Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - The Fiddler And The Ski Mall

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

Conan speaks with Jesse at the World Expo in Dubai about playing rock violin and which musical act Conan would play lead guitar for if given the opportunity. Wanna get a chance to talk to Conan? Submit here: TeamCoco.com/CallConan

Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit teamcoco.com slash call Conan. Okay, let's get started. Hey there, Jesse, meet Conan and Sona. Hey. Hello, Jesse. How's it going?

Nice to meet you. Jesse, tell me, where are you right now? I was always told is that you're someplace very far away. Where are you? That's true. I mean, it's far away from you. Not too far from me. I'm in a hotel in...

That was a... You wise... You know what? This call is over. This... Jesse. Jesse, I'm sorry. Are you some kind of philosopher?

I know. That was amazing. I'm questioning all of my decisions in life now. No, seriously, where are you? I do that daily. Where are you, Jesse? I'm in Dubai. I'm in Dubai.

I'm in a hotel in Dubai. Wow. Are you originally from Dubai? You'd think so, but no, I'm not. I'm from Canada originally. Oh, okay. So you grew up in Canada, and then what made you decide to go to Dubai? I'm actually here playing at the World Expo.

So World Expo 2020 was supposed to happen in 2020, and it got delayed to this year. And so I'm here playing at the World's Fair. And I've been here since the end of August, and I'll be here until April. Are they still calling it World Expo 2020? Or do they have the... Yeah. Really? Yeah, it's Expo 2020 Dubai.

No, you've got to call it 2022. You can't... Or 2021. You can't say 2020. That's not right. That's what it is on the sign. Oh, that's... They just...

Because they were too cheap to change one sign. They already had to print it. They didn't want to reprint the sign. I get it. You know what I would do? If I wanted to commit a crime, I would do it in front of a... I would pose in front of a sign that says World Expo 2020, but commit the crime that day. You see?

So, Dubai is no... Wait, that doesn't make sense. Yeah, I don't... No. That makes... Oh my God, that makes no... It's going down a road. Oh my God, that makes...

I apologize. I get confused because of the jet lag of talking to someone who's as far away as you are. That's right. That made no sense. That's how jet lag works. Yeah. Posing in front of a sign that says 2020. What was I thinking?

I don't know. That's no kind of scam at all. That's terrible. The opposite of a mastermind criminal. You know what? At that point, you just become a tourist. What an idiot. I'm so ashamed.

I really thought I was onto something. There's a way to use the signage of World Expo 2020 to commit some kind of scam, and I just don't have the intelligence to think of it right now, but I promise you... It's just standing in front of it and then taking it and like posting it on Instagram. And maybe that's the scam. It's just getting likes. No, people think... It really has had to have been that you committed the crime in 2020 and then took the picture

recently and you're like, it wasn't me because I was there a full year in front of that picture. Yes. Thank you. That's what it is. Thank you. I just had it backwards. Thank you, Matt. You're the much better...

What? No. I'm confused about... Oh, okay. Just let it go. Yeah, tell me where. Jesse, get us out of this. So, Jesse...

Why are you trying to leave at the beginning? Jesse, you're in a hotel room in Dubai and what you said you're performing at the Expo. What do you do? I'm a violinist. Oh, wow. I'm a violinist now. And the electric violin and yeah, so I'm performing here with a bunch of other musicians from all over the world.

Well, tell me about that. I'm kind of, first of all, I'm very impressed. That's a cool instrument. I think when I was in public school, they let me... They tried to teach us all in class. They gave us really cheap violins and tried to teach us the violin for like a month. See, I've been that teacher and it's awful. It was awful.

I think we just all hit each other with our violins and then they took them away so that kids could use them again the next year to use them as weapons. What kind of music do you like to play? Pretty much everything. I mean, I was a classical violinist growing up and then I also play fiddle and Celtic and country music and gotten into jazz and then I do everything all the way to playing rock and electronic dance. Wait, you can play rock music on the rock music on the violin.

What kind of rock are we talking at, Eddie VanVillen? Yeah, yeah. Or what? Pretty much anything. Led Zeppelin. They can play some Led Zeppelin on the violin. Christopher Kittis. In my set here, I do Guns N' Roses.

Can we hear that, please? Do you have one? Is there any way we can hear it? This is fantastic. This would be a violin you've never seen before. But this is... Oh my God, it's a Flying V violin. Yeah, it's the cool Flying V guitar, but it's a violin.

