me.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
To to la?
Speaker 6 (04:49):
I mean what you want me to say?
Speaker 5 (04:55):
How do you want here?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Ta? That is? What do you want me to say? Jake?
(05:39):
What do you want me to say? This is going
to be a fun episode again, a Jake heavy one,
because you have a lot of research here in a
deep personal connection before we get into the research, and
you know some of the background and the making of
this album, and of course it's influence coming out of it. First,
I guess I should ask for our friend Jacob Kramer.
How did he not get the invite on? I feel
(06:01):
like this is right behind block Party is like the
number one Kramer album.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
This Actually Kramer and I have a funny connection with this.
When Dismemberment Plan reunited in twenty and thirteen, or I
guess when they released their reunion album twenty thirteen and
a friend of me and Kramer's and I were going
to go to New York to see them, and Kramer's
sight unseen or banned unheard I should say was like, yeah,
(06:29):
I'll go, And then now they are one of his
favorite bands, which I think is funny. I think the
reason Kramer didn't get an invite is because, uh, we
didn't think to ask him, because he's just been earmarked
for block Party, and that's what he's gonna do. Not
to spoil our spreadsheet, not to spoil our spreadsheet, but
one day we're gonna do the only block Party album.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
So yeah, yes, because we couldn't have him on for
two episodes that would be I.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Don't want to give him a big head about it
or anything, all.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Right, So Jake, my connection to the dis memory Plan
is very similar to Kramer's. I did not catch them
at the time. As we've discussed a lot, you know,
in that late nineties early two thousands, I was not
into the indie scene. I was you know, metal and
pop punk and emo and then a little bit of
even hip hop mixed in there. This stuff from this
(07:17):
genre missed me, and it's something that I've gone back
to a lot in the last maybe five to seven years.
You know, it's always a fun experiment to go back
and listen to an older band or an older album,
having like coming to them where you are already a
fan of bands who were influenced by them, and you
can pick up like, oh yeah, Motion City Soundtrack, bought
(07:39):
their used boog synthesizer at a garage sale probably, or
you know, you can hear a little Thermals in there,
or even like Incubis a little bit at some times.
You know. So it's it's been a cool one to
go back to. Not a lot of personal connection on
my end, but you have a ton of personal connection
to this.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, I missed sort of Plan when they were current.
Most I mean a lot of that is because I
was like eleven when this album came out, but I
got into them. I guess it would have been right
at the beginning of their reunion in I guess it
would have been twenty ten or twenty eleven. And I
don't really remember how I came across them. I'll talk
(08:20):
with this when we get to discussing the song. But
I listened to them like sort of when we were
doing London Calling and we were kind of talking about
how that was an album that sort of changed the
way me and Steve considered music. I found dismemborent Plan
(08:40):
very similar for me. They were kind of I was
sort of in this weird phase musically, of like I
hadn't yet really come back to the pop punkin emo stuff.
I was very much in my like electronic indie alternative phase,
and then Dismemory Plan were kind of this perfect balance
(09:01):
in a lot of ways, even though they don't sound
like any of the electronic bands I was listening to,
but they just kind of bridged that gap really nicely
for me. And it was one of those bands that
happens to like you get lucky. Sometimes you hear a
band you're just like, oh, this is everything I've always wanted.
To hear in music, like.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
When I heard post Malone cover.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah exactly, Oh my god what but yeah, but it
was just one of those like big music moments where
I knew. I was like, oh, I'm going to love
this band, and then I did, and it just sort
of there's just a huge, huge band for me, and
like what I want all music to sound like.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I guess, yeah, that's great, man, And we're going to
get into what they sound like and the specifics of
what you're trying to highlight there. We're going to do
that after a little break. Also, just yes, the band
name is a groundhog Day joke which I watch that
movie on groundhog Day, which is the Leo meme of
pointing at the screen.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
That's the dismemberment plan.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
That's the dismemberment plan. All right, we're gonna talk about
the dismemormentive plan and emergency and I after this. All right, Jake,
(10:28):
So what do you got for us?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Okay, So before we get into this, because this is
like I feel like people listen to our show, a
lot of you probably know and really like this album
because it is kind of a big indie thing. It's
too big. So there's like five songs on here that
I would consider better than most music that we are
not going to talk about. So if we don't talk
(10:51):
about one of the songs from this album, you're like,
why aren't you talking about that? Just because there's too
much and we only have an hour?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Anyway, are you? Are you already are you like preemptively
responding to Angelo right now?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I'm actually more premptly responding to myself because I sent
in the run sheet two days ago, and this is
the first time where the last two days I've been like,
oh I should have talked about this one instead.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, be the first time that the first time that
producer Dylan had to clean up for us for a change. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Really, Like, there's just like two of my all time
favorite songs are not getting discussed today. So maybe I'm
just a little peaked about it. But it's fine.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
We can also bring them up.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
They'll come up, but we're not okay anyway, I'm a
whole thing written out.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Iron man anyways, continue sorry, thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
The Dismemberment Plan were formed on New Year's Day in
nineteen ninety three. They were originally made up of Eric
Axelson on bass, Steve Cummings on drums, Jason Kaddell on guitar,
and Travis Morrison on vocals and guitar. Axelson, Cummings, and
Morrison all went to high school together in Burke, Virginia.
As you mentioned, they were named after a stray line
(11:56):
in Groundhog Day. In nineteen ninety four, they signed to
DeSoto Records, one of the great record labels, and in
the liner notes of the vinyl reissue of Emergency and I,
it has a huge oral history of this album put
together by the av Club's Josh Midell. I don't know
if he's with the Avy Club anymore, but a lot
of our information today is going to come from that
(12:19):
oral history. In the oral history, Kim Coletta, who is
the owner of DeSoto Records, said, they wrote me a
letter and sent in a seven inch record. That's how
we are operating at the time, no email. I went
out to Fairfax, Virginia to see them play at the
kind of place where you step outside of the club
and there's a car going by at fifty five miles
an hour. They very much started as a literal garage
(12:41):
band or house band. Eric Axelson said, in this oral history,
we practiced at my mom's house in Springfield, which is
a Virginia suburb, and then Axelson's mom, Emily said of
the band, they were always very gracious. They would always
say which nights are you going to be out because
they knew I had choir practice at church on Wednesdays.
I was taking classes at a local university. When I
(13:02):
came home, the house would literally be shaken. The band
originally played sort of a more noise rock, post hardcore
kind of sound. I'd call it very much in place
with the DC post hardcore scene that they were part of.
Other bands of that ilk things like Qan not You,
as I said before, Jawbox, a little Fugazi, the Discord bands,
(13:22):
all that good stuff. They released their first album, which
is just named exclamation Point, like a literal exclamation point.
It was released on October third, nineteen ninety five, on
DeSoto Records. I really like exclamation Point, even though it's
sort of not It's a little more abrasive than I
think their later stuff would be. But you can still
(13:43):
hear a lot of what they'd become. There's a lot
of angular guitars. Travis Morrison's lyrics aren't totally refined yet,
but they're also very wordy, as they always would be, or,
as he told Pitchfork in twenty thirteen, early Dysmembment Plain
songs are like being hit with a confetti canon of words.
In that Pitchfork interview, Morrison also reflected on the beginnings
(14:05):
of the group, saying I wanted to be a writer
when I was a little kid. Then I wanted to
be Pete Townsend, the songwriting guitarists who occasionally sang. The
first six months after forming Dismemberment Plan, I was trying
to find another singer. The original idea was that we'd
have some pretty boy and I'd occasionally do the feel
me touched Me parts. Then when we were about twenty,
Eric sat me down and said, I know you're not
(14:25):
very good at it, but you're gonna have to sing,
and look what happened. It was a different era now
expectations are more muted. But at the time you would
think I want to be sonic youth, I want to
do it. You would think of it as a career.
So we had dreams about being a fairly long lived
band and we broke up. I was like, oh, we
only got to album four. The name of the band
(14:46):
also sort of caused false expectations in the scene. According
to Todd Bell, who is the bass player for Braid,
another band we should do one day, He.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Said, that's episode I think.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I was shocked when Groff came on and didn't
insist on Braid, but that's another conversation. He said. We'd
seen a flyer that we were playing with the Dismemberment Plan,
and I immediately assumed we were billed with a metal band.
We were unloading and the band downstairs began to play,
and we all just looked at each other, like, what's
going on down there? I walked down the stairs and
saw a left handed bass player, a left handed drummer
(15:19):
grooving with a rock band, and a lead singer freaking
out on the trombone, which is kind of not dissimilar
from what they would stay as.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, I guess the lefty heaviness of the lineup is
a little interesting at least.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Oh, we'll be talking about the rhythm section a lot today.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
All right, and their left handedness or.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
No, I mean they are left handed, but that's heather
here nor there, exclamation mark point whatever. Was moderately well received.
Three out of five's from All Music, Rolling Stone and
Sputnik is what's listed on the wiki. Shortly after the
recording of the album was finished, Steve Cummings would leave
the band and he was replaced by Jason Easley, and
(15:55):
this lineup would stick for the entirety of the band's career.
In nineteen ninety seven, they released the Dismemberment Plan is Terrified.
Also on De Soto, Jason Easley said of the second album,
the first Plan record is all over the place. Terrified
kind of settles down a bit, and it's the next
logical step. The lyrics are cohesive and the songs, while
(16:16):
still scattershot, are more like actual songs. And this is
the part of the show where we highlight the older sound.
There are so many songs Unterrified that I could pick,
but I will pick arguably the band's one of the
most popular songs, the band's repertoire and my favorite New
Year's Eve song. This is the ice of Boston.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
And outside two million drunk Bostonians getting ready to sing
all Lang sign out of tune. I sit there in
my easy chair. We'll get in the clouds orange with
self sure.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Kay I saw bastness funny that was flat snow?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Why bed take all night? I slipped on a red time.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Hey, I saw bost money flat snow like.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
Snaw w at the red time time time time.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Time time time.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
Time time time, time time time.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
If you happen to check out the Sadder New Year's
Playlist I put together this year, that was on there, I.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Think on I think I posted every December thirty first,
And as you said, it is a terrific song and
one of the most fun like concert sing along songs
as well.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I have not seen them live, but I would imagine, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
We have three thousand people screaming, how's Washington. It's very fun.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So from there this was I guess this is more
of a question than me leading here, but is was
that song? Obviously, there are so many on that album that,
I mean, it's a deep album in general, and you
said you had trouble picking. But was the Ice of
Boston like the song that kind of got them some
buzz and some momentum or was it just the album
(18:59):
as a whole.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It was mostly the album as a whole, and it
sort of led to this weird period where they almost
got buzz but didn't. The album's definitely more evolved scene.
