60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Closing Time”—Semisonic

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

It’s last call for '90s songs and Rob’s memories as the show draws to a close. So there couldn’t be a more fitting moment for Semisonic’s “Closing Time” to be chosen as the episode’s focus. Listen as Rob grapples with his feelings of discomfort with the word goodbye, and stay for a final sendoff to the greatest '60 Songs' guest of all time, Yasi Salek. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Yasi Salek Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Sallick and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to power pop pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. I got this issue with the word goodbye. I don't care for it. That's my issue with goodbye. This word makes me anxious. It makes me emo. I have a severe, lifelong, overwrought emotional reaction. Whenever I hear anyone sing the word, goodbye. I discovered this when I was six or seven years old and I heard Bruce Springsteen sing it. Bobby Jean, second song on Side B of Born in the U.S. day, 1984. I'm six or seven years old. Let's say I'm playing with my Transformers or whatever. I got Optimus Prime in one hand and Soundwave in the other. Soundwave the evil, the Decepticon cassette player, super menacing transformer. I found Soundwave at a garage sale for like two bucks,

greatest day of my life up to that point. Yeah, I'm playing Transformers and my parents are listening to records and I hear Bruce Springsteen sing the word goodbye and suddenly I am overcome with an arbitrary sadness. This sadness is unearned and yet frighteningly real to me. Suddenly, I too miss Bobby Jean. I am distraught. I am inconsolable. I am no fun to be around.

Do you know this Portuguese word saudad? I looked up how to pronounce it on the internet. Saudada. It's like a super nostalgic melancholy. An aching yearning, a crushing but also kind of beautiful sense of unrecoverable loss, usually triggered by like poetry or Springsteen. Springsteen is poetry, poetry including Springsteen, poetry including the Super 80s new wave rock band scandal. I recommend watching the goodbye to you video if you're ever in the mood for some super 80s

dancing. You know what I mean? Some Molly Ringwald in the breakfast club's shoulder and hip bopping action. Tremendous. Patty Smythe, the lead singer of the super 80s, New Wave rock band scandal is married to John McEnroll, but previously she was married to Richard Hell, the literary punk rocker. That all sounds exhausting. Let me ask you this. Did you know what John Bon Jovi was talking about the first time you heard him talking about this? I didn't know what he was talking about. Oh, what you lose? Did you lose one of your transformers, one of the smaller transformers? Did you lose one of the tiny evil cassette tapes, the cassette decepticons? The that you put into Soundwave,

the evil cassette player Decepticon, the cassette tapes that turned into birds and pterodactals and whatnot. Laserbeak, I believe, was one of them. That's a rad name. Perchance, did you lose Laserbeak in John Bon Jovi's backseat, baby? I bet John Bon Jovi knows all about the pain of losing Transformers. Yeah, there's me as a little kid playing with my Transformers in the backseat whilst losing my shit.

to Bon Jovi's never say goodbye. I grow up like this. I grow up with a severe, lifelong, arbitrary, overwrought emotional reaction to people singing the word goodbye. Super Tramp? Goodbye Stranger by Supertrap?

No thank you. And also, yes, please. That's the part of goodbye stranger right before Super Tramp go off. Super Tramp are about to get inconceivably funky. Super Tramp are about to get after it. There's an ultra-rad guitar part coming right here that goes, this song never bothered me.

Actually, despite frequently employing the word goodbye, the song Goodbye Stranger never triggered extreme melancholy in me. I'm thinking of another Super Tramp song that always somehow made me feel immediately, ridiculously, lowly. Super Tramp were actually the band that first made me realize that I'd spend my whole life like this, having severe lifelong, overwrought emotional reactions to really all sorts of songs that use all sorts of words. Sometimes it's the literal word goodbye. Sometimes it's just an exquisitely suffocating aura of goodbye. In all sincerity, can I play you what I still believe to this day

is the saddest 12 seconds of recorded sound I've ever heard in my life? I'm being serious. I sincerely don't know if you're prepared for this. I'm still not. The very end of Take the Long Way Home by Super Tramp, the live version of Take the Long Way Home. That's crucial. You need this extended coda. You need the slow fade out. The dissipation.

Long way home. Long way home. Plus the harmonica that sounds like a very large and very shaggy and very sad dog whimpering. I understand that I've been doing this show for like four years now. There's simply no way to tell when I'm joking. And just because I say that I'm serious, that is no guarantee that I'm serious. But I am not joking about this. Whenever I heard take the long way home as a kid and it'd get to that slow fade out,

long way home, I'd get this sense of the singer, the band, the song, the universe, physically receding and leaving me there alone, this sense of a frigid night falling, this sense of an exquisite suffocating loneliness, descending. I'd hear that part and I'd get really quiet. I'd withdraw inward. I'd feel isolated and desolate. Sometimes I'd start crying. I was a pleasant and low-maintenance kid, often, but not always, not now. So as a little kid, I've already got a sense of what music means to me. Would a bizarre and irrational and profound and lasting spiritual effect music could have on me. And it scared me. And sometimes it incapacitated me, but it fascinated me, too. And I think even before I could vaguely articulate what I wanted to do with my life, I knew that one way or the

other, I'd spend my life trying to articulate that feeling or trying to recreate it, because it really did scare me, this sadness, this loneliness, this helplessness that could be triggered in me by a band literally named Super Tramp. But I knew even then that, that I'd never run away from that feeling. I'd always run toward it. It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday. So now make me a teenager, right? This will solve everything.

Now I'm a teenager, and my loneliness and helplessness is perpetual and also insufferable, but at least sometimes my outsized super emo reaction to someone singing the word goodbye is appropriate, right? Boys to men singing it so hard to say goodbye to yesterday. That chokes everybody up. That's universal. Everybody respects the power of goodbye when they sing it or when she sings it. I have a vague memory of being in college and watching the video for Madonna's The Power of Goodbye real late at night and getting super emo about it. But this memory is vague enough that I did not recall that Madonna plays chess forlornly and sexily in the video for the power goodbye. She's playing the Blackside standard opening.

Her forlorn and sexy opponent is that handsome Croatian dude who replaced George Clooney on ER. Madonna's like suggestively stroking her king and so forth. It's a lot. It undercuts the melancholy somewhat. That's Madonna for you. I do believe I have mentioned this goodbye song in this venue. on several occasions.

I've only mentioned this song twice before. Actually, it feels like more than that. That's impressive restraint on my part. Really, Caroline by Concrete Blonde from their 1990 album Bloodletting, the second CD I ever owned. This is the purest and most devastating goodbye of the decade. For me, the leaf to falsetto,

the ghostly echo, the slow exhale of the word itself, the painstakingly detailed photorealistic image of her waving goodbye from apparently a boat. This goodbye shut me right up every time. Don't talk to me for several hours after I've heard Caroline. If this is me in high school, maybe don't talk to me at all. If this is me in college and I've gotten super into Jeff Buckley, absolutely don't talk to me at all.

