Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 156: Has Music Become Too Disposable? | Ear Biscuits Ep. 156
Episode Date: August 13, 2018Rhett and Link look back on the origin of their love of analog music, how streaming services have changed their listening habits, and Link's experience as a fly on the wall as his cousin recorded his... album on this week's episode of Ear Biscuits. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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This, this, this, this is Mythical.
Today's episode is brought to you
by our new presenting sponsor, Vitamin Water.
Woo woo!
Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Link.
And I'm Rhett.
This week at the round table of dim lighting,
we're going to be exploring the question,
has music become too disposable?
Yeah, I mean with the, I think there's gonna be
some looking backwards to our experience with music,
listening to music, and how, I mean that-
What else, eating music?
Well, I still listen to it,
but I do it so differently than I used to.
I mean, it streams now.
And streaming has changed everything in terms of,
even how you view music and is it devalued in my own mind
because of how readily available it is via streaming?
Or is it not?
Or is it not?
And what have we gained?
What have we lost?
So maybe we'll even look to the future.
Maybe we'll even look to the past.
Well I already said we're gonna.
Yeah, I'm just trying to make it dramatic.
Look to the present and the past.
Looking forward to that discussion.
We do wanna let you know that starting with
next week's episode of Ear Biscuits,
the video version is going to be available on Sunday
on the Good Mythical Morning channel, not Saturday,
because what do we got on Saturday now?
Let's talk about that.
Yes, it's a shoe new show.
It's a shoe new show called Let's Talk About That.
No, we've done the shoe thing before.
We're not doing it again right now, at least.
Nope.
So the new show, the new Saturday show,
let's talk about that on Saturdays,
followed by the all new video version
of Ear Biscuits on Sundays.
There's a video, there's a freaking video
every day on the channel.
There is.
But right now we're coming into your ear holes.
Maybe your eye holes too.
I mean, it's your prerogative.
But before we get into the whole music thing,
it's been a while but I haven't had an opportunity
to give you or you, ear biscuetteer,
just the download of my experience
at hanging out with my friend Alicia Keys
while my cousin recorded his album and stayed at my home.
And then the album was recorded
at a very rich man's private recording facility
and it was just, it was a nutso experience.
Now do you have, I mean,
are you at liberty to speak of this?
I didn't, I knew that, well, there were people
who showed up at this recording studio
and they had to sign NDAs, which stands for
not this a-hole.
Now I didn't, that's not what it stands for?
It stands for non-disclosure agreement.
Now, I, now do you ask, did I sign an NDA?
The answer is not this a-hole!
Yeah, you know what?
That way you ended up telling that joke was great.
Actually, you know what, in some weird way,
I think that setting it up,
It wasn't a planned joke.
And then doing it as a throwback was even better.
When I play jokes, it doesn't usually go well.
Right, right, right, right.
I've observed that.
Hey, screw you, man.
No, no, no, I'm just saying I was agreeing with you.
Yeah, yeah, don't!
Not this a-hole!
Would never say that.
So yeah, I'm free to talk about this.
There's not any problems here.
You're not giving any secrets.
My boy Britton, my cousin, Britton Buchanan,
follow him on the stuff.
Again, I'm living vicariously through,
in the wake of coming in second on The Voice
where Alicia Keys was his coach,
she really believes, as do I,
and many tasteful purveyors of musical talent,
that he's got what it takes, man.
He's a songwriter.
He had a whole bevy of songs,
and then he met with Alicia in New York,
and they went through and they picked out the ones
they were gonna do for his album and it's like a very
quick and dirty thing where it's like over this weekend
that I'm referring to, he went into the studio.
Can I just say before you explain the story.
To record his album.
You know, I told you this while you were gone.
Yeah. And Britton was in town.
Britton came and had dinner with my family.
And just a side note, because I also haven't said this,
the reason Britton came into town,
he was gonna hang out with us for the week.
And that's the weekend that,
that's the week that my papa passed away
and I went home for the funeral.
And I just wanna say, because I haven't said it on here,
thank you all so much for your outpouring of love
and support and encouragement
that you've been posting everywhere
ever since we posted that,
the dealing with imminent loss episode of Ear Biscuits.
So I just wanted to say thank you for that.
And it was very much a sense of closure
going back home for the funeral.
But byproduct was he had-
While he was here, you were gone.
Yeah, he was gone.
I was gone for most of it. Except the weekend.
So he was kind of house sitting for me
and waiting to record.
I got back just in time to have the experience
that I'll tell you about.
And so we had him over for dinner
and I had my sister-in-law and nieces.
Thank you for that, by the way.
And I was glad to, you know, but it was mostly like,
okay, this guy is, he's in Los Angeles,
he doesn't know anybody, he's Link's cousin,
he's, you know, a mile away from my house,
I should have a Mover for Dinner.
You had a deep sense of obligation.
But let me tell you a little something,
which I already told you this.
I mean, I texted you and Christy this.
Yeah, I think you just texted her actually.
No.
And she told me, okay.
You weren't very responsive while you were traveling,
which is okay.
I mean, I'm not gonna hold it against you.
What did you say though?
I said that Britton is our new favorite person.
I mean like, he is an incredible guy.
He's super cool, isn't he?
I mean, it's not just that he's cool, I mean.
He's genuine.
He's actually not cool in the right way
that you shouldn't be cool.
He's not too cool for school.
It's not.
18 years old.
It's the fact that he's 18 years old and he's so,
first of all, he's woke.
He's woke.
I don't like to use the word,
but he's incredibly woke, he's incredibly smart.
He's incredibly observant.
I mean, I remember.
You made some false assumptions,
being that he's from this podunk, he's from Sanford.
No, I didn't make any assumptions at all.
I just came in.
I can say podunk because my dad lives there.
I came in with no expectations at all,
but I definitely did not come in expecting him to be,
because I remember being 18 years old.
I remember the way that I thought about things
at 18 years old.
Or lack of thought about things.
And the way that I engaged with other adults
who are not 18 years old.
Right.
And this guy is, he's something special.
Now, set aside.
Well I don't think he considers you an adult.
Let's just put that on the table.
Set aside the fact that he is incredibly talented,
incredible voice, great songwriter,
all those things which are true and you'll get into that.
He's a really good, good guy.
In fact, so he talked about so many things.
He stayed over into our house
until it was like 11.30 at night night and then he leaves and the first thing
that my oldest son, Locke, says is like,
and this is a 14 year old, 14 year olds don't issue
these kinds of things.
Yeah.
He walks out the door, the door closes and he's like,
that is a great guy.
Really?
He really is.
And he is, he's just like a genuinely great guy.
He should've won.
I mean, how did all the greatness
get on that side of the family?
That is also my side of the family.
So if you're trying to cut on me,
it actually became a compliment.
So thank you.