That's so cool. Yeah. Look at that. It goes over his shoulder between the Vs. What? It actually makes more sense as a violin because the V makes a crook that goes into your neck. That's fantastic. That's right.

Yeah, it was invented... Do you know the Trans-Siberian Orchestra? They always have that big Christmas... Yes, I've heard them before. Yeah, they're great. So the guy who was the original electric violinist of that group invented this violin. Wow. It's like one half of a shoulder pad that a Klingon would wear.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I should get one on the other side. Yeah. I can do the double thing. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. I want to hear something.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, the way... It can sound pretty much like kind of like a normal violin, right? Wow. Right? That's cool. Right?

Yeah, I think you can do all kinds of great stuff with it as well. Wow. That's so cool. Oh my God. What are you doing? That's fantastic. It's fretted like a guitar. This is fretted.

Yeah, yeah, this is a fretted one too. So basically, you're not a violinist, you're a guitarist who's pretending he's a violinist. You're a shoulder guitarist. Yeah. I'm a shoulder guitarist. You have no idea how many people say that on my videos. Do you play any classics? Do you play any classic solos?

In hard rock style? Yeah. Hard rock style. Yeah. In hard rock style. So I mean, I told you, we do like... Oh. Oh, wow.

And you can do like Jimmy Hennessey stuff. Oh, sorry. Oh, no, no. I'll do some axle if you do your part. Go ahead. All right, ready? Here we go. Wow, that's perfect.

All I heard in there was mammary. It's like Billy Gibbs doing Axel Rose. Yeah, I always thought the lyric was... Or Berry Gibbs. I'm having a problem with my gland. It's my mammary. I thought that's what it was. That's right.

I have a problem with my gland. It's my mammary. Wow, you sound amazing. You sound really... Thank you. You sound fantastic, Jesse. Yeah. Thank you very much.

That is very, very good. You are a very talented fellow and you're there in Dubai and you're representing Canada in the 2020, even though it's now 2022, you're representing Canada in the 2020... This all seems made up. In the 2020, one, two... Are you sure you're not setting up in alibi for a crime? Listen, I can't talk about that on this podcast. Hey, how do you like Dubai?

I was there once very briefly. I was doing some USO performance and we stopped off in Dubai and it's another world completely. It's crazy, eh? Yeah, it's a really, really interesting city. I mean, I luckily have had some time to be able to get out and see the city and my mom came and visited, so I got to take a look around, which is kind of cool. But it's a wild city. Everything is like, if you think you've seen something, Dubai has a bigger version of it,

a more extravagant version of it. Of Conan? We have the Indian Tower in Canada and yeah, there's a huge statue of you in the middle of Dubai. Yeah, there's a 35-foot animatronic Conan in Dubai. That's right. It's kind of the main exhibit. It's constantly attacking the city and then being shut down.

Isn't there a place, maybe I'm thinking of someplace else, but I remember, I think there's a place where they create snow indoors in Dubai. Yeah, the mall has a ski hill in it. Yes. Oh my God. It's a hilarious sentence to say. The mall has a ski hill. That's a ski resort with a mall.

Has an aquarium and an ice rink and all this great stuff and it's wild. There's a dinosaur in the mall, like a dinosaur skeleton in the mall and it's insane. I've seen people going in and getting on skis and skiing in a mall in Dubai and that's when you think somewhere mankind is running out the clock. If there is a higher power, it's saying, all right, that's enough. This species can do. We've seen what this species can do. Let's start it again.

Let's reshuffle the board and start again. Ding, not what I had in mind. I gave you guys giant brains and articulated thumbs so you could do interesting things and this is what you came up with. We're starting again. You frayed out me, humankind. That is so cool. Well, it's very nice talking to you.

You seem like a, well, you're obviously very talented. You're also a very nice, amiable chap, Jesse. What can I do? Nice talking to you. Do you have a question for me? Is there anything I can do for you? Yeah, it's actually really cool. I've been a massive fan of the podcast for a long time so it's also very cool to see

Matt and Zona do and stuff. It's really cool. But yeah, I know that you play the guitar. Well, Matt clearly does. He's got about 40 of them on the wall. All decals. I have. All those are stickers.

I'll show you what I see that I got. That's just a smidgen of, I don't know if you can see that, but David's back there sleeping. Good job, David. You're killing it. But I have a few of my guitars right here. Yeah. A few axes. Nice.