I hate to feel the love between the stars. You would think Last Goodbye by Jeff Buckley would be, in retrospect, the most devastating Jeff Buckley's song for me emotionally, but surprisingly, no. Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah is way more devastating to me now, because when I hear it now, I am reminded of that mortifying time in college when I attempted my version of Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah at, open mic night. I heard there was a secret cord that David played and it pleaded gift. Oh my God.

Zero chords that pleased the Lord were played that day, my friends. So displeased was the Lord with my one performance of Hallelujah that the Lord considered triggering another flood immediately, or at least

smiting me personally off my stool or whatever with a thunderbolt or a piano. Oh my God. Please don't imagine this. But can you imagine me at like 19 forlornly straining for both the high note and the emotional gravitas here? Oh my God. How many desperate gasping breaths do you suppose I took as I attempted to croon this one word

forlornly? and sexually. The over under in Vegas is four desperate gasping breaths taken by me, maybe 4.5. Oh, my God. If I had a time machine, I would go back to 1997 and I would call in an anonymous bomb threat on the coffee shop where this occurred. Let us never speak of this again. Can we find a song that's at least arguably in my vocal range? It is weird that they've never really come up in 100. 19 episodes of this show, I will concede to you that it's weird. I listened to a great deal of Stone Temple pilots in high school and college. A truly disconcerting quantity of Stone Temple pilots. They put me on national television exactly once, and within 10 seconds, I announced to the baffled and unamused viewers of CBS this morning that Stone Temple pilots were better than the Beatles. And everyone on the internet agreed with. me. Does this show have an institutional bias against less prestigious 90s quasi-grunge hitmakers

of the Bush and Candlebox and STP variety? Is this bias the product of musical jealousy? Did I somehow never learn to play Bush's glycerine on guitar, despite it being pretty much the same four chords the whole time? Is this bias the product of insufferable critical snootiness? is purple by Stone Temple Pilots, arguably the most 1994-sounding album released in 1994. Did I publicly declare at some point that 1994 is the 90s-ist year of the 1990s, therefore making Purple by Stone Temple Pilots the 90s-ist album overall? Does Scott Weiland of STP sing goodbye right here?

It's too late to answer any of these questions. Close enough. Interstate love song did not strike me as a terrifically sad song until I heard STP play it live a couple years back with a lead singer who was not original STP lead singer Scott Weiland who died in 2015. I wrote an obituary for Scott Weiland for the website where I was working at the time, Deadspin classic. And it did not occur to me in that moment that I'd spend much of the next decade and counting writing more such obituaries. Sometimes sung goodbyes are time bombs that take years, if not decades, to detonate. Scott Weiland sings goodbye. Jeff Buckley sings goodbye. Kirk Cobain, Chris Cornell, Lane Staley, Shanea O'Connor, Doug Hopkins, Bradley Noel, Elliot Smith, and Dolores O'Reardon, sing goodbye. Figuratively, if not literally, but often literally. And that's just for starters, and that's just the quote-unquote rockers. Mark Sandman sings goodbye. Last night, I told a stranger all about you is smiled. It's also weird that the phenomenal Boston band Morphine

have never really come up in 119 episodes of this show because Concrete Blonde takes the title but the second most emotionally devastating goodbye type song I listened to on infinite repeat in high school was in spite of me from Morphine's 1993 album, Cure for Pain. It's the devastated murmur of Mark Sandman's voice, right? Here's a vocal range I can approximate.

And a spiritual register I could never in a billion years attempt to approximate. All right, let me explain to you for the very last time how being a music obsessed teenager in the 90s worked logistically. You watch MTV five hours a day. You listen to the radio 12 hours a day. You listen to the half dozen CDs you own for the rest of the day. and one day on the radio, you hear a voice. I hear a voice from the back of the room. You hear Mark Sandman's voice on a song called Buena.

That's Spanish for good. I can tell you that because it took four years of Spanish in high school. This song has a two-string bass and drums and saxophone and Mark Sandman's rad deep sonorous voice and zero guitar. Is this still alternative? Sure. Is it jazz? No. Is it cool? Yes. So now you're intrigued. You hear Buena a couple dozen more times on the radio and you're a little gladder every time you hear it. And also you start to hear a second morphine song called Cure for Pain. That's funny, right? That's pretty funny. All right, so morphine's got two good songs, which is doubly intriguing. But do they have a third?

good song? Ooh. Maybe not. There is no shame if morphine do not. Plenty of reputable, serviceable, historically significant bands do not have a third good song. But guess what? We should have kept it every Thursday, Thursday, Thursday in the album.

She was pretty good, too. And within two seconds of hearing Mark Sandman sing, she was pretty good, too. I have teleported myself to camel out records in the mall. to buy cure for pain by morphine for $17. And so now I own like seven CDs. That's how it worked logistically in the 90s. And great news for me because it turns out cure for pain by morphine has like eight good songs,

like an early pearl jam quantity of good songs. And the best of those good songs is a super mellow, devastating, arbitrary sadness-generating ballad called In spite of me. And in my mopier teenage moments, in my darkest, dorkiest nights of the soul, as I pined for various ladies who all dodged a bullet, I'd put this song on repeat and I would luxuriate morosely in the undiluted essence of goodbye

conveyed by this overwhelmingly beautiful song in spite of me. I am distraught. I am inconsolable. I'm even less fun to be around. I'm ridiculously lonely. I am as 17 as I will ever be. I'll be fine, right? It's fine. Relax. Relax. 17-year-old me. But yeah, I tap into the essence here. I once again achieve that frightful ecstatic degree of super nostalgic melancholy, that aching yearning. We are, taking the long way home, my friends, and the ecstasy lies in the fact that you can never get there. And I should know better now, right? I should know enough to not romanticize, to not actively miss, to not yearn for this helpless, joyless, desolate, yearning teenage feeling that I radiated back then. But I still miss it sometimes, in spite of myself. Because that's what music does, or at least that's what music does to me. But I am grateful to Mark Sandman, eternally, for the otherworldly calm, for the effortless cool, for the super casual annihilation he somehow conveyed with every murmured word. I hear this voice even now, and it takes me somewhere. I don't think it takes me back,

per se, because going back is not an option. But I am eternally grateful to be taken anywhere. Mark Sandman died on stage in Italy of a heart attack on July 3rd, 1999. He was 46. I never saw Morphine live and I'll never forgive myself. That's an overwrought way of putting it. But Morphine helped me feel this way. The last morphine album, called The Night, came out in 2000, more than half a year after Mark Sandman passed. And this record has an undeniably posthumous, funereal, mournful, shattering quality. And subconsciously, I'm very careful even now about when and how I listen to it. Because I can picture myself, right? In early 2000, my senior year of college, in my dorm.