No, that part of the family tree, just that branch.
I mean, it was very concentrated.
Did any of the greatness make it to my branch?
He's a great guy. Not, okay, I won't's very concentrated. Did any of the greats make it to my branch? He's a great guy.
Not, okay I won't do that again.
Because he didn't win, he's got a little bit more freedom
to then cut this album, work with Alicia on it.
And I was like, oh I wanna get to meet,
of course I wanna go with you to this studio.
I wanna see what it's like. I love watching music documentaries. I wanna get to meet, of course I wanna go with you to this studio. I wanna see what it's like.
I love watching music documentaries.
I love talking about the type of music stuff
we're gonna talk about today.
I just love being on a fly on the wall in that world.
That's why those documentaries are so much fun
for me to watch.
But being there in a recording studio environment
for the first time that was like legit was amazing.
And it turns out that this was like,
everyone there was in awe of this place
that we ended up going.
And I'm like, at some point, I'll get to meet Alicia,
which will be freaking awesome.
Right.
Because she seems like an amazing person.
Right.
And Britton said that she was.
It was, and let me, I gotta read about him here
a little bit to get this stuff straight,
but they somehow worked it out to get an invitation
to record his album at Paul Allen's house.
Paul Allen is the co-founder of Microsoft
along with Bill Gates.
He has a little bit of money.
According to his Wiki,
he is the 43rd richest person in the world.
Oh, only 43rd?
Net worth 25 billion.
He also owns the 14th biggest yacht on the planet.
How big is that?
Oh, it's 95 feet.
414 feet.
It's called Octopus.
Okay, my yacht knowledge is incredibly lacking.
As of 2013, it is the 14th
in the list of motor yachts by length.
Good gracious.
It is equipped with two helicopters, a submarine,
a swimming pool, a music studio.
A spare helicopter?
It has a spare helicopter.
And a basketball court.
He's got a helicopter to get to the helicopter.
That's how big the yacht is.
400 feet, man.
He's gotta take a helicopter from one end of the yacht
to the other end to get on the other helicopter
because that gas is burned out
to then go to like an island or something.
Yeah, right.
I will say that I did not meet this man.
He was not there.
Of course he wasn't.
But there were keepers of the place.
Their full-time jobs were just to keep the place.
The first one was a security guard who grilled me
before I was allowed through the gate.
Okay.
And I get inside and I'm a little self-conscious
because I just feel like a hanger-on.
Well. You know, it's like,
oh there's an artist and there's like,
That's kind of what you were.
His cousin.
I'm the cousin slash chauffeur slash guy whose house
he's staying at.
Everybody brings their cousin to the recording sesh.
It's my cousin.
By the way, the octopus yacht was not parked outside
of his mansion, which the recording studio
was this huge building and then up the hill from it
was the rest of his mansion, like multiple buildings.
And it was Rock Hudson's mansion.
Oh.
So Marilyn Monroe swimming around in Rock Hudson's pool,
there's probably pictures of that everywhere.
At least that's what Chris, the keeper of the studio,
told me.
I mean, you go outside of the studio and it's like,
it looks like a resort, but it's just this private home.
And I look around the corner, I'm like snooping around
because I'm not doing anything.
Yeah, you're not in any danger.
And I look up the hill at the mansion
and then lo and behold, there's a big thing
coming down the hill, there's like a, what's a,
it's on a track and it's like a, I wanna say.
A gondola?
It's like a gondola except it's on a track.
A tracked gondola.
It's like an elevator, a huge train elevator
that connects the studio to his house.
That's freaking crazy, man.
So I-
This is what happens when you-
The studio-
Are looking for ways to spend money.
The studio itself is over 10 years old.
It all looks brand new and it's a three story building
that the whole facade overlooking Beverly Hills
is just glass walls.
And the only, you can find footage of it
by searching for U2's live performance
of Songs of Innocence, I think their latest album.
If you search that on YouTube,
there's some live performances
that they recorded in this studio.
They recorded a lot of that album there.
There was, you go into the booth,
or you go into the engineer console,
whatever that thing's called,
and there's a big signed thing
that has everybody from U2 signed it.
He's got memorabilia hanging everywhere
because Paul Allen's a huge rock and roll nut.
He's like a big Jimi Hendrix fan.
He owns, he's got a warehouse,
Britton told me that they told him,
a warehouse full of like all the guitars he's collected.
If you can name like a really famous guitar,
he probably owns it and just has it in a warehouse,
including the guitar that Jimi Hendrix set on fire,
you know, on stage.
So anyway, I go in, this place is just,
it's state of the art amazing
because he just threw so much money at this thing.
And then all these vintage guitars
they're just bringing out for the band to play
that he just has there.
I'm really self conscious.
I meet the first guy, he comes around, he says,
hey, how are you today? I'm like, I'm really self-conscious. I meet the first guy, he comes around, he says, "'Hey, how are you today?'
I'm like, "'I'm great,' he says.
"'Hey, Grant, nice to meet you.'"
And I'm like, oh, that was just not,
I was like, actually, I just said I'm great.
Heretofore known as Grant.
But my name is Link.
And he's like, "'I'm Chris, nice to meet you.'"
I'm like, oh gosh, I've already screwed up.
Yeah, yeah, you never recover with that guy.
I try to be really quiet and not say a lot.
That's Grant over there.
Just hang out.
Grant's the quiet one, the cousin.
But the place was just crazy.
And then finally, I mean, it was three different days
that I took him there and I was hanging out
over that weekend.
And the second day, Alicia shows up
in the middle of him recording. And the second day, Alicia shows up in the middle of him recording and you know,
she's simultaneously stunning.
Just, I mean, she's beautiful and then she exudes,
she's got this like, she's got more positivity
than anybody I've ever experienced,
the way it just like radiates off of her.
More than me?
Even more than you, Rhett.
That's surprising.
It's great to have an idea of a celebrity
and then meet them and it just delivers.
Right.
She delivered like nine months of pregnancy, bam.
The bar is really high and she just floats right over it.
Yeah, I'm a big fan now, she's great.
Super nice.
She likes Grant.
She, yeah.
She's a big fan of Grant.
I met her husband, Swiss Beats.
Swiss Beats.
Famous rap producer.
Heard the name.
Jay-Z, DMX.
You met Jay-Z and DMX?
No, he produced songs and albums.
I was like whoa, this party got crazy.
Winning Grammys and whatnot.
Super cool guy, we talked about eating hot peppers.
I gave a little plug to our channel.
Oh man.
But then instead of going to our channel,
he pulled up his phone and he started searching.
I thought he, I was like he's gonna go to my channel.
I was like I'm gonna feel awkward,
but I'm secretly gonna be happy that he's watching my stuff.
But instead he pulled up those freaking hot chip videos.
Oh gosh.
Like the ones we didn't do, you know?