No way yeah in the late nineties indies scene or
mid nineties. I guess Terrified was pretty well received. Robert
Christegau called it surprisingly thoughtful for post hardcore and said
it's sort of the way Primus might sound if Primus
(19:23):
enjoyed a normal sex life, which I think is a
great quote to your point and your question. The album
was successful enough to get Interscope Records interested in signing
the band to a deal. The way it went down was,
according to Eric Axelson, we were on tour in May
of ninety seven and Kim told me that the bass
player from Blondie was coming to see the show in Allentown,
(19:44):
Pennsylvania at a fire haul. He was also the A
and R rep for Interscope Records. I didn't believe it,
but I looked in the crowd and saw this older
guy with curly hair who was clearly not a kid
from the scene. Jasoneasley would continue. After the show, he
talked to me at the merch table, and sudden there
were a lot of phone calls happening. This was extremely
short lived, as the only piece of music the group
(20:06):
actually released on Interscope was the Ice of Boston EP.
It was your very typical of the time, like, here's
this new band on a major label. Let's put out
a song that's already on an album with some extra
songs kind of thing. It does contain one of my
favorite dismemberment plan songs, which is called the First Anniversary
of Your Last Phone Call, which is also on the
(20:27):
Barsouk reissue of Emergency and I.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
A killer song title.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, a great song title, A great song. It's actually
the last track on the vinyl, which is a great
place for it. We're not talking about it because that
it's not really that important or interesting, but go look
it up because it's great. Shortly after the release and
touring of Terrified, the band began writing what would become
Emergency and I. Emergency and I is a odd title
(20:54):
for a record, Yeah, and it has no meaning at all.
Travis Morrison said that it just happened right after getting
back from New York. I was at the Black Cat
in DC. I was watching Shudder to Think and it
popped into my head. To this day, I don't know
what it means. So that's what it means.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I mean, look it, it's uh, it's fun. It fits
the well, not fun, but like it fits the dismemberment
plan as a name, it fits the kind of mood
and style of music. I don't know it like. It's
one of those ones that it could sound very intentional.
If if he had been like, oh yeah, I just
thought it summed up the album, I would believe him.
So it works.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
It's one of those cool titles that might mean nothing,
but I feel like it suits the album really well.
For some reason, it.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Can't Sandy's is that a cookie? It's a double entre
so the kids will pop with it. Sorry, no, I've
warned to you that I was.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I'm always here for chemical toilet references.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yeah, all right, let's get to emergency and emergency. You
you can't even make my friend more smarter than I.
That's emergency and Jake, all right.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
So the writing process eurgency and I was one of
those this is the most focused we've ever been kind
of narratives. Jason Easley said, we were spending a lot
of time in the basement, really digging in individually to
make music that sounded like it came from a group.
We probably could have had twenty different remix albums if
we had put out suitable rough drafts of our songs.
I love it.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
We've been in the gym, We've been in the lab.
You got to show up music music pr tour. Yeah,
I can't wait. I hope Josh Terry starts to blend
his baseball and basketball fandom into his right writing and
he's just, you know, cloud nothings have been. They just
rented a gym in LA for three months and they
(22:50):
just you know, two days.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Showing up on tour in the best musical shape of
their lives.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Eric Axston further this by saying, but the writing process,
how Travis had a knack for having ideas and matching
them with other people's ideas. He'd hear a riff or
a drum beat, or a new sound, and he'd pull
out some guitar part or vocal line he had. This
is also the time where the band started experimenting with
new sounds and also with sampling, rather than the fairly
(23:19):
standard two guitars, one bass, one drummer setup of the
last two records. Jason Kaddell said, we bought an EMU sampleizer.
Around that EMU sampler at around that time, it was
all over emergency and I. We sampled video games, toys,
vocal samples a lot, which we would speed up and
slow down all kinds of things. Emergency and I was
(23:43):
produced by Jay Robbins of Jawbox, who has also produced
records by Against Me, Jets to Brazil, Hey, Mercedes, The
Promised Ring, Modern Life as War, Job Breaker, Murder by Death,
and so manymore. We could very easily do a Jay
Robbins month, and perhaps we should, he said of the
writing process before Emergency and I. I recorded a seven
(24:04):
inch of what do You Want Me to Say, which
we played off the top on the eight track cassette Masters.
There's a little snippet of them jamming on the City,
but that's just the very beginning. Joe has the beat
and they just sort of have the verse part going
like this really cool groove with that strum guitar chord
in the bassline, and you can hear Travis in the
background going, hey, play that thing, that modified soul coughing
(24:25):
thing you were doing. It must have been two days old.
And when looking back on writing the lyrics to this album,
Travis Morrison says, in quick succession, my sister, who was
very young, had a kid and my dad died. In
the cosmic scope of things, these things happen. It's not
like I was the first person to go through these things,
but it was a very intense time. And because of that,
(24:46):
I think I was finally able to emotionally access classical
real themes, like really basic life stuff. Before that, I
didn't know how. And so while I think Emergency and
I and many songs We're going to talk with today
are a huge musical evolution of the band, and it is,
but in many ways, in a bunch of songs on here,
they did not leave their let's call it claustrophobic noise
(25:11):
rock beginnings behind perhaps best scene on the very chaotic,
wonderful song I Love a Magicians.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
Yet Sisters Stopping its Ways is it's a success.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
Stops side.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Who fun? I like, by the way, you weren't kidding
about Jay Robbins, Like his Wikipedia page has a limited
like like a partial producer resume, and it's insane.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
It's crazy. I remember I learned about him through d
Planned because they always cited job Box of such a
huge influence, and then I listened to Jobbox like Jobbox
are great, and I had no idea that he had
produced like all of my favorite albums.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah, promise Rang Texas is the reason that One Texas
is the reason album. You know, the sounds are the
sounds are all over here, and I know that one
of the things that I guess you wanted to talk
about that a little later with the different song, So
I won't bring up the rhythm section now, but yeah,
take us through I Love a Magician and what basically,
(27:49):
you know all this experimentation here that that's very obvious
as soon as you dive into the album.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Uh yeah, So Travis Morrison in that oral history said
that I Love a Magician happened very quickly in a
bizarre rehearse on Root seven in Falls Church in the
basement of an old office building. The ceiling was like
five and a half feet off the ground. I'm not
sure we were supposed to be there at all. Security
guards were staring at us as we wheeled in our amps,
and I remember Jason howling away on this new distortion
(28:15):
pedal which we wrote the song around. That sound pretty much.
I've seen on various retrospectives that song and Girl Clock
and Memory Machine described as claustrophobic, which I really like
because I think that's a great way to sort of
discuss the rhythm of those songs. Expanding on this Christaville.
(28:36):
In a twentieth anniversary article of Emergency and I for Stereo,
Gum said the ensuing album demonstrates how resoundingly right things
can go when you forge into the unknown. Sometimes it
does so by simply rendering the ragtag chaos of early
dismemberment plan more vividly. Squalls of noise and a stuttering
drum beat keep Memory Machine feeling like a nervous breakdown.
(28:58):
The claustrophobic sensation return I Love a Magician and Girl
o' clock blitz Creed laments about modern love or lack thereof.
If I don't have sex by the end of the week,
Morrison stuttered on the ladder, I'm going to die. The
apocalyptic funk punk of eight and a half Minutes too
could have been a holdover from is Terrified.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
How upset were you when eight and a half minutes
was not actually eight and a half minutes long, and
it was only three minutes.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I was fine with it only because of how it sounds.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, I feel like they're only also advertising though for
the long song Guy I feel like they only have
they only.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Have one song that's longer than five minutes. So I
was like, that's fine, Yeah, that's fine with me.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Just making sure you're okay with it, and we don't
we don't have to take a you know, eight and
a half minutes out to slander the false advertising.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
I feel like if it was another band that I
didn't like as much, I would have a problem with it.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
That's fair.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
But I'm like, no, you know what, they can do it.
It's fine, all right.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
I'll stop. I won't stop interrupting. I'm gonna derail you.
At another point, you keep saying you're gonna stop. You
know you're not gonna Yeah, I mean it's a research
heavy episode. I feel like I need to give you
a brief there every once in a while.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Look, I appreciate it, which is what's important. Emergency, as
I said earlier, was originally meant to be released on Interscope.
We'll get into why it was not soon, but the
advantage of recording on interscope is the money allowed the
band to record at a real studio, Water Music Studios
in Hoboken, New Jersey. According to Jason Caddell, there was
(30:22):
a fair amount of excitement in signing to Interscope because
it allowed us to record at a nice studio for
three weeks, which was amazing. Before we just kind of
smushed into inner ear studios, both physically smushed and also
smushed time wise, having to rush through stuff. Eric Axelson
described the studio as being in an industrial area of Hoboken.
In the main buildings where the studio is, there's one
(30:43):
big room and a control room. Also we stayed there.
You would go outside around this little walkway and go
up some stairs and you're in an apartment with five
or six bedrooms, a big living room and kitchen and
cable TV. And living in the studio allowed the band
for a lot of downtime, but also allowed for a
lot of the experimentation that happened on the record. A
(31:04):
lot of this experimentation was done around the band's keyboard sound,
in which they brought in some new keyboards because their
old ones sucked. Travis Morrison said, I remember a lot
of experimentation happening with our keyboard sound. We were addicted
to some trashy keyboards that did not sound good when recorded.
It was fun in a basement show, but it sounded
bad in the studio, so we spent a lot of
(31:25):
time experimenting, and I was uptight about it, like that's
the machine that makes the magic, right. I was worried
about losing that because there's a symbiotic relationship between musician
and device and creativity. But that being said, it sounded
like shit, so we had to do something. The album
was actually had two producers. Alongside Jay Robbins, was also
(31:46):
Chad Clark, who said that of the keyboard experimentation that
on Spider and the Snow, the strings in that song
come from a cassio keyboard and there was a kind
of cheap reediness that evoked a string section but wasn't
exactly a string section. I thought we should bring in
an orchestra, or at least bring a mellotron and express
the fact that we had access to more tools and textures.
(32:09):
We argued pretty intensely about it, but that song wouldn't
have the right emotion without the ratty, crappy tinfoiy keyboard sound.
And to give you an idea of that crappy keyboard sound,
here is a clip from Spider in the Snow.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Beyond Fang Worse than Bad memories. There's no memories at all.
From the edge of twenty twenty two are far friends
on these names again, ball.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
As I would walk down k Street, the sat tempang
job and the winter froze a life out of the ball. Yeah,
I must have been having a ball.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
You can't say, but I know that it's.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Jos smart. You can't sell bud.
Speaker 5 (33:23):
That was bloud Joss.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Farther So, Jake, in the week that leading up to
(33:59):
this recording session, you posted just Remember in a plan
track on your Instagram story with the caption best song
ever with a question mark. Now, I was walking around.
I was doing what I do in one of my
walks with the album the other day in my prep,
and I couldn't remember which song you had posted just
I could just picture the very great album art, and
(34:22):
I was trying to I was like, Okay, let me
try to guess. I'll listen through the album and I
will guess, and then I'll go back and look at
Jake's Instagram story and try to see if I was right.