Yeah, I lived in a dorm my senior year of college. It was a cool dorm. Trust me on this. And we had a piano in the common area where people studied or tried to study. And the piano is in this separate room with a door. so theoretically you wouldn't disturb anyone while playing it. But this room wasn't like soundproof, right? And I can still picture myself in there, fumbling through these chords,

and trying to sing with the colossal and chill gravitas of Mark Sandman. And also I think at least once I tried to scat the melody to the saxophone solo, but forget I said that. And I'm sure everyone trying to study nearby wanted to kill me, but I kept trying to play this song anyway, because I wanted to somehow generate the poignant goodbye feeling myself. Though, of course, I only generated a different, more ineptitude-based form of sadness. But that inept sadness can be poignant too, right?

I want you to know that I did find a morphine song where Mark Sandman actually sings the word goodbye, but it's like a deep cut, right? It's an extra posthumous b-side. The song is literally called Shadow parentheses, I know you part five. Come on now. That's a stretch even for me. I'll tell you the saddest moment on this song,

The Night, though, it's right at the end. When Mark Sandman starts murmuring, super cool, poignant, jazzy type stuff, but it's like he's fading out. I get this sense of the universe physically receding and leaving me there alone. This sense of a frigid night falling. This sense of an exquisite, suffocating loneliness descending.

And whatever words he's singing here and whatever they might mean, none of that matters. What matters is that you can very clearly hear him waving. And sometimes the songs that trigger this feeling of unrecoverable loss are immediate. You feel the sadness, the yearning, the loneliness in real time. But their impact can also take years, take decades, even without a tragic death as a catalyst, even without an overwrought obituary to write. Because I think we all understand subconsciously when we're young that it won't last, that the whole point of youth is that it doesn't last.

And now what we do in our youth and the music we listen to on infinite repeat while we do it, we're going to remember it forever. And we'll get more emo about it the more time passes. But no young person really acknowledges the impermanence of their youth at the time. We're too busy. So a few choice goodbye songs might only truly hit us in retrospect. Often those are the best ones. And often those are also, in retrospect, the most obvious ones.

Closing time. One last call for alcohol. So finish your whiskey or beer. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 120th and final episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s and this week we are discussing closing time by Semi-Sonic from their 1998 album Feeling Strangely Fine because this enterprise does not shy away from extreme sentimentality. Am I feeling trepidacious and super emo and super extra indulgent about this show ending?

Why, yes, yes I am. Will this show be back soon in another form? Yes, yes, it will. Don't unsubscribe or whatever. Do I know what that new form is? Yes. Am I going to tell you right now what that new form is? No.

Why not? Because they told me I should wait. So there you have it. Trust the process. But yeah, I find myself somewhat contemplative. I am perhaps a wee bit overcome as we gear up to finally definitively leave the 90s behind. But it's time. We're going to get through this together.

Or we're going to not get through this together. Closing time. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Oh, let's not overdo the melodrama here, people. Let's pull ourselves together. Let me pull myself together. Let's get a little momentum going. Minnesota, mid-80s onward, who we got in 1984.

Same year Springsteen puts out, born in the USA, same year I'm six years old and realizing I've got this whole goodbye sensitivity deal going on in 1984 in Minnesota alone, Minneapolis and St. Paul, the Twin Cities, produced Zen Arcade by Husker Do, Let It Be by the Replacements, and Purple Rain by Prince. Sheesh. Are these the three best albums to come out of the same region

in the same year in pop music history? Let's say yes. I say yes. Around this time, the singer-gatologist Matt Wilson, the bassist John Munson and the drummer Elaine Harris from a Minneapolis-based psych rock band called Trip Shakespeare.

They put out their debut album called Applehead Man in 1986 and then Matt convinces his younger brother, Dan Wilson, a painter and fellow singer-songwriter, to join up on guitar and vocals as well. And by 1988, Trip Shakespeare sounds like this. Namely, Tripp Shakespeare sound like this. sound like they're living in

1966. They sound like hippies. They sound like the summer of love has either not yet occurred or it's occurring right now. This song is called Two-wheeler, four-wheeler, from the band's 1988 album, Are You Shakespeare-ed?

Yeah, that's what they called it. In 1991, the Chicago reader affectionately refers to Tripp Shakespeare in print as moon children. And specifically, quote, Moon children on a level rock and roll hasn't seen since Donovan got his first whiff of patchuli, end quote. That's affectionate.

Right? That's not entirely pejorative. That's affectionately semi pejorative. The occasion here is an interview to discuss Tripp Shakespeare's fourth album, 1991's Lulu, which has the misfortune of coming out the same year as Nirvana's Nevermind, a.k.a. the year punk broke, aka the year it got a little less cool to sound like a bunch of 60s hippies.

Matt Wilson, the older brother and founding member, tells the Chicago reader, quote, there's no irony in what we do. We're trying to find something gorgeous. If you hear us harmonizing, even if we're failing, we're not setting up a net for ourselves that says, we don't care.

We do care. end quote. Yeah, unironically caring was not very cool in 1991, but Tripp Shakespeare are blissfully undeterred. There he is. There is the dulcet, pure pop falsetto radness of Dan Wilson, the younger brother on a song called Bachelorette from Tripp Shakespeare's 1991 major label album Lulu. And this gorgeous harmonizing, unironic record is defiantly out of fact. In this video is a bit of a giddy, long-hair, Nelson-adjacent Dorkfest. And this poor band is totally about to get dropped from that major label. But you hear it, right? You hear a tremendous super poppy expert charisma.

This song, Bachelorette appears to be about women getting relentlessly hit on at the club. But this extra falsetto line has an unexpected disarming poignance to it. Does it not? and the clock above the bar there approaching that fateful three closing time you don't have to go home but you can't stay here trip shakespeare put out one more little ep of cover songs and break up in 1993 dan wilson the younger brother and john munson the bassist hook up with a new drummer named jacob schlichter and start a new band called pleasure that's a weird band name pleasure changed their name to semi-sonic Semi-Sonic put out their first album in 1996. It's called Great Divide. And it starts with the brightest and jauntyest power pop guitar riff imaginable. This song is called FNT, which stands for fascinating new thing.

And the fascinating new thing in question is, you guessed it, a power pop dream girl. I can guarantee you that if she's ever set foot in a bar, she's been told that before. But the chorus is punchy as hell, dude, that you're lovely, and you're perfect. Now, I love Power Pop, and I spent my teenage years compiling mixtapes of Power Pop Dream Girl songs in usually unsuccessful attempts to woo my own personal Power Pop Dream Girl. And this song, FNT, is the first time that I personally hear Dan Wilson's voice. And he immediately strikes me as an upper echelon sort of dude in, you know, the, power pop dream girl space, his brightness, his cheerfulness, his wanton hookiness, his earwormy

insidiousness, his Midwestern affability, and his semi-psychedelic exuberance that now sounds a little less 60s and a little more mid-90s. In the interim between 1991 and 1996, we've gone broadly from grunge to post-grunge. Punk broke to such an outrageous mainstream extent that punk kind of broke. The mid to late 90s are going to get a little weirder, a little less growlier, a little more delightfully random as fluky mega hit pop songs go. Sugar Ray's fly is coming. Third-eye blind, semi-charmed life is coming. The new radicals you get what you give is coming soon after that. And here in 96, to tide you over in the meantime, you've got a semi-sonic song called Delicious with a chorus that literally goes,

woo-hoo, woo-hoo, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds more profound when they do it. That's super profound. One of the most stressful aspects of doing the last episode of this show is that if I have any more absurdly mundane teenage anecdotes, I got to fire them off now, like right now, even if the anecdote in question does not pertain at all to anything I'm talking about. It is important to me, obviously, that I stay on topic. But I'm out of time.