Yeah.
I was like, well, I eat a whole hot pepper, Swiss Beets.
Can you please look at my channel?
He's like, but Grant, did you eat a chip?
Because if you did not, I'm not interested.
Met their kids, Egypt and Genesis.
Wow, throwback.
And I'm bored a little bit later,
I'm scrolling on Reddit, you know,
because I'm trying to stay out of the way,
what am I gonna do?
I'm gonna thumb through Reddit.
And Egypt, who's like, I don't know, because I'm trying to stay out of the way, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna thumb through Reddit. And Egypt, who's like, I don't know, nine or 10,
sits down next to me and starts scrolling my phone for me.
Of course he does.
And then he's like, I don't know how,
but he had like a pickpocket.
Next thing I knew he had my phone
and he's watching all of, like a montage of all of the deaths
in Jurassic Park.
Oh.
And I'm like, and I look at him, like as if to say,
how did you get my phone?
I was literally on it and you have it.
And he looked at me and he kinda went back to it
and I was like, I can't see.
And then he like turned it and for the next 15 minutes
we watched all the deaths in Jurassic Park together.
You and Egypt had a moment.
Yeah, and then five hours later
when we leave the recording studio,
Britton and I are driving home and you know,
my phone at like a poignant point
in our debrief conversation connected via Bluetooth
to my speakers in my computer, I mean in my car,
and it just started playing the audio
of all of the deaths from Jurassic Park.
Which is like.
That's a little distracting to drive to.
It was kind of, it was a good button on the end
of an amazing experience of being a fly on the wall
of watching amazing musicians collaborate with Britain
to make this album in record time.
It was the band From The Voice.
They had just listened to the demo versions of the songs
and then they would come in and Brittain would play it live
once and then they would be like, all right, let's go.
It was amazing how great they are.
And the best in the world at that.
They play thousands of songs live
because of being on The Voice for all these years.
And it was super cool to just be sitting in the control booth
just watching them through this panoramic view
of this glassed in thing that's probably
unmatched by any other studio except the one on the same guy's yacht.
So I mean it's, it was just crazy to be along for the ride
and then to cap it off with hearing every person scream
bloody murder death at the hands of raptors
and other dinos.
And so we don't know exactly when this album is coming out,
but sometime in the fall, hopefully.
They recorded all the music tracks,
but then he's gonna go to Alicia's studio in New York
and track his vocals,
because they didn't have time for that.
Maybe I can go up there and-
Lay down some tracks?
No, just watch silently.
Backup vocals by Grant and Alicia.
So that's how I'm enjoying music now.
You know, I mean, my new standard is
I've gotta be in the room with the masters of their craft.
And when you're not doing that,
you're enjoying music digitally, mostly, as I do.
We used to enjoy it analogically.
So we're gonna talk about that.
We're gonna talk all about that,
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Now on with the biscuit.
Okay, so I do think about this question a lot.
What, because the way we listen to music
has changed so much,
how has it changed my relationship with music?
Has it devalued what music is to me?
I mean, do our kids view music differently than we did
because they're starting from a place of having
arguably free in their experience access to any
and everything at any moment they want it,
anywhere they are via phones and streaming.
And I guess I get concerned,
but maybe I should just be nostalgic.
Maybe there's just as good as bad.
I'm just raising all the questions.
Well, let's start, why don't we?
We're just talking about when we were kids,
the experience with the way
that we would experience new music.
And this is gonna be true for many of you who are listening
because many of you like us have kind of lived through
this digital revolution.
And I think sometimes we underestimate
because you forget, you so quickly,
just even, I think about like literally like
two or three years ago.
Yeah.
Before I finally like went and paid for music streaming
because I was still just buying albums.
You know, things change so quickly
but if you go all the way back to the beginning,
like do you remember?
Well, because even before we go back,
yeah, because even just like my, not Apple Music,
but I had this Apple Match subscription,
and that's when you pay,
Apple came out with this thing, and it still exists,
but my subscription was up, and I'm like,
I ain't paying for this, but a year ago, I'm like was up and I'm like, I ain't paying for this.
But a year ago, I'm like, you know me,
I would never pay for anything.
And I actually paid to have Apple match everything
that I already owned in their cloud.
And there was a handful of things
they didn't already have in their cloud that I owned
that as a part of the match process
was uploaded to their servers and kept.
I'm talking like demo recordings and stuff like that,
which is now occurring to me, I may have lost.
But in general, it was the fact that I'm now
like a year later, I'm like,
why would I wanna keep my music in a cloud
when I have access via streaming to all music everywhere.
And again, that was just a year ago
that I was paying for that.
But like you said, if you go all the way back.
Yeah, so we tell the story often about
the first time we bought our own music.
I wanna go back even before that
to the very first time I consumed music
kind of on my own.
And for me, that was with a record player in my bedroom.
A record player? A record player.
So before, because I remember getting my first,
you know, we called it a jam box.
Yeah.
Boom box is usually what they refer to as,
but, and then we would get the ones that had like
two cassette players and the record player on top.
But I'm talking before that it was just a record player.
And my collection of music was just my parents old records.
And it was, I remember some very specific things
like the Four Seasons, like Frankie Valli
and the Four Seasons.
Mm-hmm.
Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley.
I mean, there was only, there was about 12 albums
that they had just, for some reason, ended up in my room.
So I would listen to those same albums over and over again.
And then there was also, what is the smaller record?
Is it 45, is that what it is?
Yeah.
And you have to change the speed for that.
Right.
There was the official song,
like theme song of the Georgia Bulldogs.
Really?
And the center sticker on the record
had like a Georgia Bulldog Ugga, they called it.
I don't even remember the song at this point,
but I'm sure that it's still, it's not the fight song.
It's like this Bulldogs song.
And that was it, I just played that stuff over and over again
and of course listened to the radio.
But that was the first time that I took albums
and listened to them and I would put those albums on
and pick something up in my room and-
Lip sync it?
And walk around the room singing,
love me tender.
You know, and sometimes I would like slick my hair back.
Go full Elvis?
And do it.
Dang.
Yeah, and this was just an experience
that I was having to myself.
I had a similar experience.
We had, in the house with Jimmy,
we had that guest room in the front
that eventually had the Nintendo.
Well, it had a record player and like the two tower speakers
like most houses had the room where you had that.
Or if you got even older, like my Nana and Papa,
they had like the big piece of furniture
that had the record player in it
and the speakers coming out the front,
which you can buy at like vintage stores now,
big hawking piece of furniture.
But my mom had a record,
like a little 45 single of The Name Game.
The Name Game. The name game.
Banana, Fana, Fofana, Fee-fi, Mo-mana, Anna.
I would play that and I would dance around
and we had the Pac-Man theme song.
Get a lot of mileage out of that.