I thought it would be Spider in the Snow. I
was wrong.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
I mean, it's a fair guess and also not that
far off. This is kind of the song that I
posted We're going to talk about next, but this was
the second Spider and Snow was the second dismemberment Plan
song I heard, and I would say this is the
one that really cemented them as like a band. For me,
I was so blown away by the first song heard
(34:56):
by them, which are about to talk about that. I
was kind of like, okay, but what else? And then
I heard this, I was like, oh, all right, this
is amazing. People seem to agree with me that were
involved in making it. Axelson said of writing the song,
I remember having the riff and Joe and I were
playing in straight for like a motown thing, and Travis said,
cut the beat off at the end of the phrase,
(35:18):
and suddenly the song was there. Jay Robbins said of
the song, I remember hearing Spider and the Snow at
a show around that time and thinking, I can't believe
I know the people who wrote this, And I think
Spiring the Snow is also a good place to start
talking about the rhythm section of this band being Axelson
and Easily, which for my money, are the best rhythm
(35:40):
section in indie rock. Ever, I'm including like Radiohead in
that I think this song and back and forth, and
like their entire discography highlight how not only how important
the rhythm section are to this band, but just how
ridiculously talented they are. I think a lot of their
songs are driven by the Ryven section, and I also think,
(36:02):
not to get too far ahead, but their reunion album,
Uncanny Valley, was kind of lukewarmly received when it came out,
and I think a big reason for that is that
I think the rhythm section is kind of muted in
the mix on that album. Because when I saw them
in New York touring that record, and you had and
(36:22):
what the rhythm section was all the way forward, and
you had the loud, powerful drums and the loud bass,
all of those songs in Uncanny Valley have a completely
different feel to them and a totally different life, and
all of a sudden like, oh, this song's amazing, and
it completely changed the way I listened to that record.
And there's like on internet archive there at least used
(36:44):
to be don't if they're sillar, but there used to
be like hundreds of Dismemberment Plan bootlegs, So you can
go find that if you want to see what I mean.
But yeah, air Caps is in Jason easily again for
my money, the best rhythm section in indie rock.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Do you do you have much? Did you come across
much on in terms of like what the songwriting flow
was for them, like like because these sound like they
would have been very complicated to come together. And my
gut was that, like the lyrics came last because everything
else was so complex.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
It kind of like, I'm not entirely sure, but from
what I can tell is that it kind of sounds
like it came from all over, like Travis just writes
all these words, but also he as they pointed out,
he has this way of like hearing the song and
knowing what goes with what or sometimes, like with I
Love a Magician, it was just a guitar squeal that
(37:40):
they sort of built the song around. It doesn't sound
like it was built around the rhythm section so much,
which is interesting, but it does sound like it was
just like it built around an idea from one of
them and they went from that. I know that when
they were writing Uncanny Valley, that came out of just
rehearsal jam because apparently they had no interest in making
(38:03):
a reunion record. But then as they were rehearsing for
their reunion tour. They were just jamming in the rehearsal space,
and that just turned into how they wrote their songs,
and apparently that's how they wrote a lot of their stuff.
So it sounds pretty equal division of labor. But they
sound just like really talented guys who hear one thing,
(38:23):
they're like, Okay, we'll build a song around that.
Speaker 6 (38:26):
Now.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I guess, yeah, that makes sense. That's a I mean,
that's that's kind of the way it has to go
when it's that. I guess complex is the Yeah, that's
the word for it.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
In terms of the rhythm section sound on this album,
Eric Axelson said that Jay suggested I play through a
Marshall four x twelve like Lemmy from Motorhead at the time.
I love Drummond bass and dance music and reggae and
these very low bass sounds. But the reality is we
played this really fast, frenetic music, so the tone didn't
make sense with our all over the place playing, so
(38:58):
we tried a guitar amp with another output together at
this low end and it worked out. But it's kind
of weird because when you hear the record, it's not
actually my normal sound. This sort of production and these
ideas and the two producer team caused some friction in recording.
Easily described it by saying being cuckoo and not wanting
to hurt anyone's feelings, we decided to have two producers.
(39:19):
Chad and Jay had a tough time managing their relationship,
and I don't think any of us made that any easier.
It was kind of the passive aggressive Olympics at the beginning,
but we got it sorted out by the end, and
Chad Clark would say our division of labor was that
Jay ended up being the person who was focused on
raw mechanics, making sure that the band was playing in time,
making sure that we were taking tech seriously at a
(39:40):
certain level and that we weren't making a ramshackle, low
budget record, which was welcome. My role was pursuing a
wide screen feel, pushing things far out and using the
studio as an instrument. It ended up being a comptable
scenario for me playing the Brian Eno role. Jay Robinson,
on the other hand, I had to be the bad
cop who was there to remind everybody that they weren't
(40:00):
playing together, that they were speeding up or slowing down.
We were doing things like mapping out click track tempos
and trying to get them to rehearse with a click track,
and being angs written about whether that was the right
thing to do or not. However, all this tension and
experimentation created some of these crazy amazing songs. And this
(40:21):
is the point where I'm going to talk about the
song that I've alluded to a bunch that was the
first song of theirs I heard that, the first one
I heard, the period, the best song period. The first
time I heard this song, I think I listened to
it on repeat for about thirty five minutes and it's
only a three minute song. It's just one of those
like big, big song moments for me. To me, this
(40:42):
song is a perfect mix of what dismemorment plan is
are and should be. The lyrics, the rhythm section, the synth, bass,
the drum beat, it's all there. It's perfect. Or as
someone I saw on the r emo reddit, call it
the peak of indie rock. I don't know where they
fit in our emo but whatever, Or as Christaville said
(41:04):
in that Sierrogum article, few songs can match the tingle
inducing power of surging synth rocker the City, when Morrison
raises his voice at the end to proclaim all I
ever say now is goodbye. It was basically all my
friends eight years early and will leave you every bit
as wrecked. So this is, in my opinion, maybe the
greatest indie rock song of all time. This is the City.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
Now.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Notice the street laughs up do saga e bang Criby
raised some blank face sterns from the subway.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
As people know.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
The parts lay mc lock, my unmade bed, streets saw
silent like.
Speaker 4 (42:14):
My class telephone and this is where I live for
the bell profell less.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
So I'm god, I'm self prophetic.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
I see you where you're loft's.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
No one's known, there's nothing to don the sets from
down since you've been.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Got well Jake. While I don't know that I will
(43:07):
agree that it's the best indie rock song as well
said maybe I know, and as we'll see in our
next segment, maybe I don't even agree it's the best
song on this album. However, it's a very very good
song and it got them on some pretty big touring.
(43:27):
I mean not just this song, but the whole album
got them some pretty big touring opportunities. But not before
some label drama, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
So though this would end up being one of the
most successful, well received indie albums of all time, not
successful commercially but critically, the release of the album started
by being dropped by Innerscope. Jason Cannell said that Kim
was managing us at the time and a few months
after the album finished, suddenly she couldn't get anyone from
(43:56):
the label on the phone anymore. Travis Morrison would follow
this up by saying a friend of ours worked in
Interscope's PR department and told me of an epic meeting
where they went through the list of all the bands
on all the major labels. They were trying to figure
out who signed who. They got to our name, and
there was silence. No one spoke up, including the person
who signed us. I think they may have been trying
(44:16):
to do this to us a favor, and so because
of all this label drama, the album was held up
for release by almost a year. In this year, the
band just went on tour for the whole year, and
then in nineteen ninety nine, while on tour, the band
got the call that they'd finally been dropped by Interscope, which,
according to easily. They all cheered when they received the news.
(44:39):
After all that with Interscope, the album ended up just
being released on De Soto, just like the first two.
Then the release of Emergency and I sort of made
for some interesting tours and shows. I feel like this
Memory Plan are a band that really sort of the
connection between crowd and band and what concerts can be
(45:01):
is always an interesting thing for them. Jessica Hopper, who
was the band's publicist at the time, turned a Chicago
show on the Emergency tour into a dance party, typing
up rules for dancing and posting them on the doors
as big posters. The show ended with audience members doing
the worm and dancing on stage. This also led to
the tradition of having the entire crowd jump on the
(45:23):
stage during the Ice of Boston, which started a Cleveland
show on this tour and continued for literally every show
for the rest of the band's career. Also, when the
band got home from the first Emergency and I tour,
they had an email waiting for them ask them if
they would like to open for a little band called
Pearl Jam in Europe.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Oh, Pearl Jam with our friend Jonah's band the Regrettables
cover band Pearl Jam.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Eric Allison said that we played some club shows in
Germany before that, so we literally went from playing for
fifty kids in Nuremberg fifteen thousand people at the first
Pearl Jam show in Prague. I hadn't had stage fright
in years, but when the lights went down and their
stage manager said you're on, I went totally numb. Travis
Morrison would say, I opened my mouth to sing the
(46:14):
first song and this weird croaking sound came out. I
was so nervous. I couldn't believe how many people were
looking at us. Although the previous night I drank seven
shots of Absence, so maybe that didn't help.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
All right, Jake, Well, as much as I would love
to hear more Pearl Jam and Absence stories from the road,
we gotta take a break, and after that we will
talk about the reception to Emergency and I and how
it's become twenty plus years later, held up as one
of the indie rock essential albums as it were, as
well bringing it into our own takes and rankings after this.
(47:06):
All right, Jake, So you know, I think we know
that this album's held in pretty high regard, but give
give us the rundown of the immediate reception, and you know,
I'm sure you have some I'm sure you have lots
of bands that we don't have time for about just
how much the dis memory Plan meant to them.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yes, so, as you said, this is one of the
most well received indie albums ever, as a five out
of five from All Music and Consequence of Sound. The
original pressing of the album got a nine point six
from Pitchfork, and the twenty eleven reissue received a perfect ten.
It has five out of five from the Rolling Stone
Album's Guide, five of a five from Tiny Mixtapes, and
(47:46):
an anus from The Village Voice Guild magazine said that
it's the Dismemberment Plans landmark masterstroke, still cited by many
bands and critics as the turning point in the evolution
of indie rock. It was named the best album of
nineteen ninety nine by Pitchfork and ranked number sixteen on
their Top one hundred Albums of the Nineties list, with
(48:07):
William Morris writing the album's lyric book reads better than
half the modern volumes on my bookshelf. Modern R and
B should have as much rhythm modern rock should have
as much balls. Pitchfork also ranked the City as the
sixty fourth best song of the nineties. As I said,
the album was re released on vinyl in two thousand
and seven on BARSUK Records, which spawned a tour and
(48:30):
sort of this reunion of the band. Eric Axston told
Treble Zine about the reissue. People had asked about it
or suggested it over the years. This time it was
Josh Middell from The Onion, who we've known for years,
that got the ball rolling. Now that it's done, we're
so happy with it. It sounds and looks just the
way we'd imagined. As I said, this is also where
that oral history is from. It's in the liner notes
(48:51):
that Josh Medell put together. It's awesome. You should get it.