I got zero episodes left, and I got all this wisdom left to impart. I got no time for coherent segways. My buddy Gene goes into a suburban Ohio McDonald's mid-afternoon, place is empty. Only other human being in the joint is the cashier. He's this tall, doofy, lanky, super-dazed, acne-ridden, teenage dorkas, just wobbling behind the counter in a stupor. Like, I say this with affection. I say this with recognition. This is the 90s, but I always picture Napoleon Dynamite now.

And my buddy Gene is hanging back. He's checking out the menu or whatever when another customer barges in. This hard-ass 40-something drill instructor tough guy. Picture every gym coach you've ever had. This dude stomps into the place, rumbles up to the counter, plants himself right in front of the doofy cashier, slaps his hand down on the counter, points at the doofy cashier and goes, quarter pound of a cheese knucklehead that's the whole story there's no moral per se do you see my dilemma here how am i supposed to make that pertain to anything i mean i had to tell you at some point

but when how what the hell does that have to do with semi-sonic also it's a good thing i didn't screw that up because i definitely cannot yell that again i actually really hurt myself just now and i'll have a sore throw for several days it's a blessing this show is over for now because I'm going to need a prolonged period of vocal rest. Semi-Sonic have found here in 1996 their moment. They are unabashedly poppy and ever so slightly witty, and they are right on time. And they are joined here in 1996,

here in their optimal moment, by another power-pop-ish band of even wittier dorks from New Jersey. This song is earnestly addressed to a power-pop dream girl, and it's called Leave the Biker. Hit it, fellas. With crumbs in his beard from the seafood special. With crumbs in his beard from the seafood special. That's how the chorus starts.

Incredible. Yes, it's the Fountains of Wayne. The Almighty Fountains of Wayne from their 1996 self-titled debut album. And on this record anyway, radiation vibe is most likely the first song you remember. But Leave the Biker is the song you know. need. Oh, can't you see my world that's falling apart?

Leave the biker, leave the biker, brick is hard. Amazing. I am amazed. I can't really explain this and I probably shouldn't try, but bands like Fountains of Wayne, bands and artists revered as true songwriters, the true artisans and geniuses. Whether you measure that genius in Grammys or critical acclaim or

cult status or whatever, songs written by true songwriters just feel like they're written better. And the chord changes feel profound, even if they're not profound. There's nothing fancy about Leave the Biker chord-wise, but that line, Oh, can't you see my world is falling apart where it goes, that's just C to C minor, I think. But it just sounds difference, right? It sounds right.

It sounds perfect. It sounds purposeful and preordination. With true songwriters, it just hits different. Don't it? Every chord in its right place. I shouldn't have tried to explain it. Can I throw one more sublime and ridiculous and radiantly dorky 1996 pop song at you? Hit it, other fellas.

Forget the chords, dude. This one's all vibes. Meggie Tah. Whoever you are from their 1996 debut album, Sacred Cow. These fellas are from Pomona, California, a half hour east of L.A. I map quested it. My editor has clarified that the drive takes way longer with traffic. My freshman year of college, the big campus concert was bare naked ladies with Geggy Ta opening. And I had a fantastic time. Gaggy Thai had a hotline, like an 800 number that just played whoever you are on a loop. And I like this song so much that I called that phone number for my freshman dorm room several times. This band is a trio featuring a multi-instrumentalist named Greg Kirsten, who is now a present tense Grammy-dominating true songwriter super producer with a hand in four number one hits, stronger by Kelly Clarkson, Cheap Thrills by See ya, and Hello and Easy On Me by

Adele. Make a note of it. Dan Wilson of Semi-Sonic is primed here in 1996 to join this exclusive club. of true songwriters. And he's got the falsetto. He's got the charisma. He's got the every chord feels profound gravitas. This song is called brand new baby. And it's about being sad because your former baby has got a brand new baby who isn't you. And the chords are ever so slightly fancier.

Are they not? I guess you're not mine is a heartbreaking and very succinct five-word summary of the power pop dream girl mindset. This episode is almost over, which means. this iteration of the show is almost over, and I'm having just tremendous anxiety about it. I think I've established that I can just blurt that sort of thing out out of nowhere. Okay, now it's 1998. And the aforementioned semi-charmed lives and you get what you gives are inexplicably

dominating the post-grunge, late alternative rock landscape. And it's time for Semi-Sonic to truly impact history. The second Semiconic album is called Feeling Strangely Fine. Let me play you real quick melodies from the first. first three songs on this record. Closing time, you are, of course, familiar with. That's semi-sonic bassist John Munson. John came up with that piano part.

Good job, John. Bass players who could also do another thing, such as play piano or dress themselves or order their own meals and restaurants, multifunctional bass players are quite rare in rock and roll. Did you see recently somebody asked Tim Comerford, the bassist from Rage Against the Machine, why his band broke up,

and he was like, I don't know anything. Nobody tells me anything. I'm the bass player. Incredible. Just stupendous. Great piano part, John. Great job, John.

In my college newspaper, right when this song first got popular, I wrote that closing time sounded like a gorilla playing piano with one finger. That's rude. Why did I write that? Track two on Feeling Strangely Fine

is called Singing in My Sleep, but it's about a power pop dream girl who makes you a mixtape for a change. And it starts like this. Oh, they gave the gorilla an electric keyboard for this one. Stop it, Rob. Stop it. Hey, let me tell you for the billionth time that the greatest feeling in the world is when you love a song, but you forgot about it and then you hear it again.

And it's like hearing it for the first time and being reminded that you always loved it simultaneously. Track three is called Made to Last. Oh, the gorilla's back to the piano. Stop it. Semi-Sonic have mastered here the art of very simple melodies, not even deceptively simple melodies. There is no deception. These melodies are not trying to trick you. They are simple.

They are straightforward. They are modest and they are enduring. To my mind, made to last is the song where our buddy Dan Wilson definitively joins the ranks of the true songwriters. I listen to this chorus and every chord change feels like another. impeccably crafted step on like an impeccably crafted staircase. Better end this quick. We're running out of metaphors. The chords are D, B, E, Minor in A.