Yeah, we had that and we had Freddie Feelgood,
let's see what, Ray Stevens.
Oh, Ray Stevens.
The country music comedy music guy,
which is kinda crazy that one of the first things
I listened to was a comedy, a musical comedy record
from Ray Stevens.
Yeah, my parents loved Ray Stevens.
But Freddie Feelgood, it actually wasn't that funny,
but he played all the instruments of the Freddie Feelgood's it actually wasn't that funny, but he played all the instruments
of the Freddie Feelgood's band with his mouth.
He was like Bobby McFerrin.
And you know what?
I still have those records.
I have them in the console at the house right now
and I played them for the kids.
They thought it was crazy.
Because once I got a record player, you know,
for my birthday and I'm like teaching Lando how to play it.
But yeah, you would listen to the record,
and I'm reminded now that I finally have a record player now
that it's almost a, it's a focused experience.
You put this disc on there,
and then it plays for a certain amount of time,
and you kind of have to be there for it,
because the speakers are only there.
You can't walk anywhere you want.
And then you would flip it over
and you would listen to the other side.
And while you're doing that,
I mean, you think about how intimately familiar you were
with not only the music itself, but the device,
the actual medium, the record itself, and then the sleeve.
I would sit there, the album cover itself,
I would hold it, and I remember seeing that Four Seasons,
that Four Seasons album, of course they dressed,
they all wore the same exact thing.
You notice new things,
because you've looked at, you've done this 100 times.
And you just sat there and looked at it,
made observations about like,
oh, look at how Frankie Valli's like sitting over there.
He's like obviously a little bit different.
They're all together but he's kinda out in front
and a little bit to the side.
And you just made observations about their hair
and their clothes and then you read everything on the back.
It was just a totally different relationship.
And then it was, like I said, for me,
it wasn't this endless supply of records.
That was it. And it wasn't being added to. It was like it wasn't this endless supply of records. That was it.
And it wasn't being added to, it was like,
we just had that handful of records
that I listened to all the time
and it was either that or the radio
until I was given the opportunity to buy my first album.
But it was just a familiarity with that.
Which was a tape, right?
Which was a cassette, yeah, it was a cassette.
It was Weird Al in 3D.
Yeah, mine was Weird Al even worse.
I didn't buy music until later.
Your mom had more music available
than my parents did, I think.
Yeah.
Because I don't remember, they were buying things.
Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Al Green,
that's what my mom got me into.
She had those records.
But as far as tapes, the second tape I bought
was the Fat Boys.
I had the Fat Boys, well my brother had the Fat Boys.
If my brother had it, it was technically
available to be listened to.
And that's the other part of it.
Music was so much about if you had that physical thing and if or somebody gave it to you,
or if your brother had it, you know?
I mean, getting into rap music was because your brother
was into it and his friends.
So Cole and Oliver would listen to rap music on their tapes
and when I come over to your house, I knew you had tapes,
but if your brother had the tape,
it automatically became more cool.
So I remember I would go in his room and I'd like see,
oh, he's got Cool Mo D.
Cool Mo D, I specifically remember being introduced
to Cool Mo D.
He's got EPMD.
Yeah. He's got.
NWA.
Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is,
is like you got these,
and this is something that was-
Straight out of Compton.
This is true, this was true all over the nation,
but you got these little redneck white boys
in middle of nowhere in North Carolina
who are buying NWA,
having no idea what any of this is about,
but just being absolutely mesmerized.
And it was a thing.
It wasn't, it was like, oh, you've got the thing.
I mean, it was an illicit object
that you would insert into a thing
and then music would come out.
You know, it wasn't something that just-
It was contraband.
Was in your pocket and it was everywhere,
it was contraband, it was secret and it was,
you could touch it and you could feel it
and you could feel guilty about it.
And you remember Jeremy Fisher, who lived down the street.
Yeah.
Because there was so much profanity in this music
and our parents were upset that we were listening to it
but they never really heard it directly
because you knew when they were coming up the stairs
to cut it off.
What he did, he was like, well, I've got a solution.
He was like, you take a couple of pieces of toilet paper
and you put it into the top.
Your ears and you won't hear it.
You put it into the top of the cassette
and wait until it gets to that point on the tape
where there's a curse word.
Hit pause and then hit record and then hit unpause
and go beep and he would literally record his own beeps
over the curse words.
He was the neighborhood censor.
Which made NWA very difficult to listen to.
A little bit distracting because everything would drop out
except Jeremy Fisher's beep and he provided this
as a service.
He was like, I'll take your tape and do that for,
and that happened one time and I never let it happen again.
Talk about a dead career path.
But the other thing I remember from that era
was the way that the process of being introduced
to new music from someone else was, hey, listen to this.
I remember being over at the Hetrick's house new music from someone else was, hey, listen to this.
I remember being over at the Hetrick's house. And you know, Mark was like a year older than Paul was,
I think Cole's age.
Yeah.
So a few years older.
And we sat down in Paul's bedroom and he was like,
have you guys heard Metallica?
Oh snap.
And I was like, what's Metallica?
And I had been listening to, you know,
when I wasn't listening to Frankie Valli,
I was listening to Weird Al.
So the transition into, and I'd done a little bit of rap,
but this is actually probably before Cole got into rap.
He turns on, he had like a big stereo,
like the speakers were separate. it wasn't all one thing.
And I'm sitting on the bed and he turns on,
I don't even remember what song it was.
Master of Puppets?
I just remember thinking,
this is amazing and probably evil.
You know, it was like so, it was so-
Aggressive.
It made me think that,
it made me think differently about Paul Hetrick.
I just remember thinking, this guy,
he must be into some weird stuff
because my point of reference,
but I just remember thinking, it wasn't like,
I mean, just the other day I had somebody send me an album
by just sending me a link on my phone.
And then it was just like, I'll get to that when I want to.
No, no, that wasn't how it worked back then.
It was like, come into my bedroom, sit down.
Yeah, it was like inner sanctum.
And I'm going to control the volume.
I'm going to look at you as you're experiencing this.
I'm gonna check in with you
and see how you're processing this.
And it's this moment that I remember in a way
that I just question whether or not you have the ability
to have that level of experience
when somebody just sends you a link to a song.
I mean, you know why artists have listening parties,
you know, they work so hard to make this thing
and you wanna have this communal experience
of just listening to it.
This is different from a concert, you know, it's like,
and I do feel like we used to have that.
It makes you cry when you think about it.
I'm getting so choked up.
I mean, yeah, the thing about Discovery,
it was come into my room, I'm gonna play it for you,
or I'm gonna loan you this object,
you're gonna dub it and then give it back to me.
And while you're listening to it, I can't listen to it.
Unless it comes on the radio.
Or you go to the store and you buy it.
And for me as a kid, every weekend my mom would go shopping.