It's great. In two thousand and one, the band would
release Change, which is my favorite dist memory play an album.
I don't want to go too deep into it because
I want to do an episode about it one day.
But it is significant. I'm not saying me it's slightly
mellower than Emergency and I I would say, but it
also has some of the best songs in their career,
(49:13):
including this one Superpowers.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Watch Seen wells, most beautiful women less a solid too.
I've fallen asleep, been the shift fifty South, I've watched
the rich. Let's get off fifteen Montana. I shut it
(49:46):
as an unseen mouths it down. My spine's fine.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Yes, you'd be cows powers, Yella.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Is gone to say in the world.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
Light, brown, sun and sours to.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
Rounded bower, ox stems spars. Yeah, I can see.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
The grass stars way.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Now. Unfortunately, Jake, the superpowers in this regard indicate that
at least one of the band members was just too
damn smart to spend his time in a rock band. Yes,
and they did not last long after that.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
One, Right, No, they're not. In two thousand and two,
they put all the tracks from Emergency and I and
Change on their website, encouraging fans to remix them. That
led to the release of two thousand and Three's a
People's History of the Dismemberant Plan, which is kind of
a cool little document. In January of two thousand and three,
the band announced they were breaking up, playing their final
show on September first, two thousand and three, at the
(51:33):
nine to thirty Club in Washington. Travis Morrison would go
on to release his first solo record, Travis Stan, which
famously got a zero point zero from Pitchfork. I actually
think it's pretty good. I love that.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
Not to take it back to basketball, but you know
that meme of Tony Snell's stat line that Will Lou
will always tweet out when someone takes some bad lass,
you had thirty eight minutes, zero points, zero zero rebounds.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
It's kind of become this like notorious review in Pitchfork lore,
because like they really just gave it a zero because
it's the guy from Dismemorment Plan and it wasn't Dismemberment
Plan record. Sort of on that Travis has said about it.
I got the sense they thought I was a rock
star and they wanted to take me down a peg.
But I don't think it occurred to them that the
review could have a catastrophic effect. Up until the day
(52:23):
of the review, I'd play a solo show and people
would be like, that's our boy, our eccentric boy. Literally
the view changed overnight. I could tell people were trying
to figure out if they were supposed to be there
or not. It was pretty severe. How the mood changed
the review isn't the story the reaction to it is
the seriousness with which everyone takes Pitchfork is kind of
(52:43):
mind boggling, which we could do a whole episode on
that idea. Travis would go on to form Travis Morrison
Hell Fighters and would release the album All Y'all in
two thousand and seven, which is actually fantastic. Check it
out if you want. Eric Axelson would go on to
start the band Maritime with members of the Promise Ring,
who have some very good albums, And to the point
(53:06):
you were alluding to earlier about a member of the
band being very smart, Jason Easley would go to work
for literally NASA as a robotics demonstrator and test engineer,
which I guess explains why he's a good drummer. I
don't know, but has to be the first person we
have discussed in seventy one episodes that works for NASA.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Yeah, the person rocket scientists probably.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, I think so. The band would play a one
off reunion show in two thousand and seven, which was
a charity show for Jay Robin's son, but stated they
would not be getting back together. However, as I said earlier,
they would reunite for a tour behind the vinyl reissue
of Emergency and I in twenty eleven, touring Japan and
the States and playing Pitchwork Festival and the Roots Picnic.
(53:50):
They would continue jamming and playing for next few years,
eventually releasing Uncanny Valley in twenty thirteen. As I said,
that record was only moderately well received, but also, as
I said, I'm convinced that is entirely because of the
production and also the mile high expectations of a new
Dismemberment Plan record. But I would say there are some
great Dismemberment Plan songs on that record, and they also
(54:14):
did a great tiny desk show for it, which I
know is all the rage right now, so that's a
cool and check out. They haven't really been active since then,
their last show being played in twenty fourteen, but they
are the band that every day. If there's one thing
this show has done, it has caused bands to reunite.
So I am hoping that our doing this episode will
(54:37):
cause another Dismemberment Plan reunion.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
All right, Jake, I believe we're at the point where
we have to rank some songs, do we not?
Speaker 3 (54:44):
We do we do?
Speaker 1 (54:46):
Before we do that? A quick question for you, can
you or do you have much of a take on
the rankings of the other Dismemberment Plan albums, because I
don't really this is I have engaged with this one
much more than the others.
Speaker 2 (54:59):
I think, like, obviously this is like the most important
and like probably the best one. Change is my favorite,
But I think the Emergency and I and Change are
kind of like one A and one B. I think
when it comes to that, the other three, I feel
like if you sort of mixtaped them and like picked
(55:21):
the best songs meat, you'd have a really great album.
I would probably put Terrified third, Uncanny Valley fourth, and
exclamation Mark fifth. But they're all great, like they they're
because they had such a short discography. They didn't really
get to make a stinker. Like there's a quote I
didn't put in the episode where Travis is talking about
(55:42):
RIM and how they have seventeen albums and some are
terrible but it's just fine because it's ram and who cares.
But they didn't get to that point, And I think
that's kind of a blessing and a curse in a way.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
Yeah, that's I mean, that's if this has told us anything.
It's uh like doing this podcast, it's that sometimes there
is no right path right Like we've talked about bands
that did too many albums and diluted it like that,
or didn't do enough or broke up too early. There's
every everything is its own thing.
Speaker 6 (56:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
You know what I'm saying, what I'm trying to.
Speaker 2 (56:17):
Say here, I know exactly what you're trying to say.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
And in terms of you know, so I mentioned when
I was going through this album, like coming to it
differently as someone who hadn't listened to it a lot,
but had listened to bands like Motion City and Incubus
and the Thermals and even you know, on that track
back and forth, like there's a little bit of John
Samson to it. I think I'm curious if you came
(56:41):
across if you either came across bands who were like,
yeah the dismemberment plan was that for me? Or if
you hear them in other bands as well. Before we
get into our favorite songs.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Here, I mean, I haven't found I didn't find in
my sort of looking like anything directly like any bands
directly saying, but I think you can just there's so
many aspects of the band that I think, uh, you
can pick out like Travis Morrison's lyrics and his like
sort of inability or ability I guess, to fit so
(57:13):
much wordiness sort of not into the timber of the songs.
Like you, I think you hear that a lot in
guys like Tim Kasher's writing, which we talked about in
our Cursive episode. I think you hear it a lot
now in sort of like the new wave of emo
indie rock that is very wordy. This member Plan are
a little more sarcastic and obtuse than those bands.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
Do you feel like I guess, I guess, looking more
like early two thousands to mid two thousand stuff. Do
you think that you know the way they kind of
mixed in a little more keyboard and like danciness to
the indie like Obviously, again, I don't want to I
don't want to be like, well, Morrison loved Gladys Knight
and he he dropped some hip hop in there, and
(57:57):
you know, suddenly every band was doing that. Obviously, it's
a it's a deeper process than that. But I'm curious,
do you do you think, like you know, if you
trace them ahead to a broken social scene or something
like that, like, do you do you feel it or
do you see it.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
I don't know if i'd go to broken social scene,
but I would definitely go to the sort of early
two thousands dance punk scene.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:18):
I think like when I think bands like The Rapture
and early LCD and Chick Chick Chick and that kind
of stuff that I definitely hear a lot of this in,
especially especially the way that Jason Easley plays like a
lot of sixteenth notes, a lot of sort of off
time drumming, you hear. I think you hear a lot
(58:41):
of that in those kind of bands.
Speaker 1 (58:43):
Yeah, that makes sense. I will stop putting you on
the spot with questions that I don't know if you
had in your notes or not. What we will do now,
Jake is I will put you on the spot for
a question I know you have a ready to go
answer for. Let's talk favorite songs on Emergency and I
I'm going to go first, since you carried the bulk
of this one. The reason that I thought Spider in
(59:03):
the Snow was maybe the song that you called the
best song period was maybe selfishly because it's my favorite
song on the album. We don't agree. That's that's poor
logic on my part, since we don't often agree on
the best song on an album. So for me to
assume that my favorite was your favorite was, you know,
(59:23):
there's a logical fallacy there. I have Spider in the
Snow at number one, I had the City number two,
and then I went eight and a half minutes and
life of Possibilities. I do think Spider and the Snow
in the City are like a clear delineation as my
two favorites on the album, and then after that you
could make a case for like five or six songs.
Speaker 2 (59:41):
Yeah, I have no idea how to rank the songs
on this record. I'm being honest.
Speaker 1 (59:46):
I mean I called the City the other song other.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
Than the City. The City's number one, and then I
think I have back and Forth at number two, and
then for three it's one of Spider in the Snow
you are invited or a gyroscope, I think.
Speaker 5 (01:00:05):
So.
Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
I think the one thing that's easy about that then,
is the City's going on the mixtape either. Yeah, I
think so to the City from this memory plan goes
on the mixtape. So I will say, also, Jake, thank
you to you for a very well research episode. It
was fun to hear a lot about this, especially from
my perspective, being newer to the band and not having
(01:00:29):
experienced a lot of their history. I was a fun one.
You did a great job. I know I set the
stakes really high out of the gate, but you met
you met it. Flying Colors, Jake, thank you too.
Speaker 5 (01:01:08):
Cock.
Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
Please try the fish.
You dig down underground now, through the soil, through the
cooling clay, as the din fades above you. You're moving
your secret. You're listening to the latest episode of Columbia
House Party. Jake, what's up man?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh much? How you doing well?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I'm sleepy and yawnee now because you yawned fifty times
in the green room before we came on.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I feel like I shouldn't be held accountable for you
being tired. I think that's unfair.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yeah, I mean, look, there's at least a little bit
of that. That's my fault.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I mean, yeah, you work harder than I do, so
I feel like that's on you.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Luckily, I have this tea eat in a cup with
a monkey on it, where the monkey's second arm extends
out to be the handle of the mug.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I've always said that warm tea is a good way
to wake yourself up.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
It has caffeine in it.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Still, tea tea is sleep drink.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
No, not for me. Maybe if you drink like the
sleepy tea.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well yeah, why would you drink any other tea other
than breakfast or sleep tea?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Because it tastes good and I've had too many coffees today,
and I don't want to get in trouble from my
body for too many coffees.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I guess that's fair.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
It better be fair.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Ja, I don't really feel that strong about this, being
perefly honest.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, me neither. I just wanted to give you some slack.