Simple, beautiful, classic. I don't know why I'm projecting some sort of arbitrary cosmic genius onto this chorus, but I am. The whole point of this enterprise is arbitrarily projecting cosmic genius onto random chords. The high note here helps all. Also. A minor C, D, E minor A, still simple, but the high note is pushing us skyward. We are building something wholly and indestructible here. We are building a cathedral. And even though this is 1998, we're totally post-grunge, we are still building to the single most 90s moment in the semi-sonic canon, which is this rad burst of heavy bass and guitar distortion to indicate that this rad chorus has been. peaked. That is an extremely, a delightfully

1994 moment on this 1998 record. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. I have outrun the melodrama for as long as I am able. So in January 2020, the great podcast's Song Exploder.

You know Song Exploder. Pop Stars come on and deconstruct their songs. It's awesome. Song Exploder did an episode on closing time. So Dan Wilson comes on and he explains, Fafably that while they were making this whole record feeling strangely fine, his wife was pregnant and the baby, their daughter, was born prematurely and their daughter spent almost a year in intensive care in the hospital. And everybody is doing great now, but all of that was a heavy,

overwhelming moment that lasted for like a year. And closing time, as a consequence, has this double meaning, right? It's about a bar, about closing time at the bar, about the clock above the bar, approaching that fateful three. But it's not just about the bar. Right? Right. Closing time. Open all the doors and let you out into the world.

Closing time is also about the womb, right? I won't say that word again. This is not new information. Dan Wilson toss about this in interviews all the time. But it was new to me at the time. And it's important information. nonetheless. There are lines in this song that just absolutely do not make any sense otherwise. So, okay, I personally am finally made aware of this double meaning in January of 2020,

and in March 2020, COVID is happening, and my wife is pregnant, and it's awesome, but given the circumstances, it's also weird and terrifying. And we start plotting out this show over the summer, and this show launches in October, and then my daughter is born on Halloween. And there are comparatively brief, but super harrowing complications. And everybody's doing great now. And last night, I re-listened to the Closing Time Song Exploder episode while my three-year-old daughter was fast asleep and pinning down my left arm. And I don't know how you expect me to be cool and detached about any of this.

Sing the line, Dan. Every new beginning comes from some of the beginnings. I go through phases where I'm not sure if I dig the yeah there, but no, yeah, the yeah is absolutely essential. Dan Wilson is now a present tense Grammy-dominating true songwriter super producer who's worked with Adele, The Chicks, Pink, Mitzke, Chris Stapleton, John Batiste, Taylor Swift, etc., etc. Someone like you was his big Adele song that he worked on. It's baffling, I realized. But closing time in real time did not radiate super emo goodbye song energy to me personally. But why would it?

I am 20 when this song comes out. I am oblivious to virtually everything. I cannot comprehend double meanings. I can barely comprehend single meanings. As I am now 20 years old, I am numerically no longer a teenager. but as I think you'll agree, spiritually, I am permanently a teenager. But in 1998, I will be young forever. And closing time is a song about being young forever, even though the bar's closing.

So you got to go be young forever somewhere else. Can I confess something to you that will not surprise you at all? I did not spend much time in bars in college. Or afterward. Sometimes by chance I'd be walking down the street down my college's main drag. at 2 or 3 a.m. Right, when the bar is closed. And all those bars would be emptying.

All those doors opening to let you out into the world. And by you, I mean, not me. And everybody's drunk and loud and boisterous. And I'm just walking down the street, alone, unboisterous. And that's a super emo feeling, right? That's a particularly deadly goodbye feeling. When you're surrounded by loud, boisterous people, you're too afraid to ever say hello to.

And now you're totally alone. blah, blah, blah, it happens. And I'm doing great now, honest, but my loneliness felt super profound to me at the time. And who knows, maybe it was profound. But what I wanted to say, as briefly and as clearly as I can manage, is that this goofy show started in the midst of pretty intense isolation. For everyone, I think I can say. But even the vague sense that literally anyone was listening, the tremendously thoughtful and kind emails and DMs, and whatnot that I've received, the chance to spend even a little time more recently, physically in rooms, in the physical presence of other physical people who've spent any time listening to any of this. I am so grateful to all of you for all of this. So thank you. I'm not dying or anything, and this show will be back. Let's not overdo it. Let's not let me overdo it. But thank you. Let's have Dan sing that line again, but it's the slow one right at the end of the song, where the piano playing gorilla

is a little more prominent. Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, the gorilla. And thank you to you. We'll talk again about something else soon. But for now, this is me waving,

and this is me thanking you for getting involved, and this is me saying goodbye. We could not end this show without talking once more with the great Yassi Salik, host of Bansplained and 24 question party people, crucial to this show as well. Some people on the internet seem to think

I am actually your father. I think that's great. I don't think that's, that doesn't offend me at all, so that's good. It's, if you take it more like I look so young

and not perhaps that you're giving old. Yeah. It's probably more that. It's maybe like a little column A, a little column B. Great to talk to you

again, Yassi. Thank you for being here. Thank you for everything, Yassi. We have done this together. We have done our best to bring the music and talk program into the universe. That part might get cut, but I wanted to say it. Anyway.

They don't want to, they don't want to remember. They don't want to dwell on that. Am I the most frequently appeared guest. Now, did I beat everyone out? This is my fifth appearance. I counted. Totally. Yes. You absolutely are. There might be, Leslie might have done three or four, but nobody has done five. And so you should be, I hope you are honored. I am honored. I also have a suspicion that you didn't have anyone else to ask for this one.

And I'll take it either way, babe. Little a column A, little bit. Little column A, little column B. Little Colm. Totally. Okay, cool. Yeah, see, why do we do this? Podcasting, living? Yeah. We wake up each day.

March tirelessly towards that. We have both spent most of the past four years or so, like, podcasting at, like, truly incredible length, you know, and depth about old shit. You know, what is our deal? What do you think our deal is? You know, it would be amazing, but I'm not going to allow it. if we allowed Kerm to answer that. We will ask Kerm that at the end of this.

That's a good idea. More, I guess, more broadly speaking. I think about this a lot. I just feel, we've talked about this, but I feel there is a thing that happened when the Internet swallowed the monoculture and the biggest... personalities and iconic names in music dwindled down.

And so there's just so much more to talk about pre, especially the 90s, because the 90s was just that like apex of like culture and broad spread information. And MTV was at its peak and magazines were at their peak. And it's just a lot of good stuff. And also we are old and, you know, bathing in nostalgia because we don't know what the kids are up to these days. And none of my business, TBQA. This is not to be discounted that we don't know what's going on. Do you think this is fundamentally a healthy or unhealthy thing to do with our time?

