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April 3, 2025 14 mins
Comedians Mark Bailey and Mike Miller talk funny about more school band memories, Steve Allen and his influence on Letterman, Mark's story about how calculus can save you from being beaten up, Mark's inspiration to be in radio from inspirational marching band guests, Sammy Gravano never threatened me as a high school kid, why newspaper club in school is good, and my best friend David in Junior high school and high school and garage bands.  Brought to you by Nagoyaradio.com, Nagoyacomedy.com, and stand up comic Mark Bailey.
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
He's Talk Funny, a podcast by Mark Bailey and other
comics from all over. We ended up in Japan because
we wanted to learn the Javanese language, meet the Javanese people,
and eat food from Java, and explore other parts of
Indonesia and to Talks Funny podcast from Nicole Radio dot
Com and Nagoya Comedy. Here's Mark Bailey, Here's Mark Bailey, Mark.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Bailey, Mike Miller Talk Funny. We talked about Steve Allen.
He was eventually on copy genthisiasm. He's a brilliant comic mind.
He wrote a book which I memorized on comedy. It's
just very funny. And he was doing late night talk
shows in the early sixties when everybody was square.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
You were very there was a censor that strictly censored
all your stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
That you could say right and they would say you
can't talk to this person. You could talk to that person.
He invented talking to people in the audience. He invented
the top ten actually before let Himan. If you watch
his old shows, it's like Letterman is almost as good
as this, you know, interesting Steve, because Steve Allen was
also never at our shows all right, So you said

(01:07):
you played clarinet in school band?

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yes badly?

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, how long? Only like a year or two of high.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
School, junior high school, Yeah, high school. I didn't do
any music.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
In high school. I got so many elective choices. I
was bumped up a year because I got I took.
I took them into the tests and they bumped me
up a year. So I had a high IQ. And
look at you now here I am. That's why you
also can have a high IQ. The highest course you
could take in tenth grade was calculus, and I already passed.

(01:40):
I took the calculus test. I just got the gene
for calculus, and I passed the test, and they said,
you've got a waiver, so you can take an elective
instead of that class you already passed. So I took
jazz band.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
But I was also in marching band, in brass band Wow,
swimming Wow, and swimming and percussion band and all those bands.
So we would go to venues, we play Christmas shows
and stuff and New Yor's shows. And my music teacher

(02:14):
in ninth grade got she was so cool and she
looked like Tony Taneil from Captain Nintanil and she goes,
so we're doing the Christmas show. There's no sex part.
And the drummer is your best friend, David. Do you
want to do his drums? And I said, no, David
should do it David. He wants to do it. I
want to do it with David. She goes, what do
you play? I said, I'll play guitar. So with did

(02:35):
jingle bell rock and we do all this stuff and
then she goes, we don't know what you're doing on
guitar and rhythm guitar and everything else, so you just
direct the band. So we did that right. It's really great. Wow,
But I'm leading up to a story. We're all nerdy guys.
David one of my best friends from childhood. He was
not nerdy. He was a long haired Taiwanese half Cherokee.

(03:00):
He looked like a Cherokee chief. He was a cool guy.
He looked like Elvis meets Jackie Chan if they had
a baby. He was a cool guy, and he wore
leather jackets, and his dad bought us kiss tickets, and
his dad let us smoke cigars when we were nine.
He was a great guy. And he wrote a murdercycle

(03:23):
when he was twelve, Wow, and he had drums, and
my family couldn't afford drums and anyway, so we were
in the band. I said, whatever band you're in in school,
i'll join it. So he goes, I'm do jazz band.
Let me play drums. I said, I'll join jazz band
if I don't have to play clarinet. And then they
had guitar, so I said, I'll play guitar. So I

(03:45):
played guitar. When I was thirteen. I wrote songs for
our band and we had a gunsman and I was
such a better musician when I was thirteen.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah, because you had unlimited time to practice.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
And nobody told you you can't do this. Yes, Mike,
you don't practice every day, you'd a practice for you
can't do vocal Maybe I can't. I probably can't. No,
you're thirteen do anything. Yeah, you don't know. You don't know.
You can't. Why are you playing drums and bass and
guitar and vocals and keyboards? Yeah? I can't do that. Yeah. Yeah,
So we're doing all this. So we're in a marching band.