I mean, let's give you some give you some flack
rather not slack slack in here.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, we don't use slack. We use email a No.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
The rest of us use slack. You just don't log
into it.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, I probably know it's Dylan.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, because I could just pass on what Clay and
Dylan and Jests put in the in the slack, I
just passed it on to you, who needs to use
slack if you have me as the Gobe absolutely correct. Wow, Jake,
I have bad news for you. As as much as
we're joking around me carrying being this is a very
Jake episode. You're carrying all of this, bad boy, this
(02:15):
is Columbia house party. Thank you for making it through
two minutes of Jake and I taking gigs at each other,
you know, absence and the heart growing fond or all
that stuff. Thank you so much for following along with us,
listening along if you are so inclined, Patreon dot com
slash Columbia House party to support us there. Failing that,
please rate, review, subscribe. Tell Jake just how good a
(02:36):
job he did on this episode, because this is a
research heavy one, A lot of fun background on today's band.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
This isn't This isn't good. It's all on me, this
is rude.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well, hey man, it's a It's a band I wasn't
super familiar with until recently and have gone back and
listened to. So I obviously did my research, but I'm
excited to go through it. Jake, what do you have
for us today? For the essential indie heads?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So today, I have an album that is considered by many,
including myself, to be one of not only one of
the best albums of the nineties, but also one of
the most important indie albums of all time. It's an
album that is extremely important to me personally, even though
(03:19):
it's not my favorite album of this bands, and this
band is extremely important to me. I think it's You
could very easily call this band one of my three
favorites in the world, and that doesn't change rankings. I
love this band. They are everything I want music to sound.
Like they are very much in a genre I love
(03:40):
a lot, and since we're not ever going to do
a Q and Not You episode, probably I figured this
was a good way to sort of bridge that gap.
So today we are talking about the dismemberment plans, extremely
massively amazing album Emergency, and I lost.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
My membership God to the human race. You don't forget
the face because I don't know that.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
I do love here.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Thrown down?
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Then check lest let's see if feelings are good.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
It's honestly is bad.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Keeping inside we're still.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
You a problem?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Well, I guess we got one now. I really don't
know how she's over here?
Speaker 5 (04:28):
You God, damn you want me to say? Why do
you want me to.
Speaker 6 (04:38):
Lea?
Speaker 4 (04:39):
S I do you want me to say?
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Why do you want me.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
To to la?
Speaker 6 (04:49):
I mean what you want me to say?
Speaker 5 (04:55):
How do you want here?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Ta? That is? What do you want me to say? Jake?
(05:39):
What do you want me to say? This is going
to be a fun episode again, a Jake heavy one,
because you have a lot of research here in a
deep personal connection before we get into the research, and
you know some of the background and the making of
this album, and of course it's influence coming out of it. First,
I guess I should ask for our friend Jacob Kramer.
How did he not get the invite on? I feel
(06:01):
like this is right behind block Party is like the
number one Kramer album.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
This Actually Kramer and I have a funny connection with this.
When Dismemberment Plan reunited in twenty and thirteen, or I
guess when they released their reunion album twenty thirteen and
a friend of me and Kramer's and I were going
to go to New York to see them, and Kramer's
sight unseen or banned unheard I should say was like, yeah,
(06:29):
I'll go, And then now they are one of his
favorite bands, which I think is funny. I think the
reason Kramer didn't get an invite is because, uh, we
didn't think to ask him, because he's just been earmarked
for block Party, and that's what he's gonna do. Not
to spoil our spreadsheet, not to spoil our spreadsheet, but
one day we're gonna do the only block Party album.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
So yeah, yes, because we couldn't have him on for
two episodes that would be I.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Don't want to give him a big head about it
or anything, all.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Right, So Jake, my connection to the dis memory Plan
is very similar to Kramer's. I did not catch them
at the time. As we've discussed a lot, you know,
in that late nineties early two thousands, I was not
into the indie scene. I was you know, metal and
pop punk and emo and then a little bit of
even hip hop mixed in there. This stuff from this
(07:17):
genre missed me, and it's something that I've gone back
to a lot in the last maybe five to seven years.
You know, it's always a fun experiment to go back
and listen to an older band or an older album,
having like coming to them where you are already a
fan of bands who were influenced by them, and you
can pick up like, oh yeah, Motion City Soundtrack, bought
(07:39):
their used boog synthesizer at a garage sale probably, or
you know, you can hear a little Thermals in there,
or even like Incubis a little bit at some times.
You know. So it's it's been a cool one to
go back to. Not a lot of personal connection on
my end, but you have a ton of personal connection
to this.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, I missed sort of Plan when they were current.
Most I mean a lot of that is because I
was like eleven when this album came out, but I
got into them. I guess it would have been right
at the beginning of their reunion in I guess it
would have been twenty ten or twenty eleven. And I
don't really remember how I came across them. I'll talk
(08:20):
with this when we get to discussing the song. But
I listened to them like sort of when we were
doing London Calling and we were kind of talking about
how that was an album that sort of changed the
way me and Steve considered music. I found dismemborent Plan
(08:40):
very similar for me. They were kind of I was
sort of in this weird phase musically, of like I
hadn't yet really come back to the pop punkin emo stuff.
I was very much in my like electronic indie alternative phase,
and then Dismemory Plan were kind of this perfect balance
(09:01):
in a lot of ways, even though they don't sound
like any of the electronic bands I was listening to,
but they just kind of bridged that gap really nicely
for me. And it was one of those bands that
happens to like you get lucky. Sometimes you hear a
band you're just like, oh, this is everything I've always wanted.
To hear in music, like.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
When I heard post Malone cover.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah exactly, Oh my god what but yeah, but it
was just one of those like big music moments where
I knew. I was like, oh, I'm going to love
this band, and then I did, and it just sort
of there's just a huge, huge band for me, and
like what I want all music to sound like.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I guess, yeah, that's great, man, And we're going to
get into what they sound like and the specifics of
what you're trying to highlight there. We're going to do
that after a little break. Also, just yes, the band
name is a groundhog Day joke which I watch that
movie on groundhog Day, which is the Leo meme of
pointing at the screen.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
That's the dismemberment plan.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
That's the dismemberment plan. All right, we're gonna talk about
the dismemormentive plan and emergency and I after this. All right, Jake,
(10:28):
So what do you got for us?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Okay, So before we get into this, because this is
like I feel like people listen to our show, a
lot of you probably know and really like this album
because it is kind of a big indie thing. It's
too big. So there's like five songs on here that
I would consider better than most music that we are
not going to talk about. So if we don't talk
(10:51):
about one of the songs from this album, you're like,
why aren't you talking about that? Just because there's too
much and we only have an hour?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Anyway, are you? Are you already are you like preemptively
responding to Angelo right now?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I'm actually more premptly responding to myself because I sent
in the run sheet two days ago, and this is
the first time where the last two days I've been like,
oh I should have talked about this one instead.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, be the first time that the first time that
producer Dylan had to clean up for us for a change. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Really, Like, there's just like two of my all time
favorite songs are not getting discussed today. So maybe I'm
just a little peaked about it. But it's fine.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
We can also bring them up.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
They'll come up, but we're not okay anyway, I'm a
whole thing written out.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Iron man anyways, continue sorry, thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
The Dismemberment Plan were formed on New Year's Day in
nineteen ninety three. They were originally made up of Eric
Axelson on bass, Steve Cummings on drums, Jason Kaddell on guitar,
and Travis Morrison on vocals and guitar. Axelson, Cummings, and
Morrison all went to high school together in Burke, Virginia.
As you mentioned, they were named after a stray line
(11:56):
in Groundhog Day. In nineteen ninety four, they signed to
DeSoto Records, one of the great record labels, and in
the liner notes of the vinyl reissue of Emergency and I,
it has a huge oral history of this album put
together by the av Club's Josh Midell. I don't know
if he's with the Avy Club anymore, but a lot
of our information today is going to come from that
(12:19):
oral history. In the oral history, Kim Coletta, who is
the owner of DeSoto Records, said, they wrote me a
letter and sent in a seven inch record. That's how
we are operating at the time, no email. I went
out to Fairfax, Virginia to see them play at the
kind of place where you step outside of the club
and there's a car going by at fifty five miles
an hour. They very much started as a literal garage
(12:41):
band or house band. Eric Axelson said, in this oral history,
we practiced at my mom's house in Springfield, which is
a Virginia suburb, and then Axelson's mom, Emily said of
the band, they were always very gracious. They would always
say which nights are you going to be out because
they knew I had choir practice at church on Wednesdays.
I was taking classes at a local university. When I
(13:02):
came home, the house would literally be shaken. The band
originally played sort of a more noise rock, post hardcore
kind of sound. I'd call it very much in place
with the DC post hardcore scene that they were part of.
Other bands of that ilk things like Qan not You,
as I said before, Jawbox, a little Fugazi, the Discord bands,
(13:22):
all that good stuff. They released their first album, which
is just named exclamation Point, like a literal exclamation point.
It was released on October third, nineteen ninety five, on
DeSoto Records. I really like exclamation Point, even though it's
sort of not It's a little more abrasive than I
think their later stuff would be. But you can still
(13:43):
hear a lot of what they'd become. There's a lot
of angular guitars. Travis Morrison's lyrics aren't totally refined yet,
but they're also very wordy, as they always would be, or,
as he told Pitchfork in twenty thirteen, early Dysmembment Plain
songs are like being hit with a confetti canon of words.
In that Pitchfork interview, Morrison also reflected on the beginnings
(14:05):
of the group, saying I wanted to be a writer
when I was a little kid. Then I wanted to
be Pete Townsend, the songwriting guitarists who occasionally sang. The
first six months after forming Dismemberment Plan, I was trying
to find another singer. The original idea was that we'd
have some pretty boy and I'd occasionally do the feel
me touched Me parts. Then when we were about twenty,
Eric sat me down and said, I know you're not
(14:25):
very good at it, but you're gonna have to sing,
and look what happened. It was a different era now
expectations are more muted. But at the time you would
think I want to be sonic youth, I want to
do it. You would think of it as a career.
So we had dreams about being a fairly long lived
band and we broke up. I was like, oh, we
only got to album four. The name of the band
(14:46):
also sort of caused false expectations in the scene. According
to Todd Bell, who is the bass player for Braid,
another band we should do one day, He.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Said, that's episode I think.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I was shocked when Groff came on and didn't
insist on Braid, but that's another conversation. He said. We'd
seen a flyer that we were playing with the Dismemberment Plan,
and I immediately assumed we were billed with a metal band.
We were unloading and the band downstairs began to play,
and we all just looked at each other, like, what's
going on down there? I walked down the stairs and
saw a left handed bass player, a left handed drummer
(15:19):
grooving with a rock band, and a lead singer freaking
out on the trombone, which is kind of not dissimilar
from what they would stay as.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, I guess the lefty heaviness of the lineup is
a little interesting at least.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Oh, we'll be talking about the rhythm section a lot today.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
All right, and their left handedness or.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
No, I mean they are left handed, but that's heather
here nor there, exclamation mark point whatever. Was moderately well received.
Three out of five's from All Music, Rolling Stone and
Sputnik is what's listed on the wiki. Shortly after the
recording of the album was finished, Steve Cummings would leave
the band and he was replaced by Jason Easley, and
(15:55):
this lineup would stick for the entirety of the band's career.
In nineteen ninety seven, they released the Dismemberment Plan is Terrified.