You know, are we just living in the past to no purpose? Are we serving a valuable purpose and, you know, re-contextualizing. I did not know this is what you were going to. invite me on to talk about whether my life has purpose, whether my work as meaning, whether I'm wasting all of the hours of my day on Rock's back pages. I don't know, babe. That's not for me to decide. People listen. They seem to like it. We're giving those people something to get through their miserable lives, you know? Wow. Okay. I did just, did this start as a COVID era type thing for you? Because I think it did for me in a like a subconscious kind of way. Like I was just, you know,

it was 2020. I wasn't talking to anybody else. I wasn't going anywhere. It's like this is the time to start a podcast and just. Oh, as a as opposed to now where you're talking to lots of people and going lots of places. Yes. Exactly. You're out on the town. My full social life. now, you know, many visits to target, you know, many picking up food from various restaurants. You know, I'm very social now. But at the time, I do think that I had a subconscious desire to start a podcast, you know, where I could just talk at incredible length about the smashing pumpkins because there wasn't a whole lot going on otherwise at the time. I don't know if for me it had anything to do with COVID personally.

I know I'm supposed to say more right now. I just, yeah, I don't know. Again, this might get cut, but they told us to start podcasts. And we said, okay, how about this one? And in my case, they were literally like, we don't have budget for a host. and I was like, okay, well, I'll host it. And here we are. That will not make the final cut.

But I think you're such a natural as a host that, like, had you considered it before then? Yeah, totally, totally. I, in case the listeners haven't noticed, I like talking. I was talks too much on the report card, just simply every report card, my whole God-given life. and then I didn't know they would invent a job that was perfectly suited for that. I'm grateful that this job exists because what would I do otherwise?

I don't even know. Stand on the street corner and shouting about melancholy and the infinite sadness to anyone who would listen at the target. You have five minutes to talk about melancholy. Machina too.

Can we talk about machina too? Just going to television reunion shows and shouting, Wrap It Up Bitch from the back. Wrap it up, bitch. Marky Moon is too long. That is my favorite, you know, four words of rock criticism ever composed. Robert Criskeau could never.

No, I'm saying that's, you want to talk about compression, you know, brevity. Revity being the soul. Yeah, exactly. Wrap it up, bitch. That's the peak. I'd never consider myself an especially nostalgic person, but I guess this show proves that I was very wrong about that.

Do you think of yourself as especially nostalgic? Like, it's in and everything was better back then sort of way? A million percent. Like I, it's to a fault probably, but I, and I don't think it's a healthy way to look at things, but I can't help but feel that way. I think it's like a mixture of things. I think, for me anyways, the 90s, because of my age, because I was sort of like a preteen and then a teen, there was both like the excitement because that's like the most exciting time. Everything is so new.

Discovery is like nothing's going to hit you as hard as things hit you when you're a teen. And also there was like a real sense of safety because the world was also kind of small to me because I was 13, you know. and we didn't have the internet and everything so scary made everything so big and scary everything we were on like some AOL chat rooms here and there and that probably was also scary in its own way but

yeah it just I don't know man we used to be a proper country was all MTV Buzzbin I miss you babe yeah did you know at the time

you know even as a teenager in the 90s that you'd have this lifelong relationship with this music. Like, you'd always remember David Matthews this way, and you'd have his picture on your desk, you know, a couple decades later. Like, were you, were you nostalgic in advance for this time? No, I don't think so. I mean, how could I have known? But, I mean, isn't that true of every generation?

Like, wouldn't you say, like, boomers still talk that way about the Beatles and the Who or Led Zeppelin or whoever? You know, I think it's just... It just be like that. Who do you think this generation is going to talk about? I don't know, man. Will peep? Yeah, maybe Little Peep was really important and really emotionally resonant.

Lana. Lana. Yeah. They still didn't, Little Peep and Lana didn't hit cultural saturation or haven't the way that the thing, most of the things that we talk about did or have. I don't think. I think you could argue that just by nature of the way it was. Well, I mean, that's sort of the question is like, was Nirvana as big as they were, you know,

just because they were Nirvana or because we were in a captive to MTV, you know, to four or five magazines, you know, to the radio, you know, like we were, did we love Nirvana or were we told to love Nirvana,

you know, and we succeeded. A little column, right, I do think we had more choices. I thought about this the other day, and then again, this is me being an old, yelling at the clouds, but in my own personal mind.

But I was like thinking, I was thinking about Courtney Love and I was thinking about Whole. And I was thinking about young women girls today and how when I was a young girl, that was, she was ostensibly a pop star. Like, it was not hard to access. I didn't have to dig to find hole in Courtney Love, right? Covers of magazines, TV.

And now to find a alternative, for lack of a better word, female icon that isn't sort of, and this is not to disrespect our current pop stars because they're great in their own ways. but they're a little, you know, clean. They're a little polished. They're a little, you know, kind of, the word I'm thinking of is antiseptic. I don't know how to. Like, they're just.

No, I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't, they don't have the, you don't get to see some messiness and some, and I, it made me sad. But I'm sure that they're, they don't feel sad because they're like, what are you even talking about? grandma let's get you to go well yeah i i don't think there's a Courtney love equivalent i don't think

there's a shenade o'connor ripping up the pope's photo on SNL equivalent you know i don't think there's an L7 throwing her tampon in the crowd equivalent and so the question always is like is this is that the specific you know vibe of those people or is there something about the media you know environment, the lack of the internet, you know, that made it all that way. I think it's, it's so much bigger than that. I think, like, there was something to be alternative to. Like, alternative meant something because it, you know, you even, we, I'm sure you've talked about this on many of the episodes, but, like, some of these bands didn't, alternative

radio in the 80s was like Depeche Mode. And then you get to the 90s, they didn't fit anywhere or, capitalism hadn't swallowed alternative culture to the point that now it's the way it is where like you can be ostensibly extremely liberal but also extremely bought into capitalism which the twain did not so much meat back in those the early 90s it was like even hawk didn't think so yeah at least no yeah so i don't know man what do i know i'm just a Just a podcaster. Sure.

Are there bands or albums or even songs that you loved back then, but you hate now or vice versa? Like, do you think this has ultimately been about reassessing your taste or like sort of articulating the taste that you're always going to have? No, I don't find that I revisit things and I'm like, oh, yeah, this sucks. I can't believe I liked it. Sometimes it's the opposite. I'm like, wow, this is way better than I even remembered it being. Like, I didn't even actually give this the credit that a new miserable experience. Fucking banger.

Yes. Well, well executed record. So there's nothing that seemed like a guilty pleasure to you in 1996. But now, like, that's sort of a concept, I think we've sort of left behind, which is probably a good thing in general. I love that. Is this just you're like so much I'm not, I don't want to talk about semi-sonic? Well, it's just sort of the end. I don't know.