So my question would be if you had, now this isn't an insult, but it's going to come across as one. So if I had any talent at all, I was going to say if you had limitless talent, but I guess that's implied. But no, if you had absolutely limitless talent to play lead guitar for any artist, band, like solo artist, dead or alive from all time, who would that person or who would that band be? So like you're Angus Young or you're going out there being and leading the Jimi Hendrix

experience, which would just be the, I guess, the Conan O'Brien experience or whatever it would be. Same costume. It's the same. You know what? I would. Oh yeah. And you have to wear the same clothes that they wear.

Really? Wait a minute. Yeah. It's part of it. I can't be Angus Young and not dress like the school outfit, right? I would do this. And this, this, this is going to, this is not the answer people are expecting, but. This is good.

I don't think I've ever heard you think this much about a question on the park. Yeah. I'm not really a thoughtful person. I would, let's see, what I would do is I would play, I would want to play in like the Johnny Burnett trio, which is a rockabilly band or the, or Jean Vincent's and the bluecaps. I would want to play, I would want to play in one of those early rockabilly bands and I would love to have the ability to play like that. Just really play those amazing hardcore rockabilly riffs.

Nice. You know, I'm, I think as a hack guitarist go, I'm, I can play decent rhythm. I think I have good rhythm and, but, and when I grab a solo, it's with great enthusiasm. But the musically unenclined or fooled and think, wow, you're really good, but the musically unenclined would say, huh, he's got more balls than brains. Remember, this is with limitless ability. So this is like your solo and this rockabilly group is, yeah, yeah. I would say I would want to be, you know, I want to, I want to play like a train kept

a rolling with Johnny Burnett and, and I would love to be able to play sort of at that level and get that sound. I think that would be, I think that would be my dream. That's a good. That's a valid choice. Yeah. I think so. Yeah.

That's good. Yeah. And I'd have the hair all piled up and. Like you do right now. I know. I was like, how would that be any different than what you normally do? Well, that's how I, that's how the hair started. Really, when you think about it.

Yeah. That's what I would do. And so I'm, I'm, I'm happy with my choice. That's a good question. That's a good choice. That's really good. Well, listen, I, I know that you have an appointment to go skiing now in Dubai, in Dubai at the mall here, you're going to get an orange Julius and then you're going to

go skiing. Exactly. I mean, I got, I, I'm from Canada and I'm, I'm surrounded by sand in December right now. That's fantastic. Quite the shock. So I mean, I got to go there to at least get that Canadian. Yeah.

Get that. Get that Canadian. Yeah, exactly. Tim Hortons there. Yeah. Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons are everywhere now. Yeah.

They really are everywhere. They're not here yet. They're not here. In Southern California. They're good. There are Tim Hortons in Boston. You know, I see that when I first went to Canada to do a week of shows, there were Tim Hortons everywhere and I hadn't seen them before.

And I knew whenever I did any press in, in Toronto in like 2004 to just keep mentioning Tim Hortons and I did. And every time people were like, I love this Conan. He likes his Tim Hortons. So it changes all the time though, right? It's always in different places. It's all different. It's different now.

They don't have the coffee that we have in Canada that makes it Tim Hortons. They don't have it here. It's all espresso. Yeah. So it's crazy. Yeah. You're bitching. You have the ability to go skiing in a mall.

You can get your ears pierced and then hit the slopes and shred as you play violin and you're complaining about what Dubai doesn't have. Can we get you to go to that ski slope and play that violin just going down the hill on some skis? That would be amazing. It looks like I'm going to have to. I have to warn you. I can't ski.

So it's going to be me playing the violin. Well, that's even better. Because that's going to be you playing the violin. Sweet child of mine. And then falling and hurting yourself badly. And that's a good video. Yeah. That's a video that goes viral.

It's actually probably will be my best video I've ever posted to be, it's like a sad thing, but that would probably be the most views I've ever gotten. Me just eating it on the hill. Well, thank you very much for calling in. It's cool to have such a talented fan and I hope you have a great time at the horribly named 2020 Expo, World Expo, which is now two years out of date. And yeah, I hope our paths cross soon, Jesse. Thanks.

Same here. It was really nice to meet you guys. All right. Get some sleep. It's probably one in the morning where you are. Two. It is one in the morning. Good guess.

All right. I'll talk to you later. Thanks, Jesse. Awesome. Bye, guys. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

Thank you. Thank you.