But I didn't have money to buy a cassette every weekend
but it was a very strategic thing.
Like I had to decide, okay,
Rhett has the MC Hammer album.
You know, what was it called?
It was the one before.
Too Legit to Quit was the one.
No, no, no.
Please Hammer Don't Hurt Him.
Please Hammer Don't Hurt Him.
Yeah.
Which was before the You Can't Touch This album.
But Cole has this other guy, Young MC.
I think You Can't Touch This was on
Please Hammer Don't Hurt Him.
Did you have young MC?
Yes, Cole had it.
And then you had MC Hammer.
And I felt like, who am I gonna side with?
Because I can only buy one tape this month, basically.
Or am I gonna buy something that's a little,
a little more out there that nobody has
so that I can like say, hey, I got something nobody's got
and it's actually good.
You know, so.
And at the time we had a sense.
It was an investment mentality
because you know, you got eight to 12 bucks
you wanna spend on an album,
you can't listen to it ahead of time.
There were a few places eventually
where you could like listen to CDs in the store
and use like dirty old headphones
that everybody's been putting on.
But for us it was like, you look at the cover of the cassette
and you're like, all right, Cole's got an EPMD tape,
but they got a new one coming out.
I'm gonna be the first to get that one
and I can say I got it.
Obviously there was no internet, but we didn't,
it was word of mouth because we didn't subscribe to any magazines that had any of this information in it. Like, obviously there was no internet, but we didn't, it was word of mouth because we didn't subscribe
to any magazines that had any of this information in it.
No.
It was just somebody at school would tell somebody else,
and somebody somewhere had a magazine.
There's no, I know that.
I mean, I would just go and look at the record bar.
I would look at the cassette section,
and you would see the rap section,
and I would buy something. Well, you would go to the cassette section and you would see the rap section and I would buy something.
Well, you would go to the ones
where they had the most of that tape too.
Yeah. You know what I'm saying?
So if they had like 30 Young MC tapes, you would know,
That must be a good one.
Yeah, this is in demand. A new one.
I gotta get this one.
And then that would be the tape that you would listen to.
And so it was a deep experience that is very difficult to achieve,
but it was almost, the whole system was built
for a deep experience before.
Now you have to have one in spite of the system.
I'll get to that, but in other words,
I'd make a calculated decision out of all the tapes
that I can buy this month,
this is the one I'm gonna buy.
And it's the one that I'm just gonna listen to
again and again.
I'm gonna put the tape in and I'm gonna play it.
And I didn't have a new fangled, you hit fast forward,
the special fast forward button that can detect
when there's a gap in the audio and that's the next song.
You just listen to it.
And it was an album experience half by half,
just like a record, we had to flip that tape over
and you would just sit there and you would experience it
in a certain order that the artist intended on both sides
and then you would do it again.
And you would sit there and you'd unfold those liner notes
and you would read the lyrics
and you read who they were sampling.
I remember when I got a Tribe Called Quest low end theory,
one of the greatest rap albums of the 90s easily.
I got that because Cole had the previous one.
It's a long title, I'm not gonna say it here.
I can't quite remember it.
People's Instinctive Travels in the Paths of Rhythm.
But I would listen to Low End theory and I said, okay.
Who are they, they're sampling stuff.
I didn't even know that what sampling was.
Right.
But you read about it in the liner
and it's the average white band, what is that?
And then I'm like looking through my mom's
record collection again and I realize
she's got average white band records.
And I started bringing those into my room
and listening to those and I'm like,
this kinda sucks to me.
Because it doesn't sound anything like the rap
but somehow they found something in this
except to make that.
Pick up the pieces, pick up the pieces.
Oh yeah, that was immediately obvious.
Okay, that's one of the best instrumentals of all time.
I think it's all great now but it was like,
it was a treasure hunt experience to connect dots
of their creative process.
It was like, my mom has this album
that these guys in New York turned into this new thing
that Rhett's older brother thinks is cool, you know?
Yeah.
And I'm sitting here in my room by myself,
reading it, just pouring over,
and that was the experience.
It was a forced, paced, deep experience
that everything now is geared towards the opposite of that.
Yeah, well, yeah, so let's, okay,
so at risk of sounding like a couple old farts
who are reminiscing about how great it was
when we were introduced to music.
And you had to like all the songs, I'm sorry.
But you, it didn't, if the song.
It's not listening.
I would just, you'd listen to, you'd know the songs
that sucked because you'd listen to those too, right?
Well, because you had invested in it.
Yeah.
Because you bought it.
You spent money and time.
It's like, I've gotta get through this
because it makes it feel like it's worth it.
Now, let's contrast this with the way things are today.
And I'm not going to, as I talk about this,
I'm actually gonna talk about the,
I'm not judging the experience because
I think there's actually something to
the way things are done now. Yeah, yeah. So the way that I think there's actually something to the way things are done now.
Yeah. Okay.
So the way that I introduce myself,
now first of all, I subscribe to,
right now I have Apple Music,
that's just because I have an iPhone
and so I end up doing a lot of Apple things.
So that's kind of my streaming service that I use.
But what I'll do in order to find new music is,
in fact, the other night I did this,
sitting there and I'm like,
I'm gonna find something,
I wanna find some like melancholy Americana.
Like first of all, just the fact that I can think that.
Yeah.
And not have to go to the smallest section at Sam Ash.
There was never a section at Sam Goodies
or which, there's a bunch of Sams.
If I had gone in to- Melancholy what?
Melancholy Americana, they would have been like,
"'Sir, please leave."
But now I have the ability to go basically
to the like Americana section.
And then it's like latest releases.
And I can do like, you know, top tracks or latest releases.
And what I'll do is I'll play one
and I make a decision sometimes two seconds in,
sometimes 15 seconds in as to whether or not this is,
I'm gonna continue listening.
And I'll go through 10, 11, 12 different people,
most of them I haven't heard of,
and then I'll land on somebody and I'll be like, oh.
Something that grips you in like track one.
So like for instance, I did this.
And the album art does still play into that though, right?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
because you can look at the album art and make,
the combination of the album art and the title of the album,
you kind of make a decision.
Right.
Is this person trying to give me something
that is going to work for me?
So I just recently discovered,
and I'd heard of this band, the Milk Carton Kids, okay?
Like, it's one of those, like, oh yeah,
I don't know anything about those guys,
but I've heard, they've been out for a while,
they've gotten multiple albums,
but when I was doing my melancholy Americana deep dive,
you know, 10, 12 albums into top tracks
or latest releases, whatever, I get to milk carton kids,
and then I'm like, oh, hmm, oh, okay.
Perking up. And I stuck with it,
and I ended up listening to the entire album,
and now I consider myself a fan of these guys,
who by the way, are based in Eagle Rock close by.
Are they missing or what's their story?
I think it's a play on that.