I'm all screwed up, dude. It's just, it's a super emo environment here. You know how to go home. Yeah, exactly. You cannot stay here at 60 songs that explain the 90s. To have, to have like a straight formal conversation about the merits of semi-sonic, which are many, which are manifest. Like, it's nothing against the band or the song. But I do think the purpose in picking the song is the aura of, you know, melancholy.

that it casts over this whole operation. Yeah. I'm not dying or anything, but this is, you know, the end of a four-year era. Are you really sad? Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. What are you going to do with yourself when you can't talk about your college roommate, Todd? Todd was high school,

but I take your meaning. How you experienced Stone Temple pilots in the car, even though you refuse to do an episode about them and so many people are big mad, big mad about that. I do think you have inspired some people to be madder. I do think you rallied

the STP troops there. And I appreciate that, you know, on Stone Temple Pilots' behalf. It's a valid point. Yeah, I can't wait till this comes out and they're like, semi-sonic is the last. I think plenty of people that I've seen on the internet

predicted that this would happen. Honestly, it would have, you know, I would have been delighted to come up with something that was totally out of left field. And we considered plenty of those possibilities. But I do think that this was ultimately just too good to pass up. And so we are owning the corniness. Do you feel like you covered it all? I think we got close enough, but no. You know, I, it's the mighty, mighty boss tones float to mind. You know, not that you never did. Okay. Never had to knock on wood? But I know someone who has? They were briefly, I would imagine they were briefly in the no doubt conversation, which was several years ago now. So maybe they weren't, but I hope they were.

There was never a ska-centric episode. Like Ricky Martin, my bloody Valentine. You know, we easily came up with not 30, but like 10 to. 15 episodes that we certainly could have. Stone Temple Pilots, obviously. You know, there's, I don't think there's any way to avoid leaving something

on the table. And so I think that we got close enough, but no, of course. Of course, you know, I'll walk around tomorrow, you know, thinking about like, whatever, like, the morphine episode or the jewel episode or the gang star

episode. See? This is, this is, this is what it's like. Um, no, I'm very sorry. I don't mean to add to that anxiety. As my dear friend, Dana's mother always used to say, may she rest in peace. You have to leave some stones unturned. There we go. There we go. You have to leave some stone gossards unturned. But you didn't. You, you turned over the stone gossard. We did do pro jams. We didn't do stones solo ventures, you know. First of all, his, first of all, put some respect on his band, Brad. Brad. Yes. The algorithm keeps feeding me Brad. I was listening to morphine recently, and they kept feeding me Brad. You might like Brad. Yeah, I don't know. You've dragged me into your melancholy because now I'm like, have I wasted in my life?

And now I'm like fucking J. Alfred Prufrock over here with my pant hem, you know, dragging on the ocean. Should I eat a peach? Okay. Yeah, that's for my life. literary folks out there. You know what I'm talking about. Of course.

Did closing time make any impression on you at all? Yeah, I love that song. It's so good. Are you kidding? I have a two ears and a heart. It's a fantastic song. Did you? I'm sorry.

I'm sure you covered all of this. But, like, of course, I couldn't help myself but to do a cursory Google search because I'm a broken person. And I was like, two things. What's your process. One, that this was. about his child coming out of the womb. Yeah, yes.

Didn't want a dick, me, born prematurely, yeah, was in the hospital for almost a year. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here in the womb? Yeah. This, yeah, yeah. And then the drama coming out years later

to be like, yeah, they paid a bunch of money to make this. And me being like, why would you say that to people out? You didn't read this that the drummer was like, yeah, I was all payola, baby. I think they paid like $800,000 to get this to become a radio hit. That's money well spent, first of all, $800,000 is a lot of, who got that money?

Like, just DJs? No, yeah, radio is a clear channel, I'm assuming. I mean, this is the lawyers are going to come in. This is all hearsay and speculation. I just want you guys know. We're going to be nuked from Sweden right now. Yeah. But then there's all this.

like the, I guess there was, I'm sorry, I just, this stuff just jumps out of me because I'm like, was this a sciop? Because the label lady apparently told Dan Wilson like, are you ready? It's going to be a huge hit. And he was like, I don't believe you. And maybe she knew because of the Paola. And then in the article, it just in one line mentions that she later died in a motorcycle dirt biking accident. A dirt biking accident. That's right. Okay. What are the dots you're attempting to connect here? I don't know. My brain is. fucking broken. My brain is broken. The red string situation that's going on. And I think it's like, I don't have time to do this for Semi-Sonic. I have other shit to do. No, I, you're very busy. I have a whole season of red stringing to do. I can't be like figuring out Semi-Sonics just how closing time became a smash hit.

Right. Because that's, it's naive to think that that's not true for any hit song to a certain extent. There is a certain sort of organic. you know, quality that closing time has, where you're like, of course it was a hit, right? But if it is that just incepted, you know, just did we just arrive at that thanks to all the pay? Maybe it was like the people that were like, we have to kill Grunge Dead once and for all. There we go.

And this is the song to do it. Just somebody's, do, do, do do, do, do, do, you know, there was. They're like, and now counting crows. people ask me sometimes like what is the 90s song of the 90s it's life is a highway by Tom Cockcray I knew it

the end period I knew Tom was going to come back it's Garth Brooks babe this is this is the thing this is the wrongness of nostalgia is that we've absolutely rewritten history to act like these were like so the prevalent things of the early 90s, but it was really just Garth Brooks in life as a highway

for five years. It's only in retrospect that we've, I mean, it's not sure. Obviously, there were some big hits, but there was a lot of Garth Brooks. You go back to those billboard charts every year. It's just Garth Brooks, Garth Brooks, Garth Brooks, Garth Brooks. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you think he just screwed himself by not being on Spotify? I'm sure he's doing very well for him. self-finish. Rich, babe. He is fine. And I'm sure he's leaving some money on the table, but, like, you know,

Chris Gaines, he's like, how rich do I need to be, babe? Chris Gaines is a real one. He does not need. Yes. That is the haircut. That is the wig of a very rich man. It's a lace front.

It's a beautiful lace front. Do you feel like you were happier and more carefree in the 90s, and that's why you like talking about it? That's a good question, and that's why I go back to the COVID, right? Where just in the midst of all this chaos, like I subconsciously was like,

let's the 90s, I'm going back to the 90s. Because I was a teenager. I was an angsty teenager, you know? And I was sad about like bullshit, 95% of the time, but I was, as I recall, like pretty sad a lot of the time. But I just assume now that that's just what a teenager is and what a teenager does. And the reason that music means so much to you as a teenager is because the music, you know, both magnifies, you know, your sadness but also like soothes you at the same time.

Yeah, it's a self. And you're supposed to be miserable as a teenager. You have no perspective and your hormones are raging. And also people don't take you seriously. And you are a little tiny adult, but everyone treats you like a little child. They don't let you make decisions. It's awful. You have to go to business school.

Okay, well, I wasn't in my 20s by then. But yeah, sure, my adult teenage time was also very, very difficult. Not that different. I mean, my Sepulterra T-shirt at the business at the U.S.E. Business School. Did you ever see a second Sepuletura T-shirt in that environment? I don't think I saw a T-shirt. t-shirt. People were wearing like button downs.