(04:16):
Me and David was doing giant bass drum in the
marching band. And the reason one that we were fourteen.
I was in ninth grade and the reason I wanted
to become a DJ is we lacked morale and it's
hot in the summer. We're up in Brooklyn or marching.
We're playing these Spanish songs in a marching band and

(04:39):
it's just boring brown blam with a salsa Spanish song.
You should have like some timballets or monaccas. There's nothing.
It's just like very waspy, waspyrun brown. It's like polka.
And I said, at least let us do polka. It's
a higher tempo. And our bandleader, she was a nice

(05:00):
lesbian and she said, to you people suck, and I said,
you should try it sometimes. Excuse you people suck. So
I brought in Steve from ninety four Q in New Jersey,
famous DJ, and you all listened to him because I
asked you before, and you listen to the station he
came in. This is nineteen seventy eight, and he goes, okay, listen,

(05:23):
listen people I know. In the last year and a half,
Elvis died and Leonard Skinner's playing crash Face, but you
gotta get your together and he gets the crap together.
The music must live.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
He said, what's the third shoe to fall? You guys
fail first Elvis, then Leonard Skinner. Now you can't perform.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Come on, people, come on and I laugh like I laughed,
like hell.

Speaker 4 (05:57):
He goes, mister nerd clarinet man, you get me, and
I said, I got you, I got you, and he goes,
get these people in order, and I'm like, come on,
people happened to Elvis, happen to let let us get it.
It's not gonna happen to us. I said that there,
stupid slow polka, get on it.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Nice. Nice.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
So it was a DJ who saved your saved your band.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
He saved your band. He helped us with morel And
that's when I realized I want to be a DJ.
And I talked to him later and I said, I
want to be a DJ. And he goes, I thought
you were delusional for being a marching band and you
want to be a DJ. You're definitely delusional. Is he
the guy whose career you ruined? Later? No, no, no,
he was. He was his brother. And he goes, if

(06:44):
you want to be a DJ, you don't want to
be a DJ, he goes, Once you become a DJ,
you're gonna realize it's a dead end jump and look
at you now. Yeah, here we are. We do a podcast.
We're being sued by Spotify. All right. So I brought
up the band story because I had a life of
death moment where we're doing band practice in August and

(07:04):
we use in the high school. I'm in ninth grade
and we have a lunch break and they're waxing the floors.
There's union mob guys waxing the floors in the kitchen.
And then we're the barber Hotel, not the Barberson Hotel
and waxing the floor and we're sitting on the stairs
and we're eating our lunch, and then we have to
go back out in the hot sun and do band

(07:26):
practice for four more hours. And this is a Saturday,
and then watxing the floors because they do it on
a Saturday. I can't find the trash can to throw
my garbage away. I asked everybody on the stairs with us,
who's in our band, Is there a trush can? They
just put it in their bag. I want to throw
it away. What's your trash can? Is the trash can?

(07:46):
You see a trash can?

Speaker 3 (07:47):
No?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
And somebody said, there's one right over there across the floor.
So I walked across the floor on the wax, and
you slip on the wax. Now I didn't slip, but
I made big two prints in the wax and the wax.
And the guy had just he was smoking a cigarette
and he's an union mob guy. It wasn't Semi Gravano.
It was not semi Gravan. Mike out, dare you say

(08:11):
it was not? It was not him? It was not him,
It wasn't what do you make it wasn't. It wasn't.
It wasn't him, And so I didn't think anything about it,
and I was unaware. I'm just walking through the wax,
kind of sticky, and I throw my garbage away on
the opposite side, and I walked back on the floor.
So I'm leaving two tracks. And then I said back

(08:33):
on the stairs, I said how long when we got
to get back? They said, we got like two minutes
to get back to the field to do marching band practice.
So then this mob guy comes up, Union guy. I
don't know if he's mob, but he looked mob. But
he had a little bit longer hair than normal. He
looked like a just a stoner and he goes, I

(08:56):
just waxed that floor and I said, yeah, thank you.
Now you destroyed it. No, I couldn't find a trush can.
He goes, well, you don't have to walk across the
floor to give the trush can. I said, well, when
you were wissing the floor, couldn't you bring the trash
can over here? I mean, we need a trash can.
We need lunch. He goes, You're gonna take the mop

(09:16):
and you're gonna fix every footprint that you made. I said,
I don't think that's gonna happen. I was fourteen. Wow.
And he goes, no, you're going to And I said,
I don't think so. And all my I don't know
if they are my friends. They didn't really help me.
They're like eight band members. We're going to that eight
thirds standing around me going not me, not me, I'm

(09:38):
not here. And he goes, I'm gonna count from five
to zero and if you don't come down and take
the mop I give you, I'll wipe it with your face.
And I'm like, are we gonna put up with this? Nobody?
Nobody help me? Who are you again? I'm like, you're
gonna take us on and they're like, who's us, who's us?

