Endless Thread - Snacktime: Diablo and Classic Culkin

Episode Date: August 29, 2019

Ben and Amory swap recent Reddit gems about an obscure heavy metal band and a surprising Macaulay Culkin appearance at a comedy show.

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All right, welcome to Endless Thread Snack Time, where we kick back freaking snack and tell each other fun stories we find on Reddit in between our regular hardcore to the core ET episodes. Amory, I got a little snack for you. You do. Yeah. Okay.

I'm ready. Are you a metal head? No. Well, this will be interesting then. So I want you to listen to this song and tell me when it came out. 1979. Okay, well, this to me would suggest maybe a slight lack of metal fluency. it. That's fair. Because listening to this song, I mean, this is the thing. You're not entirely

wrong, at least according to mysterious posts on the internet. But most people would listen to this song and say, this song came out after 1985. And supposedly, this song that we just heard a little bit of came out in 1973. And this is weird and kind of crazy because you and I, probably know much more from the 1970s kind of proto-metal that sounds a lot more

like this. That was Black Sabbath Into the Void. That song came out, I believe, in 1971, maybe. So this is what's weird. I'm going to read you this comment. And this comes from the RBI or Reddit Bureau of

Investigation, Subreddit community. The comments says, I came across the song a while ago and searched around the internet attempting to find its source. It doesn't come up whenever I use services like Shazam. And when I look up the name of the band and the supposed name of the demo, it only leads to links to YouTube videos and a last FM page, which includes the following description. One of the first metal bands from the Philippines, I guess the band is called Diablo, formed sometime in the earth. in 1970s and often regarded as forgotten godfathers of the metal genre,

formed by young occult fanatics Morrison, Uchita, and Eldritch Yokoyama. They released one known demo called Huling Sumpa in 1975, played a few shocking gigs before vanishing into obscurity. Some say that one of these people was arrested and sentenced to life in prison in 1981 or 1982 for killing three people and critically wounding eight others at a bar? Oh my God. The last known lineup of this band is Ben Diablo on vocals. Okay.

Which seemed appropriate once I found this story. Jesus Calense on guitar, messiest guitar, Bang K on bass and Madalim K. Nalengit on drums. I can't find any resources on the internet to corroborate this. Music in question is surely not from 1973 unless the band was unbelievably ahead of their time. This is like unsolved. But a lot of users point to some interesting things.

First of all, there are a lot of metal bands that kind of make up this mythology about themselves, right? So-and-so, kill the guy, so metal. Yeah. Right? Yep. And there's apparently a few different versions of this story. you dig around online, including the murder part, which suggests maybe it's not true. So maybe it's like a weird kind of marketing campaign or something.

Another person points out that it looks like the first mentions of this band on the internet are from 2012, and that this is right around the same time that this movie about the band Death from Detroit. I don't know if you've ever heard of that band, punk band. This band Death from Detroit had this movie come out about them. They became more widely known as kind of like inventing genres of music decades before they were actually a thing. Nobody was making music like that in 73. Three Black Brothers from Detroit, Michigan. And so this makes one commenter think there's a good possibility of someone hearing about the death story or seeing that movie.

And then trying to recreate it as a hoax with a Filipino. metal band. So that's one possibility. Just to play Diablo's Advocate, as it were. Another person on this post, a redditor named Vampire Queen Despair, which feels appropriate. Yeah. Says, I wouldn't immediately discount it being real just because it accidentally invented the genre if it is. 70s Detroit punk band Death did that too.

So it's not unheard of to be so early to the party that it screws you over. It's not likely, but don't assume that that makes it impossible. And just a second example of this, this Redditor comments of like I accidentally invented a genre. The band Crow Magnin accidentally invented old school industrial music back in 1969 with apparently a song or a record called Caledonia. Hmm. Much as I would like it to be a very clever marketing scheme, I think it's only in hindsight when you go back and listen to an album a decade or two later that you say, wow, this person was really ahead of their time musically. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, like, you want it to be a marketing hoax? You don't really want that, right? You want it to be real.

Yeah, I mean, I want it to be real, but I'm admittedly delighted at the ways people use the Internet. in ways that I just would never think to do. So, you know, I do and I don't. Okay. Well, I guess, you know, listeners let us know what you think. When did that band's music actually come out? And do you believe the possibility that this Filipino band invented metal before metal was metal? Diablo.

Diablo. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but if we do all that. We also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast.

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Is this going to be a Macaulay Culkin story? It is going to be a Macaulay Culkin story. Oh, I love it. Keep the change, you filthy animal. So this post actually comes from the stand-up comedy subreddit, which is hilarious because stand-up comedy,

as we know, is my nightmare. This was posted by a user who goes by buttons, bows, with zees at the end. Very hip. Buttons, bows. Yes.