Like, I was a real I'm not like other business school students. You know? Does it surprise you at all that the Semi-Sonic guy is now like this Adele Whisperer, you know, Taylor Swift's level

superstar songwriter and producer? Like, does closing time strike you as the work of like a future you know, Grammy winning you know, super producer? It is so catchy, but like on the strength of that song alone, no, but it just shows you that like, you know, some people have gumption and ambition and a wide range of talents. Yes. And I'm glad that he was able to apply.

Like, you can't picture like Eddie Vedder writing songs for other people per se. Maybe he has. I don't know. Too much integrity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just like some people are only. able to, like, write in their own voice, you know? And that is...

Right, right. Not to say that's more authentic or less authentic. I don't want to be the authenticity police, but... Sure. You know, and then some people are just know how to write a fucking snappy good song. And it doesn't matter who it's for. Yeah, because I was going to ask, like, I was listening to some of these songs that he's co-written or co-produced, and I was trying to decide if I hear him at all.

You mean? The weekends... Starboy That one I don't hear him at all. That one took me the fuck out. I was like what? Yeah, that's, I would like to know specifically what Dan contributed

to that process. Abel was like, get that closing time, man, on the horn. I need a little bit of his special sauce. I know who I want to take me home. Take me home. Take me home.

Because like the Adele songs, it's someone like you, right? Like that's his big Adele song. And like that melody I can see as him having a hand in it. Like then you have to get into what he actually did. But I just, I think you're right that some people have a very specific sort of signature. And there's some people, that's what people I say about Jack Antonoff, right? Is that it's less about what he brings to it, that he's just so copacetic with everybody and so encouraging, you know,

and just the environment that you fall. is what makes the song great, and it's not about your personal greatness. You know, it's not about hearing the semi-sonic guy and the song he worked on. It's that the environment he creates is so superior that it allows Adele, etc. to be their best selves. He must be really rich. Speaking of Garth Brooks. It's true.

It's true. He's not Chris Gaines, rich, probably. But, yes. okay. Okay, yes. I think we can for sure say he's doing okay. Rob. Yeah. What do you think is the most 90s-ass song of the 90s? My standard answer to this is how bizarre, which I do think I'm Why? OMD? I don't know. I don't know. But the randomness, it has to be random. The randomness is part of the appeal. When did tub thumping come out? Does you? Did you do tub thumping?

I did tub thumping. I listened to a great deal of chambalwamba to do tub something. Love that. Every time it comes on in my hit workout class, I make sure to tell everyone that this was made by anarcho punks who donated all the money. Do you tell them that while you and they are both exercising furiously? Yes. What a delight I am in class, just live fans playing everywhere I go. are anarchists.

Against everyone's will. Nobody asked. They're like, okay, cool. Can you hand me that kettle, though? Life is a highway is a good

over 90s, most 90s song. Do you think are, well, okay, not to like, do real podcast journals on here,

but like, other whole interesting thing about the 90s is how much it changed. like every three years and it has like seven different phases of wildly different music. Like the fact that you went from life as a highway to smells like teen spirit to the counting crows to corn in one decade and then backstreet boys and it all.

Closing time somewhere in there. Closing time blues travel. You know, there's a lot. It was a, you know, just in rock, guitar rock music jumped around quite a bit. yeah real cycling of the they went through all of it so that we couldn't have anymore after that they were like now we're done good luck to you guys enjoy whatever that's enough guitar rock for everybody i think that's enough guitar rock um rob do you feel that like myself your brain is broken now and that you could only conceive of and think about things now through the lens of how you've

digested songs that explain the 90s? I do think it has affected the way that I listen to music, yes. Whether that's a positive or a negative thing is debatable. Do you listen to a lot of new music? Not as much as I used to two or three years ago. I feel far less. in touch, you know, than I did back then. Now that my job isn't necessarily to like review the new Drake record at midnight,

et cetera. Now that I don't, now that I don't have to do it, inevitably that leads to not doing it. Let me ask you, who do you think, what do you think there's artists now that are really honoring and carrying forth the mantle of the 90s in a really beautiful way? when I think like Olivia Rodriguez immediately comes up like some of it is superficial right you know but like the Avrilavine of it all that's obviously like very early 2000s. The Varucah salt of it all. Yes. The Courtney love of it all. You know, as it's as close as you can get. Aesthetically at least, yeah. Yeah. But other than that, you know, it embarrasses me when I'm drawn to a new band and they're very obvious. like 90s like wet leg for example you know like there's there's a feeling of like of course

I'm gonna like this like it's the breeders yeah right like it feels very obvious to me personally what drew me to this in the first place like I don't want to be the person who can only respond to a band now if they sound like hum or whatever but like inevitably yeah didn't do hum either never yeah I can't believe you didn't do she missed the train to Mars she's out back counting sorrows is a massive song um I think that's always been true though I don't you don't think a bunch of people were like this sounds like Led Zeppelin about Pearl Jam you know I like this it reminds me of Led Zeppelin for sure I think it's always been that way right okay I don't feel so about that I'm giving I'm trying to give you a

break. I appreciate that. Gretta Van Fleet were headlining the Guy Fiery Festival here in Columbus that got canceled like two weeks ago because nobody bought tickets for it. It was like Greta Van Fleet, Brett Michaels of poison, you know, and a handful of other not very inspiring people. It's a dark thing that you brought up to the last episode of your podcast. It's all darkness. Sully. It's a sully. It's a last episode. episode. Greta Van Fleet's canceled Guy Fierry event. Real baby shoes never worn type story. It's really sad. Flavor Town shut down. That's the way. That's the way it all ends.

We could have done better. Rob, we could have honored. We could have honored this podcast. I think we did honor it. I think I think awkward melancholy is the only way that we could possibly go out if we're trying to do this right. You know what I mean? And me saying at least six different times. I can't believe you didn't do that song. That's yes. That's really why I thought you. Bush, babe, glycerin. I just simply cannot believe. Yeah. I think we've established that I have a weird, you know, phase two grunge bias, you know, that I will spend the next several months, you know, examining. A great period of self

examination. You know wah-ha? Waha, it was good. I did not do Waha either. You yelled at me about that already. Okay. That's okay. I'll do another 60 songs

that explain the 90s Yossi's version. Please, please do. Please do. I will do the better than as for a Bansplain episode if you'll have me if that's Oh yeah, I'm sure that the ringer bosses

will be thrilled about that particular smash hit of an episode. Really be rooting for me to do it. Sincerely, thank you so much for everything. It has been wonderful to talk to you about anything and nothing always. And so I am very grateful to you for being here and for just being here in general. Rob, thank you so much for being my comrade and support system in the podcast challenges. Couldn't have done it without you. Likewise.

Thank you, Yasi. thanks very much to our guest this week, the indomitable Yossi Salick. Thanks as always to our producers, Justin Sales and Jonathan Kermah. Thanks to Chloe Clark for additional production help. And thanks, as always, to you for listening. And now I must insist you go listen to Closing Time

by Semi-Sonic. We'll see you soon.