(10:01):
Pel face, who's us? Who's us? And he goes, I'm
not kidding. You don't want to mess with it. They said,
you want me to mop it back up. I'm like, well,
how did I get out without messing it up again?
He goes, that's your problem. He goes, I'm not kidding.
You would test me. He goes, this is my last day.
I said, well, it's already your last day. You threatening

(10:24):
a minor. What did you say to me? You know
who I'm with. That's why I think he was mob.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
And you're like the school board.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
So he counts down five, four, three, and I'm like,
I don't know. I don't know what I'm gona do.
Two one zero. He looked at me like I'm going
to do it, and he put his hand out right.
So I stepped down and I said, give me the
FM mom it. So when out he went back, he's smoking.
They're way far away, so I'm looking at the distance.

(10:56):
That's why calculus is good to be, you know, genius.
And I'm looking how far can he run in wax
if I bail? So I'm mopping. I'm looking at him
nice telling the story. Now there laughing. Now they're doing
cheers and they're drinking beers in the school. He's having beer.
Your janitors, he's drinking beer and they're laughing. He's gotta

(11:19):
he just lit a cigarette. He's not gonna throw the
cigarette away. So I dropped him up and ran. I
baled and I ran out to the field and he
followed me, and then I just fell in line with
everybody else. And he talked to the nice lesbian band
leader and he goes, I'm looking for one of your guys,
and she goes, what do you look like. He's a short,

(11:40):
nerdy guy with glasses. We're all everybody.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
In marching vand is a short nerdy guys because we
can't get girls.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, And she's like, kid, you narrow it down a
little bit. He goes, we had an attitude. And she's like, well,
I think I know who that is, but I'm not
giving him up. And he goes, get off my fe
and he goes, I want to meet that guy. He
wrecked my floor twice. He wrecked my floor. Yeah, I
will not forget this guy. And she goes, everybody in

(12:09):
my marching band are minors? Should I call the cops
or what are you gonna do? He goes, no, I
just want to know. I just want to know who
that was. And she goes, all right, I'm gonna call
the cops. But we had no phones in right, She goes,
I'm going to the phone, call the cops. I'm gonna disband.
Everybody can go home. And she goes, I don't know
who he's looking for. I think I know, but I'm

(12:31):
gonna say everybody go home. Everybody dispersed, go different directions.
You can't chase all of you, right.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
So I really she was great, that's wonderful, miss Kirks.
Miss Kirks, that's that's a wonderful person.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, that guy's like, what are you gonna do? Man,
I'm fourteen years old.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
It's it's a kind of a thing where again it's
about the saving face thing, and he's like, I'm not
gonna let this kid, this little mouthy kid, tell me
what to do, you know, and make him make make
me work.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
But time it's like, you're like, fourteen, what are you
gonna do?

Speaker 3 (13:02):
Like, you know, mistakes happen, right, people make mistakes.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
I was a stupid nerd. I thought I thought throwing
trash away was the most important thing. Yeah, before I
came to Japan, where it obviously is the most.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Is the most important thing. No, and the most important
thing is not dropping vegetables on the ground. Mark, that's
the most important thing. Don't want to drop those vegetables.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
So I learned. Anybody listening who's in high school or
getting into high school tricks I learned is ace uh,
the proficiency tests on calculus or history or whatever you
can do, or English, and then you get to take
electives like swimming and marching band. It's just it's a hobby.
It's really my class. And I did newspaper club. Oh yeah,

(13:40):
help me learn a lot.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
You learn a lot in those different things.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Newspaper Club, that's where that happened, where I interviewed the
guy and you got it fired, and you got it.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
You got to pay back that guy who motivated his
brother fire.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
They paid in high school, they paid for newspaper Club.
There you go, great, right, Mark Bailey, Mike Talk Fun
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