Okay.
But that's a completely-
They're melancholy?
But think about how many people I pass by
for different reasons before I landed on these guys.
And here's the thing,
is that because I could do that again tonight
with any other combination of musical descriptors,
and then I could do it again the next night,
never repeating the rabbit hole that I'm gonna go down,
don't have to go back to Melancholy Americana,
I may not go back to those guys.
Now, I actually use my recently added quite a bit
because it's like, oh yeah, you remember those guys,
Milk Carton Kids you found the other night?
Listen to those guys again.
But there's something to that.
There's negative and there's positive to that.
There's a tremendous positive that you can,
that the mechanism for discovery and it,
I mean, as an artist, or I'm kind of projecting
onto more of music artists here that I have to think
that the rate of evolution of sound and of music
has increased dramatically because of access.
I mean, it's the same thing as just our access
to information with the internet has drastically accelerated
so many aspects of society.
Right.
You know, I think,
I believe that hip hop is still one of the
fastest shifting genres.
I don't know why, but I just observed it.
I think it is.
I could be wrong about that, but I think that has to do
with being able to hear so much,
like artists being able to hear and be inspired
by so many different people in anyone sitting, so to speak.
So that's pretty cool.
There's a value.
It's so easy to accidentally bite somebody in hip hop
and for your flow to sound exactly like somebody else
that I think you're kind of constantly
kind of moving away from that
and trying to set some sort of target
where if you're doing melancholy Americana
and you, oh, he sounds a little bit like so and so,
it's like, that's a good thing.
But if it's like, he sounds like Drake,
you're like, that's not good.
He needs to change, he needs to innovate in some way.
But when I think about, okay, so I think about my kids
and the way that, you know, you mentioned Tribe Called Quest.
So the other day, we were on a road trip
and I've done this, I've done a couple of these things
where I'm like, I started thinking back on some music
that I got introduced to and I'm like,
I'm going to listen to this and I'm gonna tell my kids
what I was thinking and how I first heard this
and that kind of thing and we kind of go through.
Yeah.
And so Locke is, he's really into hip hop
and he listens to, you know, like when,
what's his name, Extention, I don't know,
how do you say the guy's name that died recently
that was a, you know, triple extension,
I'm probably saying it wrong.
I don't know.
That's how out of the loop I am.
Extension cord.
But he was, like when he, that dude died,
like it was difficult for Locke for a couple of days
and of course he was like all into the theory
about how Drake was involved in all this.
But so he was pretty well acquainted with like,
you know, the cutting edge lo-fi, even some lo-fi stuff,
which I'll get back to that in a second.
But so I was like, okay,
I'm gonna play you some 90s hip hop.
I ended up going through Tribe Called Quest, Black Sheep.
I started just thinking of some stuff
that was performed at the talent show.
Yeah.
Third base.
And I know I'm jumping all over the place
with like how this is held up.
Tribe Called Quest has held up.
Black Sheep hasn't held up quite as much.
Third base doesn't hold up at all.
Like you listen to third base now and you're like.
I think there's some, I think there's a couple but.
I think some, I think it holds up but.
No like it feels like he's like getting off rhythm a bunch.
No like.
Okay but what did.
Pete Nice is off, he gets off rhythm.
What did he think about it?
What did Locke think about it?
Oh then we got to the Fugees.
And like.
Okay well you made it, okay.
Yeah, yeah, so I'm jumping all around the 90s.
But there's this like, okay, I can see,
like some of it is good, but then I can start feeling
some of it not really working,
it seems a little bit cheesy.
Right, right, right.
I mean, I tried Young MC at one point,
and I was like, I cannot believe.
No, no, no. I tried Young MC at one point and I was like, I cannot believe. No, no, no.
I can't believe how bad this was.
I mean, it was just horrible.
But I mean, I think Fuji's,
I hope he thought that was great.
Yeah, he thought it was great.
And it's less about what he thought about it.
He appreciated it, he thought some of it was good,
but it was more how easily I could just think of something
and introduce him to it.
And I was like, getting into the question
of is this disposable, it's like,
this is not the same thing as if I gave him an album
and he had a machine in his room
and he had to take the thing and put it into the thing
and spend some time with it.
There's no cost.
So without doubt, an individual album
or an individual song has become more disposable.
But at the same time, as a family,
we do things that my family never did.
We play music all the time.
Like when I go home tonight,
music will be playing in my house.
We eat dinner half the time, music is playing.
Wake up in the morning, music is playing.
We've got a computer and an Alexa in the kitchen.
And so-
Yeah, we do the same thing.
It's just, so-
And you know what, I can't.
Music's always playing.
I came into the kitchen the past two,
a few days and the Beatles have been playing
and you know, I don't play the Beatles
but I mean of course I love the Beatles, you have to.
But it's Lily who's somehow has gotten into the Beatles.
She went to a girls rock summer camp with a friend of hers
and they got her into the Beatles
and but also like the White Stripes.
And so it's, you know, she's found people
that she thought was cool that liked cool stuff.
And now she's liking that and she's starting to, you know,
to be exposed to things like the Beatles.
And it's just, it's easy.
It's just around.
I mean, so there's such a, the deep experience we had
is now the wide experience that our kids have.
You know, the widest an experience got for us
back in the day was, you remember this,
the BMG Music Service,
and also Columbia House, it would be eight CDs for one cent
or it would be an ad for 12 CDs for the price of one.
And what you would do is they would send you this big
envelope and you would open that up and it would have a sheet.
Hundreds of albums.
It would have a sheet with like 12 blocks,
12 empty blanks and then the one that you'd pay for
and it would be stamps, like lickable stickers of albums.
Oh, I had one that was a check mark.
It was like ordering sushi.
The one, yeah, they were all different kinds
and it was very like, again, it was part of the ordering
process was like holding. It was tactile.
Tactile, it was a catalog and figuring this,
a lot of them looked like music magazines
where they would like, Columbia House,
they would have articles with like weird factoids
about crap in them to make you think that you're reading
like a Rolling Stone type rip off.
Yeah.
But then you would select the album
and you would order 13 CDs, this was the age of CDs.
And it wasn't easy to figure out which 13 you wanted
because as people who had bought one album at a time,
maybe two on a really good birthday.
It was intimidating.
It's like how do you get the 13?
I'm throwing ACDC in there.
Yes.
It's back in black which I'm really glad I did that.
I mean, I first heard Bob Marley
because you put that in your 12.
Yeah, I did.
And it was like, okay, I was on a classic rock kick
and so it was just like, I just went through
greatest hits, classic rock's greatest hits section
and I took those stamps off.
So like Cream and Eric Clapton, The Eagles.
Everybody's gotta get that Eagles greatest hits album.
That's how you learn how to play guitar.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers greatest hits
with Mary Jane's Last Dance on there.