Also on De Soto, Jason Easley said of the second album,
the first Plan record is all over the place. Terrified
kind of settles down a bit, and it's the next
logical step. The lyrics are cohesive and the songs, while
(16:16):
still scattershot, are more like actual songs. And this is
the part of the show where we highlight the older sound.
There are so many songs Unterrified that I could pick,
but I will pick arguably the band's one of the
most popular songs, the band's repertoire and my favorite New
Year's Eve song. This is the ice of Boston.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
And outside two million drunk Bostonians getting ready to sing
all Lang sign out of tune. I sit there in
my easy chair. We'll get in the clouds orange with
self sure.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Kay I saw bastness funny that was flat snow?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Why bed take all night? I slipped on a red time.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Hey, I saw bost money flat snow like.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
Snaw w at the red time time time time.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Time time time.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
Time time time, time time time.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
If you happen to check out the Sadder New Year's
Playlist I put together this year, that was on there, I.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Think on I think I posted every December thirty first,
And as you said, it is a terrific song and
one of the most fun like concert sing along songs
as well.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I have not seen them live, but I would imagine, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
We have three thousand people screaming, how's Washington. It's very fun.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So from there this was I guess this is more
of a question than me leading here, but is was
that song? Obviously, there are so many on that album that,
I mean, it's a deep album in general, and you
said you had trouble picking. But was the Ice of
Boston like the song that kind of got them some
buzz and some momentum or was it just the album
(18:59):
as a whole.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It was mostly the album as a whole, and it
sort of led to this weird period where they almost
got buzz but didn't. The album's definitely more evolved scene.
No way yeah in the late nineties indies scene or
mid nineties. I guess Terrified was pretty well received. Robert
Christegau called it surprisingly thoughtful for post hardcore and said
it's sort of the way Primus might sound if Primus
(19:23):
enjoyed a normal sex life, which I think is a
great quote to your point and your question. The album
was successful enough to get Interscope Records interested in signing
the band to a deal. The way it went down was,
according to Eric Axelson, we were on tour in May
of ninety seven and Kim told me that the bass
player from Blondie was coming to see the show in Allentown,
(19:44):
Pennsylvania at a fire haul. He was also the A
and R rep for Interscope Records. I didn't believe it,
but I looked in the crowd and saw this older
guy with curly hair who was clearly not a kid
from the scene. Jasoneasley would continue. After the show, he
talked to me at the merch table, and sudden there
were a lot of phone calls happening. This was extremely
short lived, as the only piece of music the group
(20:06):
actually released on Interscope was the Ice of Boston EP.
It was your very typical of the time, like, here's
this new band on a major label. Let's put out
a song that's already on an album with some extra
songs kind of thing. It does contain one of my
favorite dismemberment plan songs, which is called the First Anniversary
of Your Last Phone Call, which is also on the
(20:27):
Barsouk reissue of Emergency and I.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
A killer song title.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, a great song title, A great song. It's actually
the last track on the vinyl, which is a great
place for it. We're not talking about it because that
it's not really that important or interesting, but go look
it up because it's great. Shortly after the release and
touring of Terrified, the band began writing what would become
Emergency and I. Emergency and I is a odd title
(20:54):
for a record, Yeah, and it has no meaning at all.
Travis Morrison said that it just happened right after getting
back from New York. I was at the Black Cat
in DC. I was watching Shudder to Think and it
popped into my head. To this day, I don't know
what it means. So that's what it means.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I mean, look it, it's uh, it's fun. It fits
the well, not fun, but like it fits the dismemberment
plan as a name, it fits the kind of mood
and style of music. I don't know it like. It's
one of those ones that it could sound very intentional.
If if he had been like, oh yeah, I just
thought it summed up the album, I would believe him.
So it works.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
It's one of those cool titles that might mean nothing,
but I feel like it suits the album really well.
For some reason, it.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Can't Sandy's is that a cookie? It's a double entre
so the kids will pop with it. Sorry, no, I've
warned to you that I was.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I'm always here for chemical toilet references.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yeah, all right, let's get to emergency and emergency. You
you can't even make my friend more smarter than I.
That's emergency and Jake, all right.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
So the writing process eurgency and I was one of
those this is the most focused we've ever been kind
of narratives. Jason Easley said, we were spending a lot
of time in the basement, really digging in individually to
make music that sounded like it came from a group.
We probably could have had twenty different remix albums if
we had put out suitable rough drafts of our songs.
I love it.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
We've been in the gym, We've been in the lab.
You got to show up music music pr tour. Yeah,
I can't wait. I hope Josh Terry starts to blend
his baseball and basketball fandom into his right writing and
he's just, you know, cloud nothings have been. They just
rented a gym in LA for three months and they
(22:50):
just you know, two days.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Showing up on tour in the best musical shape of
their lives.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Eric Axston further this by saying, but the writing process,
how Travis had a knack for having ideas and matching
them with other people's ideas. He'd hear a riff or
a drum beat, or a new sound, and he'd pull
out some guitar part or vocal line he had. This
is also the time where the band started experimenting with
new sounds and also with sampling, rather than the fairly
(23:19):
standard two guitars, one bass, one drummer setup of the
last two records. Jason Kaddell said, we bought an EMU sampleizer.
Around that EMU sampler at around that time, it was
all over emergency and I. We sampled video games, toys,
vocal samples a lot, which we would speed up and
slow down all kinds of things. Emergency and I was
(23:43):
produced by Jay Robbins of Jawbox, who has also produced
records by Against Me, Jets to Brazil, Hey, Mercedes, The
Promised Ring, Modern Life as War, Job Breaker, Murder by Death,
and so manymore. We could very easily do a Jay
Robbins month, and perhaps we should, he said of the
writing process before Emergency and I. I recorded a seven
(24:04):
inch of what do You Want Me to Say, which
we played off the top on the eight track cassette Masters.
There's a little snippet of them jamming on the City,
but that's just the very beginning. Joe has the beat
and they just sort of have the verse part going
like this really cool groove with that strum guitar chord
in the bassline, and you can hear Travis in the
background going, hey, play that thing, that modified soul coughing
(24:25):
thing you were doing. It must have been two days old.
And when looking back on writing the lyrics to this album,
Travis Morrison says, in quick succession, my sister, who was
very young, had a kid and my dad died. In
the cosmic scope of things, these things happen. It's not
like I was the first person to go through these things,
but it was a very intense time. And because of that,
(24:46):
I think I was finally able to emotionally access classical
real themes, like really basic life stuff. Before that, I
didn't know how. And so while I think Emergency and
I and many songs We're going to talk with today
are a huge musical evolution of the band, and it is,
but in many ways, in a bunch of songs on here,
they did not leave their let's call it claustrophobic noise
(25:11):
rock beginnings behind perhaps best scene on the very chaotic,
wonderful song I Love a Magicians.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
Yet Sisters Stopping its Ways is it's a success.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
Stops side.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Who fun? I like, by the way, you weren't kidding
about Jay Robbins, Like his Wikipedia page has a limited
like like a partial producer resume, and it's insane.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
It's crazy. I remember I learned about him through d
Planned because they always cited job Box of such a
huge influence, and then I listened to Jobbox like Jobbox
are great, and I had no idea that he had
produced like all of my favorite albums.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah, promise Rang Texas is the reason that One Texas
is the reason album. You know, the sounds are the
sounds are all over here, and I know that one
of the things that I guess you wanted to talk
about that a little later with the different song, So
I won't bring up the rhythm section now, but yeah,
take us through I Love a Magician and what basically,
(27:49):
you know all this experimentation here that that's very obvious
as soon as you dive into the album.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Uh yeah, So Travis Morrison in that oral history said
that I Love a Magician happened very quickly in a
bizarre rehearse on Root seven in Falls Church in the
basement of an old office building. The ceiling was like
five and a half feet off the ground. I'm not
sure we were supposed to be there at all. Security
guards were staring at us as we wheeled in our amps,
and I remember Jason howling away on this new distortion
(28:15):
pedal which we wrote the song around. That sound pretty much.
I've seen on various retrospectives that song and Girl Clock
and Memory Machine described as claustrophobic, which I really like
because I think that's a great way to sort of
discuss the rhythm of those songs. Expanding on this Christaville.
(28:36):
In a twentieth anniversary article of Emergency and I for Stereo,
Gum said the ensuing album demonstrates how resoundingly right things
can go when you forge into the unknown. Sometimes it
does so by simply rendering the ragtag chaos of early
dismemberment plan more vividly. Squalls of noise and a stuttering
drum beat keep Memory Machine feeling like a nervous breakdown.
(28:58):
The claustrophobic sensation return I Love a Magician and Girl
o' clock blitz Creed laments about modern love or lack thereof.
If I don't have sex by the end of the week,
Morrison stuttered on the ladder, I'm going to die. The
apocalyptic funk punk of eight and a half Minutes too
could have been a holdover from is Terrified.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
How upset were you when eight and a half minutes
was not actually eight and a half minutes long, and
it was only three minutes.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I was fine with it only because of how it sounds.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, I feel like they're only also advertising though for
the long song Guy I feel like they only have
they only.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Have one song that's longer than five minutes. So I
was like, that's fine, Yeah, that's fine with me.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Just making sure you're okay with it, and we don't
we don't have to take a you know, eight and
a half minutes out to slander the false advertising.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
I feel like if it was another band that I
didn't like as much, I would have a problem with it.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
That's fair.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
But I'm like, no, you know what, they can do it.
It's fine, all right.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
I'll stop. I won't stop interrupting. I'm gonna derail you.
At another point, you keep saying you're gonna stop. You
know you're not gonna Yeah, I mean it's a research
heavy episode. I feel like I need to give you
a brief there every once in a while.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Look, I appreciate it, which is what's important. Emergency, as
I said earlier, was originally meant to be released on Interscope.
We'll get into why it was not soon, but the
advantage of recording on interscope is the money allowed the
band to record at a real studio, Water Music Studios
in Hoboken, New Jersey. According to Jason Caddell, there was
(30:22):
a fair amount of excitement in signing to Interscope because
it allowed us to record at a nice studio for
three weeks, which was amazing. Before we just kind of
smushed into inner ear studios, both physically smushed and also
smushed time wise, having to rush through stuff. Eric Axelson
described the studio as being in an industrial area of Hoboken.
In the main buildings where the studio is, there's one
(30:43):
big room and a control room. Also we stayed there.
You would go outside around this little walkway and go
up some stairs and you're in an apartment with five
or six bedrooms, a big living room and kitchen and
cable TV. And living in the studio allowed the band
for a lot of downtime, but also allowed for a
lot of the experimentation that happened on the record. A
(31:04):
lot of this experimentation was done around the band's keyboard sound,
in which they brought in some new keyboards because their
old ones sucked. Travis Morrison said, I remember a lot
of experimentation happening with our keyboard sound. We were addicted
to some trashy keyboards that did not sound good when recorded.