And things changed.
I was listening to that, talk about a song.
And now. That is a good
freaking song. The relationship.
And then they ship you 12 CDs at once.
CDs changed the relationship with music
because now not only, it was still tactile,
it was still an experience of owning something.
That you can skip around.
But, and I wasn't even, you're totally right about that.
You can skip easily, so it made it a little bit easier
to dispose of, but it made it a little bit easier to dispose of,
but it also was a little bit precious
because especially if you were like me,
I'm assuming that you didn't do this as often as I did,
you leave the CD out.
Scratch it?
Man. No.
Yes, yeah.
Can't scratch that CD, man.
Well, I think I probably speak
for a lot of people out there
and that many of your CDs, now you think I'm bad.
I remember when I first got to know Jessie
and she would put one of her CDs in her car.
I mean, it was like looking at,
like when you got the light just right on her CD
so you could see all the scratches,
it was like she let a cat get on this thing.
Like she has let a cat work its feelings out
on the surface of this CD.
Yeah and you're listening to Hit Me Baby One More Time
and it's only just hit me.
And that happened, so funny thing is I have an artifact
of this time in my life on that album,
on Back in Black, on Back in Black,
the actual song Back in Black.
Yeah.
Somehow, when I transferred all my CDs over to my computer years ago,
and then they were matched on iTunes,
I thought it was supposed to repair if you had some issues.
Yeah, it is.
Something happened with Back in Black,
and it still has all the skipping from that CD intact.
What if you accidentally overwrote the master
in the cloud?
I don't think that's possible.
So like you ruined Back in Black
for everybody for perpetuity.
Well, first of all, I apologize if that's the case.
Just a side note, when I was thinking about BMJ,
I was thinking, how do they make money?
And I like did some searching about it.
Well, if you didn't cancel it.
If you didn't, here's what they did.
They would give you the 13 CDs, you only bought one,
but then every, maybe it was every month or every few weeks,
they would send you, it's kinda like Netflix,
they would send you another CD in the same genre
that you picked for me, classic rock,
and they would charge you for it until you wrote,
basically wrote them and told them that you're canceling.
So they would charge you an overpriced amount.
They made it very difficult to cancel.
Yeah and I found, when I was looking for that,
I found this documentary that I'm gonna watch.
So I'm recommending something I haven't watched
except the beginning of and it was a guy, filmmaker Chris Wilcha.
In 1994, the first thing that he did was
he got a job after he graduated,
he got a job working at Columbia House.
So in the place, and he took his video camera
to work every day and documented his process of working at Columbia House
in 1994 and it's called The Target Shoots First.
I mean this guy went on to produce a lot of other things
including the television version of This American Life
when that was on Showtime.
So yeah, he's like doing lots of good stuff now
but that was like the first pet project.
And I'll tweet out the link to the Vimeo
of that like hour 20 minute documentary that he made
of his like, it's almost like found footage-ish
or just like very intimate footage
because I kind of skipped through it
of his like taking his camcorder to work every day.
And it's just like a snapshot
of what the music industry was like.
Well, and Columbia House is such a weird thing.
Right, a weird moment.
Now, another thing.
But the experience was, that's as wide as it got.
And now it's infinite.
So here's another just anecdote about
the way things work.
And just not too long ago, by the time you hear this, it will have been a few weeks, I'm sure.
But I was doing some writing the other day
on one of the projects that we're working on.
And I like to listen to instrumental music.
Instrumental music when I write
because I don't like to be manipulated.
I also like to, I don't like to listen to words
because I immediately, I'm writing words
and then all of a sudden I start listening to words
and I also don't want music that has too much
of an emotional quality because I feel like
it will influence when I'm writing.
So I like things that are a little bit noncommittal.
And so I tweeted this out, shout out to RedMC on Twitter.
If you follow me, you know that I tweeted this.
If you don't follow me, you don't know, that's your loss.
I tweeted, does anybody have any recommendations
for instrumental music for writing?
And I kind of qualified it with,
I don't want it to be too emotional, whatever.
Thank you for all your suggestions.
Someone, actually multiple people said,
lo-fi, just search lo-fi hip hop 24 seven.
Just Google that.
Okay.
And if you do that, a YouTube channel
from Chill Hop Music comes up and it's just a live stream.
There is a looped animated video of,
I think now it's like a raccoon in bed
like studying or something.
It's like a character like sitting there in his bedroom
like chilling out, writing or typing,
I can't remember what he's doing.
Okay. Is that the part that matters the most? No, no. chilling out, writing or typing, I can't remember what he's doing. And then they've-
Is that the part that matters the most?
No, no, they play 24 seven.
But what's lo-fi?
Well, lo-fi hip hop is like amateur,
it's amateur made mixes,
we're talking like SoundCloud type music here.
But it's all about the same BPM,
it's laid back and it kind of just effortlessly flows
from one thing to the next.
And it's actually become like my go-to writing music
over the past couple of weeks.
Has it looped?
Have you heard stuff again and again?
No, I haven't.
I don't know where the end is.
And if it did loop, it's the kind of thing
I probably wouldn't even notice.
Well, it's a stream, it's not a video.
It may not be a loop.
It's so, and again, I don't know who's making this music.
I don't know how they're making money.
I don't understand the business model.
I mean, they've got like a link to their website
in the description of the video,
and I guess you can go there and do something.
I don't understand the business model at all.
All I know is that I'm just consuming
just high volumes of music
in a way that is effortless. I'm just consuming just high volumes of music
in a way that it's effortless.
Ultimately what I'm getting at is whether it's walking home,
walking into my house and hearing my kids stream
the latest Chance the Rapper releases that he just released
or listening to lo-fi hip hop,
or listening to lo-fi hip hop.
I can get anywhere and I'm completely surrounded by it.
So while I do think that it's become disposable, it's become so much more prolific, at least for me,
but this has gotta be true of everybody.
What I hear you saying is it's become,
it's actually become a more valuable mainstay
in your lifestyle as a whole.
Like it can, it can all,
because it can always be there as a constant companion.
I mean, that's valuable.
So I don't, and it,
but at the same time,
it could make it all seem more disposable because well, it's not an object,
it's not something that I gotta pour over,
like the liner notes or anything like that.
Well, and especially that, so,
because there is something to be said for,
and this is some people's philosophy,
my philosophy once I started streaming was,
because I heard people say, well, I pay for streaming,
but if I really like an artist, I buy their album.
It's like, well, once you could just add the music locally
to your devices, it just became a loyalty issue
at that point.
It's like, am I really gonna give this artist 12 bucks
just because I really like them?
I mean, yeah, some people will do that.
That's not a sustainable business model.
But I think that what you could do,
what a lot of people do is they say,
"'Well, I do wanna buy this physical thing.'"