It was fun in a basement show, but it sounded
bad in the studio, so we spent a lot of
(31:25):
time experimenting, and I was uptight about it, like that's
the machine that makes the magic, right. I was worried
about losing that because there's a symbiotic relationship between musician
and device and creativity. But that being said, it sounded
like shit, so we had to do something. The album
was actually had two producers. Alongside Jay Robbins, was also
(31:46):
Chad Clark, who said that of the keyboard experimentation that
on Spider and the Snow, the strings in that song
come from a cassio keyboard and there was a kind
of cheap reediness that evoked a string section but wasn't
exactly a string section. I thought we should bring in
an orchestra, or at least bring a mellotron and express
the fact that we had access to more tools and textures.
(32:09):
We argued pretty intensely about it, but that song wouldn't
have the right emotion without the ratty, crappy tinfoiy keyboard sound.
And to give you an idea of that crappy keyboard sound,
here is a clip from Spider in the Snow.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Beyond Fang Worse than Bad memories. There's no memories at all.
From the edge of twenty twenty two are far friends
on these names again, ball.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
As I would walk down k Street, the sat tempang
job and the winter froze a life out of the ball. Yeah,
I must have been having a ball.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
You can't say, but I know that it's.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Jos smart. You can't sell bud.
Speaker 5 (33:23):
That was bloud Joss.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Farther So, Jake, in the week that leading up to
(33:59):
this recording session, you posted just Remember in a plan
track on your Instagram story with the caption best song
ever with a question mark. Now, I was walking around.
I was doing what I do in one of my
walks with the album the other day in my prep,
and I couldn't remember which song you had posted just
I could just picture the very great album art, and
(34:22):
I was trying to I was like, Okay, let me
try to guess. I'll listen through the album and I
will guess, and then I'll go back and look at
Jake's Instagram story and try to see if I was right.
I thought it would be Spider in the Snow. I
was wrong.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
I mean, it's a fair guess and also not that
far off. This is kind of the song that I
posted We're going to talk about next, but this was
the second Spider and Snow was the second dismemberment Plan
song I heard, and I would say this is the
one that really cemented them as like a band. For me,
I was so blown away by the first song heard
(34:56):
by them, which are about to talk about that. I
was kind of like, okay, but what else? And then
I heard this, I was like, oh, all right, this
is amazing. People seem to agree with me that were
involved in making it. Axelson said of writing the song,
I remember having the riff and Joe and I were
playing in straight for like a motown thing, and Travis said,
cut the beat off at the end of the phrase,
(35:18):
and suddenly the song was there. Jay Robbins said of
the song, I remember hearing Spider and the Snow at
a show around that time and thinking, I can't believe
I know the people who wrote this, And I think
Spiring the Snow is also a good place to start
talking about the rhythm section of this band being Axelson
and Easily, which for my money, are the best rhythm
(35:40):
section in indie rock. Ever, I'm including like Radiohead in
that I think this song and back and forth, and
like their entire discography highlight how not only how important
the rhythm section are to this band, but just how
ridiculously talented they are. I think a lot of their
songs are driven by the Ryven section, and I also think,
(36:02):
not to get too far ahead, but their reunion album,
Uncanny Valley, was kind of lukewarmly received when it came out,
and I think a big reason for that is that
I think the rhythm section is kind of muted in
the mix on that album. Because when I saw them
in New York touring that record, and you had and
(36:22):
what the rhythm section was all the way forward, and
you had the loud, powerful drums and the loud bass,
all of those songs in Uncanny Valley have a completely
different feel to them and a totally different life, and
all of a sudden like, oh, this song's amazing, and
it completely changed the way I listened to that record.
And there's like on internet archive there at least used
(36:44):
to be don't if they're sillar, but there used to
be like hundreds of Dismemberment Plan bootlegs, So you can
go find that if you want to see what I mean.
But yeah, air Caps is in Jason easily again for
my money, the best rhythm section in indie rock.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Do you do you have much? Did you come across
much on in terms of like what the songwriting flow
was for them, like like because these sound like they
would have been very complicated to come together. And my
gut was that, like the lyrics came last because everything
else was so complex.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
It kind of like, I'm not entirely sure, but from
what I can tell is that it kind of sounds
like it came from all over, like Travis just writes
all these words, but also he as they pointed out,
he has this way of like hearing the song and
knowing what goes with what or sometimes, like with I
Love a Magician, it was just a guitar squeal that
(37:40):
they sort of built the song around. It doesn't sound
like it was built around the rhythm section so much,
which is interesting, but it does sound like it was
just like it built around an idea from one of
them and they went from that. I know that when
they were writing Uncanny Valley, that came out of just
rehearsal jam because apparently they had no interest in making
(38:03):
a reunion record. But then as they were rehearsing for
their reunion tour. They were just jamming in the rehearsal space,
and that just turned into how they wrote their songs,
and apparently that's how they wrote a lot of their stuff.
So it sounds pretty equal division of labor. But they
sound just like really talented guys who hear one thing,
(38:23):
they're like, Okay, we'll build a song around that.
Speaker 6 (38:26):
Now.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I guess, yeah, that makes sense. That's a I mean,
that's that's kind of the way it has to go
when it's that. I guess complex is the Yeah, that's
the word for it.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
In terms of the rhythm section sound on this album,
Eric Axelson said that Jay suggested I play through a
Marshall four x twelve like Lemmy from Motorhead at the time.
I love Drummond bass and dance music and reggae and
these very low bass sounds. But the reality is we
played this really fast, frenetic music, so the tone didn't
make sense with our all over the place playing, so
(38:58):
we tried a guitar amp with another output together at
this low end and it worked out. But it's kind
of weird because when you hear the record, it's not
actually my normal sound. This sort of production and these
ideas and the two producer team caused some friction in recording.
Easily described it by saying being cuckoo and not wanting
to hurt anyone's feelings, we decided to have two producers.
(39:19):
Chad and Jay had a tough time managing their relationship,
and I don't think any of us made that any easier.
It was kind of the passive aggressive Olympics at the beginning,
but we got it sorted out by the end, and
Chad Clark would say our division of labor was that
Jay ended up being the person who was focused on
raw mechanics, making sure that the band was playing in time,
making sure that we were taking tech seriously at a
(39:40):
certain level and that we weren't making a ramshackle, low
budget record, which was welcome. My role was pursuing a
wide screen feel, pushing things far out and using the
studio as an instrument. It ended up being a comptable
scenario for me playing the Brian Eno role. Jay Robinson,
on the other hand, I had to be the bad
cop who was there to remind everybody that they weren't
(40:00):
playing together, that they were speeding up or slowing down.
We were doing things like mapping out click track tempos
and trying to get them to rehearse with a click track,
and being angs written about whether that was the right
thing to do or not. However, all this tension and
experimentation created some of these crazy amazing songs. And this
(40:21):
is the point where I'm going to talk about the
song that I've alluded to a bunch that was the
first song of theirs I heard that, the first one
I heard, the period, the best song period. The first
time I heard this song, I think I listened to
it on repeat for about thirty five minutes and it's
only a three minute song. It's just one of those
like big, big song moments for me. To me, this
(40:42):
song is a perfect mix of what dismemorment plan is
are and should be. The lyrics, the rhythm section, the synth, bass,
the drum beat, it's all there. It's perfect. Or as
someone I saw on the r emo reddit, call it
the peak of indie rock. I don't know where they
fit in our emo but whatever, Or as Christaville said
(41:04):
in that Sierrogum article, few songs can match the tingle
inducing power of surging synth rocker the City, when Morrison
raises his voice at the end to proclaim all I
ever say now is goodbye. It was basically all my
friends eight years early and will leave you every bit
as wrecked. So this is, in my opinion, maybe the
greatest indie rock song of all time. This is the City.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
Now.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Notice the street laughs up do saga e bang Criby
raised some blank face sterns from the subway.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
As people know.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
The parts lay mc lock, my unmade bed, streets saw
silent like.
Speaker 4 (42:14):
My class telephone and this is where I live for
the bell profell less.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
So I'm god, I'm self prophetic.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
I see you where you're loft's.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
No one's known, there's nothing to don the sets from
down since you've been.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Got well Jake. While I don't know that I will
(43:07):
agree that it's the best indie rock song as well
said maybe I know, and as we'll see in our
next segment, maybe I don't even agree it's the best
song on this album. However, it's a very very good
song and it got them on some pretty big touring.
(43:27):
I mean not just this song, but the whole album
got them some pretty big touring opportunities. But not before
some label drama, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
So though this would end up being one of the
most successful, well received indie albums of all time, not
successful commercially but critically, the release of the album started
by being dropped by Innerscope. Jason Cannell said that Kim
was managing us at the time and a few months
after the album finished, suddenly she couldn't get anyone from
(43:56):
the label on the phone anymore. Travis Morrison would follow
this up by saying a friend of ours worked in
Interscope's PR department and told me of an epic meeting
where they went through the list of all the bands
on all the major labels. They were trying to figure
out who signed who. They got to our name, and
there was silence. No one spoke up, including the person
who signed us. I think they may have been trying
(44:16):
to do this to us a favor, and so because
of all this label drama, the album was held up
for release by almost a year. In this year, the
band just went on tour for the whole year, and
then in nineteen ninety nine, while on tour, the band
got the call that they'd finally been dropped by Interscope, which,
according to easily. They all cheered when they received the news.
(44:39):
After all that with Interscope, the album ended up just
being released on De Soto, just like the first two.
Then the release of Emergency and I sort of made
for some interesting tours and shows. I feel like this
Memory Plan are a band that really sort of the
connection between crowd and band and what concerts can be
(45:01):
is always an interesting thing for them. Jessica Hopper, who
was the band's publicist at the time, turned a Chicago
show on the Emergency tour into a dance party, typing
up rules for dancing and posting them on the doors
as big posters. The show ended with audience members doing
the worm and dancing on stage. This also led to
the tradition of having the entire crowd jump on the
(45:23):
stage during the Ice of Boston, which started a Cleveland
show on this tour and continued for literally every show
for the rest of the band's career. Also, when the
band got home from the first Emergency and I tour,
they had an email waiting for them ask them if
they would like to open for a little band called
Pearl Jam in Europe.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Oh, Pearl Jam with our friend Jonah's band the Regrettables
cover band Pearl Jam.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Eric Allison said that we played some club shows in
Germany before that, so we literally went from playing for
fifty kids in Nuremberg fifteen thousand people at the first
Pearl Jam show in Prague. I hadn't had stage fright
in years, but when the lights went down and their
stage manager said you're on, I went totally numb. Travis
Morrison would say, I opened my mouth to sing the
(46:14):
first song and this weird croaking sound came out. I
was so nervous. I couldn't believe how many people were
looking at us. Although the previous night I drank seven
shots of Absence, so maybe that didn't help.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
All right, Jake, Well, as much as I would love
to hear more Pearl Jam and Absence stories from the road,
we gotta take a break, and after that we will
talk about the reception to Emergency and I and how
it's become twenty plus years later, held up as one
of the indie rock essential albums as it were, as
well bringing it into our own takes and rankings after this.
(47:06):
All right, Jake, So you know, I think we know
that this album's held in pretty high regard, but give
give us the rundown of the immediate reception, and you know,
I'm sure you have some I'm sure you have lots
of bands that we don't have time for about just
how much the dis memory Plan meant to them.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yes, so, as you said, this is one of the
most well received indie albums ever, as a five out
of five from All Music and Consequence of Sound. The
original pressing of the album got a nine point six
from Pitchfork, and the twenty eleven reissue received a perfect ten.
It has five out of five from the Rolling Stone
Album's Guide, five of a five from Tiny Mixtapes, and
(47:46):
an anus from The Village Voice Guild magazine said that
it's the Dismemberment Plans landmark masterstroke, still cited by many
bands and critics as the turning point in the evolution
of indie rock. It was named the best album of
nineteen ninety nine by Pitchfork and ranked number sixteen on
their Top one hundred Albums of the Nineties list, with
(48:07):
William Morris writing the album's lyric book reads better than
half the modern volumes on my bookshelf. Modern R and
B should have as much rhythm modern rock should have
as much balls. Pitchfork also ranked the City as the
sixty fourth best song of the nineties. As I said,
the album was re released on vinyl in two thousand
and seven on BARSUK Records, which spawned a tour and
(48:30):
sort of this reunion of the band. Eric Axston told
Treble Zine about the reissue. People had asked about it
or suggested it over the years. This time it was
Josh Middell from The Onion, who we've known for years,
that got the ball rolling. Now that it's done, we're
so happy with it. It sounds and looks just the
way we'd imagined. As I said, this is also where
that oral history is from. It's in the liner notes
(48:51):
that Josh Medell put together. It's awesome. You should get it.
It's great. In two thousand and one, the band would
release Change, which is my favorite dist memory play an album.
I don't want to go too deep into it because
I want to do an episode about it one day.
But it is significant. I'm not saying me it's slightly
mellower than Emergency and I I would say, but it
also has some of the best songs in their career,
(49:13):
including this one Superpowers.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Watch Seen wells, most beautiful women less a solid too.
I've fallen asleep, been the shift fifty South, I've watched
the rich. Let's get off fifteen Montana. I shut it
(49:46):
as an unseen mouths it down. My spine's fine.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Yes, you'd be cows powers, Yella.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Is gone to say in the world.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
Light, brown, sun and sours to.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
Rounded bower, ox stems spars. Yeah, I can see.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
The grass stars way.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Now. Unfortunately, Jake, the superpowers in this regard indicate that
at least one of the band members was just too
damn smart to spend his time in a rock band. Yes,
and they did not last long after that.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
One, Right, No, they're not. In two thousand and two,
they put all the tracks from Emergency and I and
Change on their website, encouraging fans to remix them. That
led to the release of two thousand and Three's a
People's History of the Dismemberant Plan, which is kind of
a cool little document. In January of two thousand and three,
the band announced they were breaking up, playing their final
show on September first, two thousand and three, at the
(51:33):
nine to thirty Club in Washington. Travis Morrison would go
on to release his first solo record, Travis Stan, which
famously got a zero point zero from Pitchfork. I actually
think it's pretty good. I love that.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
Not to take it back to basketball, but you know
that meme of Tony Snell's stat line that Will Lou
will always tweet out when someone takes some bad lass,
you had thirty eight minutes, zero points, zero zero rebounds.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
It's kind of become this like notorious review in Pitchfork lore,
because like they really just gave it a zero because
it's the guy from Dismemorment Plan and it wasn't Dismemberment
Plan record. Sort of on that Travis has said about it.
I got the sense they thought I was a rock
star and they wanted to take me down a peg.
But I don't think it occurred to them that the
review could have a catastrophic effect. Up until the day
(52:23):
of the review, I'd play a solo show and people
would be like, that's our boy, our eccentric boy. Literally
the view changed overnight. I could tell people were trying
to figure out if they were supposed to be there
or not. It was pretty severe. How the mood changed
the review isn't the story the reaction to it is
the seriousness with which everyone takes Pitchfork is kind of
(52:43):
mind boggling, which we could do a whole episode on
that idea. Travis would go on to form Travis Morrison
Hell Fighters and would release the album All Y'all in
two thousand and seven, which is actually fantastic. Check it
out if you want. Eric Axelson would go on to
start the band Maritime with members of the Promise Ring,
who have some very good albums, And to the point
(53:06):
you were alluding to earlier about a member of the
band being very smart, Jason Easley would go to work
for literally NASA as a robotics demonstrator and test engineer,
which I guess explains why he's a good drummer. I
don't know, but has to be the first person we
have discussed in seventy one episodes that works for NASA.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Yeah, the person rocket scientists probably.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, I think so. The band would play a one
off reunion show in two thousand and seven, which was
a charity show for Jay Robin's son, but stated they
would not be getting back together. However, as I said earlier,
they would reunite for a tour behind the vinyl reissue
of Emergency and I in twenty eleven, touring Japan and
the States and playing Pitchwork Festival and the Roots Picnic.
(53:50):
They would continue jamming and playing for next few years,
eventually releasing Uncanny Valley in twenty thirteen. As I said,
that record was only moderately well received, but also, as
I said, I'm convinced that is entirely because of the
production and also the mile high expectations of a new
Dismemberment Plan record. But I would say there are some
great Dismemberment Plan songs on that record, and they also
(54:14):
did a great tiny desk show for it, which I
know is all the rage right now, so that's a
cool and check out. They haven't really been active since then,
their last show being played in twenty fourteen, but they
are the band that every day. If there's one thing
this show has done, it has caused bands to reunite.
So I am hoping that our doing this episode will
(54:37):
cause another Dismemberment Plan reunion.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
All right, Jake, I believe we're at the point where
we have to rank some songs, do we not?
Speaker 3 (54:44):
We do we do?
Speaker 1 (54:46):
Before we do that? A quick question for you, can
you or do you have much of a take on
the rankings of the other Dismemberment Plan albums, because I
don't really this is I have engaged with this one
much more than the others.
Speaker 2 (54:59):
I think, like, obviously this is like the most important
and like probably the best one. Change is my favorite,
But I think the Emergency and I and Change are
kind of like one A and one B. I think
when it comes to that, the other three, I feel
like if you sort of mixtaped them and like picked
(55:21):
the best songs meat, you'd have a really great album.
I would probably put Terrified third, Uncanny Valley fourth, and
exclamation Mark fifth. But they're all great, like they they're
because they had such a short discography. They didn't really
get to make a stinker. Like there's a quote I
didn't put in the episode where Travis is talking about
(55:42):
RIM and how they have seventeen albums and some are
terrible but it's just fine because it's ram and who cares.
But they didn't get to that point, And I think
that's kind of a blessing and a curse in a way.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
Yeah, that's I mean, that's if this has told us anything.
It's uh like doing this podcast, it's that sometimes there
is no right path right Like we've talked about bands
that did too many albums and diluted it like that,
or didn't do enough or broke up too early. There's
every everything is its own thing.
Speaker 6 (56:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
You know what I'm saying, what I'm trying to.
Speaker 2 (56:17):
Say here, I know exactly what you're trying to say.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
And in terms of you know, so I mentioned when
I was going through this album, like coming to it
differently as someone who hadn't listened to it a lot,
but had listened to bands like Motion City and Incubus
and the Thermals and even you know, on that track
back and forth, like there's a little bit of John
Samson to it. I think I'm curious if you came
(56:41):
across if you either came across bands who were like,
yeah the dismemberment plan was that for me? Or if
you hear them in other bands as well. Before we
get into our favorite songs.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Here, I mean, I haven't found I didn't find in
my sort of looking like anything directly like any bands
directly saying, but I think you can just there's so
many aspects of the band that I think, uh, you
can pick out like Travis Morrison's lyrics and his like
sort of inability or ability I guess, to fit so
(57:13):
much wordiness sort of not into the timber of the songs.
Like you, I think you hear that a lot in
guys like Tim Kasher's writing, which we talked about in
our Cursive episode. I think you hear it a lot
now in sort of like the new wave of emo
indie rock that is very wordy. This member Plan are
a little more sarcastic and obtuse than those bands.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
Do you feel like I guess, I guess, looking more
like early two thousands to mid two thousand stuff. Do
you think that you know the way they kind of
mixed in a little more keyboard and like danciness to
the indie like Obviously, again, I don't want to I
don't want to be like, well, Morrison loved Gladys Knight
and he he dropped some hip hop in there, and
(57:57):
you know, suddenly every band was doing that. Obviously, it's
a it's a deeper process than that. But I'm curious,
do you do you think, like you know, if you
trace them ahead to a broken social scene or something
like that, like, do you do you feel it or
do you see it.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
I don't know if i'd go to broken social scene,
but I would definitely go to the sort of early
two thousands dance punk scene.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:18):
I think like when I think bands like The Rapture
and early LCD and Chick Chick Chick and that kind
of stuff that I definitely hear a lot of this in,
especially especially the way that Jason Easley plays like a
lot of sixteenth notes, a lot of sort of off
time drumming, you hear. I think you hear a lot
(58:41):
of that in those kind of bands.
Speaker 1 (58:43):
Yeah, that makes sense. I will stop putting you on
the spot with questions that I don't know if you
had in your notes or not. What we will do now,
Jake is I will put you on the spot for
a question I know you have a ready to go
answer for. Let's talk favorite songs on Emergency and I
I'm going to go first, since you carried the bulk
of this one. The reason that I thought Spider in
(59:03):
the Snow was maybe the song that you called the
best song period was maybe selfishly because it's my favorite
song on the album. We don't agree. That's that's poor
logic on my part, since we don't often agree on
the best song on an album. So for me to
assume that my favorite was your favorite was, you know,
(59:23):
there's a logical fallacy there. I have Spider in the
Snow at number one, I had the City number two,
and then I went eight and a half minutes and
life of Possibilities. I do think Spider and the Snow
in the City are like a clear delineation as my
two favorites on the album, and then after that you
could make a case for like five or six songs.
Speaker 2 (59:41):
Yeah, I have no idea how to rank the songs
on this record. I'm being honest.
Speaker 1 (59:46):
I mean I called the City the other song other.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
Than the City. The City's number one, and then I
think I have back and Forth at number two, and
then for three it's one of Spider in the Snow
you are invited or a gyroscope, I think.
Speaker 5 (01:00:05):
So.
Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
I think the one thing that's easy about that then,
is the City's going on the mixtape either. Yeah, I
think so to the City from this memory plan goes
on the mixtape. So I will say, also, Jake, thank
you to you for a very well research episode. It
was fun to hear a lot about this, especially from
my perspective, being newer to the band and not having
(01:00:29):
experienced a lot of their history. I was a fun one.
You did a great job. I know I set the
stakes really high out of the gate, but you met
you met it. Flying Colors, Jake, thank you too.
Speaker 5 (01:01:08):
Cock.
Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
Please try the fish.
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