And this is kind of like the analog revolution
that's happening, right?
It's well underway, vinyl, now cassettes are coming back.
And I think that's because ultimately we haven't changed,
you know, physically, mentally,
the hardware of humanity is the same as it has been
for thousands of years.
And so we're tactile beings, right?
We experience things with all the senses.
So the fact that while we kind of moved
into this completely digital place where you think,
oh, well, just like in the dead iPod song,
where we kind of talked about in the distant future,
people are just gonna download songs
directly into their brain.
That's, I don't know, that might happen,
but ultimately, unless we change significantly physically,
we're not gonna lose that desire
to have a tactile experience.
You're never gonna lose an appreciation
for a piece of music that is on something physical.
Like if I hand you, I mean, you just got a record player.
If I, and I bought you a bunch of crazy albums,
but if I gave you an album that you didn't have
that meant something to me, your experience with that,
there's nothing you can do in the digital world
that can top that.
And that's why people are, that's why people are kind of
rebounding back.
Yeah, I'm definitely, I have a desire to the albums
that have been the most important in my life.
I have a desire to buy them on vinyl just to have it,
just to literally have it.
I don't think everybody has to do that,
but I think the other thing that I try to do
that I'll go so far as to encourage people to do
is to adopt the discipline of immersing yourself in music
and making time,
making focused time for that if you're a music lover.
Don't rob yourself of the experience of going all the way.
Not trying to make this sexual.
But I just did.
Sometimes I'll lay in bed with my headphones on.
And go all the way with your headphones on?
I typically wear my AirPods when I do that.
And I'll listen.
I don't like to have them to be too bulky.
I'll listen to music and I'll just, I'll focus on it.
So it's not a companion to anything.
It is the object of my affection at that moment
and my analyzation.
Right.
And I'll go one step further.
I love doing that within the context of an album.
You know, I think with this wide experience,
it's a single focused as opposed to an album oriented
world that we now live in.
But I think there are artists who are still crafting albums
and like Kendrick Lamar.
I mean, if you, you can listen, I mean,
you can listen to Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe
and that's a great song but if you listen to Good Kid,
Mad City as a whole,
then you've immersed yourself in a cinematic experience
that an amazing artist crafted.
He made an audio movie.
And you gotta listen to all of it to get that.
And I mean, it's your loss or mine if we don't do that,
but it now takes a discipline that we were trained
to expect from certain artists.
And we were trained to expect from more artists actually.
You gotta sit here and you gotta press play
and then you gotta flip it over to a certain point
and you see what I'm saying.
So now we gotta actually make a decision
to take time to do that.
Or if you're driving in a car,
still saying I'm gonna,
I recognize this artist made this album as a cohesive work
and so I'm actually gonna experience it that way
over my next three commutes.
Well, I try to do that.
I think both of us are biased against playlists.
I mean, I, I, yeah, yeah.
I mean, we did the mixtape thing.
It was usually like mixing one artist,
like we would mix Merle and you would just be like
the lonesome side and the loving side or whatever.
It's like I would take all the songs about being alone,
which is quite a bit when you're talking about Merle Haggard
and then the other side would be all the songs
about being in love and I would,
Yeah.
And I would, sometimes together we would just go
down a country road and put that album in,
put that cassette in and just sing at the top of our lungs.
And sometimes I would just go by myself and think about the girl that I had a crush on and put that album in, put that cassette in and just sing at the top of our lungs.
And sometimes I would just go by myself
and think about the girl that I had a crush on
and was not responding to me
and just listened to lonesome Merle Haggard songs.
But we have kind of a-
I saw her recently, by the way.
No, I don't wanna go on a tangent.
Really?
You did though?
Yeah, in the Zaxby's.
Oh, okay. Back home.
We'll talk about that in a second.
And of course, lots of girls didn't respond to me,
so it could be one of many different women.
They were all there.
It's like one of my dreams.
All the women that have rejected me at the Zaxby's.
That's a recurring nightmare of mine.
I just wanted some chicken fingers. But the.
Why don't you love me?
We're both, and this is to do with our age, I'm sure,
but I always, I'll put a playlist on,
or like Pandora, or like a radio,
like an Apple radio station, if I've got people over
and I don't want it to end, you know?
But if I'm, I've never, never once played
one of the Apple radio stations while in the car.
I don't, it's just, I don't know.
It's weird because I would listen to the radio itself,
but I find an album, I find an artist,
and sometimes I feel like if I listen to an artist
and they have one good song,
and then the rest of the album sucks,
I just write them off.
I don't say, I'm gonna take that song
and put it into a playlist.
I say like, this album doesn't work,
so this artist doesn't work.
And this is just an internal bias that I have.
I don't build playlists for myself
because it's too much work.
But if I like an artist, like if I really like Lord Huron,
I'll go to Lord Huron Radio
and then it'll play other artists.
I'll discover other people related
by just listening to that around the house or whatever.
Well, so I think for me,
to answer that initial question,
it's definitely become more disposable.
I mean, my relationship with music isn't anything
like it was in 1982 in my bedroom.
But the amount of music that is in my life
in different environments, it's also,
we didn't even talk about just the technology,
just being able to have multiple devices all around you,
being able to listen to music while you run,
being able to listen to music while you're working out,
when you're in your car and you're making the choice
and you're being intentional about what you're listening to.
Like the combination of streaming music
with the devices that are available
has made music so much more prolific
that I think that probably like the happy medium
is somewhere kind of what you're doing,
which is you've got,
cause I currently don't have any analog experience
with music.
I got like a record player,
but we couldn't find a place
to put it and then I didn't buy anything for it
and then last time I tried to use it,
the needle was broken and so I'm out.
I don't have an analog experience at all.
And I don't listen to it that much.
It takes a lot of work.
You know, it's, I mean, when I'm in bed.
You gotta lift that record up,
you gotta work it out of the sleeve,
you gotta set it on the.
Is it in your bedroom?
It's not in my bedroom, it's in the living room.
And it's not hooked up to the best speakers.
I kinda like a headphone experience.
I could hook up my headphones to it.
What if you carried it around with headphones?
It was like a Walkman, but it was a record player.
It'd be real steady handed.
I'll try, I'll try it, I'll definitely try it.
Well, let's continue this conversation on the internet.
In the comments below, if you're watching this on Twitter,
hashtag Ear Biscuits, we're gonna get involved
in that conversation.
Yeah, and if you have a music lover in your life,
send them this episode.
Tell them they can reminisce along with us.
Maybe we'll trigger some memories from them
and spark a thought of,
oh, I need to go back and listen to that album
or that song,
or I remember the first thing I listened to was this,
or this was my favorite album
when I was in middle school type thing.
So thanks for sharing this episode
and for talking with us like Rhett said,
using hashtag Ear Biscuits.
We'll bring you another biscuit next week.