Okay. And the post reads, beginning in 2013, comedians Brett Davis and Sally Bertnick have hosted a monthly alt-comedy showcase titled The Macaulay Culkin show. Now, Ben, this show has nothing to do with McCauley Culkin. Did he show up? The post says last night, this happened. Okay, so this is McCauley Culkin coming on stage.

to randomly the Star Trek Next Generation theme song. He comes out in a cloud of smoke. He's like parading around the stage, kind of doing a little catwalk. He's wearing a shirt that says Macaulay Culkin with an arrow pointing up to his head. And the audience is going crazy.

But also, Brett Davis and Sally Bertnick, the hosts of this comedy showcase, are going crazy because they're like, Oh my God, it's McCall. Kalkin on our stage at the McCauley Calkin show. And the audience is just losing their mind. I'm McCauley Culkin. And welcome to the McCauley Culkin show.

Finally, yeah! I can't. I can't believe it. McCauley Calkin is! It's epic music. Yeah, the whole thing is pretty epic. They've been doing this show since 2013, so that's, you know, six years going strong. This was actually part of what they call the McCulley Calkin show's sixth annual

summer comedy fest. And it turns out, I was, the big question that I wanted to know is, did McCauley Calkin just show up unannounced for this? No, no way. No way. He told them. Well, when you see Brett Davis and Sally Burtnick's faces in the video, they look shocked. Like, Brett falls to his knees. He picks up Sally and twirls her around. Everyone is freaking out. I reached out to Brett Davis. It turns out that they had actually had this in the works for almost a year trying to get Macaulay Culkin. So this may have been a surprise to some people in the audience, but it was not a surprise to them, as delighted as they sounded. I like this because they played the long game. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like they were like,

listen, we'll just keep doing it. And eventually it's going to get back to him. And maybe he'll show up. Yeah. And this is exactly the type of thing that McCauley Calkin, for anyone who has been following his work lately, This is so up his alley It's up his alley To have a show named the McCauley Calkin show That has nothing to do with McCauley Calkin But also like for him to show up Here is just perfectly McCauley Calkin

And I feel like it's... Classic Calkin Classic Culkin There were some great comments on this post One Why Not The Redditor One Why Not said And now I'd like to invite you all To my alt comedy showcase titled

The Bill Gaineses gave me a billion dollars show. Just in case, Bill, you want to show up and make that happen. Someone else said something that I think is like really on point. This is always up-dank trunks, is their username. They say, there's a line by a woman and madmen in reference to a very rich, very sophisticated, yet very masculine man and his youth in which she says something to the effect of him behaving like a character in his own novel.

this is the only way I can express how I believe Mr. Culkin is acting these days, which I agree. He's just, if you have not been following him, I did a little bit of digging. He's been in a couple movies recently, a couple TV shows, those kinds of things. But he also has a- He's a huge celebrity. You did not do any digging. You typed something into Google.

Ben, I was trying to find out what he's done recently. And I stumbled... And we went to an ancient library and took out her Okay, okay, sir. Let's just quiz you. Let's see if you are up on what Macaulay Culkin is up to these days. Definitely not.

I haven't even done... I haven't even looked at dirt, let alone done some digging. Are you familiar with Pizza Underground? This sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't know. Okay, well, because you didn't do your McCauley Culkin research, Pizza Underground is the pizza-themed Velvet Underground tribute band led by McCulley Calkin and recorded in his

own house. This is not a good idea. I have a little sample here of one of the songs that they recorded in a medley. They turned these days into cheese days. This is why that one redditor just nailed it in saying that

Like, he's the star of his own movie. He picks and chooses his projects so that they are just perfectly McCulley Culkin. And he can't be anyone but himself. And I love him for it. He's got to keep it classic Culkin. Classic Culkin, that's right. All right. Also, I want to do a little bit of an update, Amory.

Okay. You may remember in our last snack dime episode, I told the story of this mysterious sound, a camper heard, in kind of the middle of New Hampshire. I just want to like shout out a couple of the people who responded to us. We got an email from Chelsea. Okay. Chelsea says,

Hi there, I just listened to your podcast bit about the noise in Andover. I live in New Hampshire right on a small dam. And that sounds a lot like the noise of a water level adjustment being made. They have large mechanical parts that squeal and grown and make the worst noises in the middle of the night. Sometimes it's like an elephant blowing a rusty trombone. And by the way, don't Google rusty trombone unless you're not at work. I believe there is a dam in Andover that could be the culprit, she says. I'm sure you can contact one of the hundreds of fisheries and water biologists in New Hampshire to verify. Thank you, Chelsea. Chelsea, thank you.

I am not yet in touch with a fishery. But I did get in touch with the city of Andover, the town of Andover. I sent them the sound. And they're super jazzed. And they are trying to search out an answer for us. So we may hear in a future episode from the town of Andover. We also got a message about this weird sound on Reddit. This is from a username Giochua.

Geoshoa. Geosua. So this person says, the title of the messages or the subject is, Into the Woods Sound Theory. I once spent an afternoon diving down the rabbit hole of a phenomenon called the hum, which reminds me a bit of the weird noise in the latest snack time episode. And then this person links to some, a video of this. I think it's up in Canada.

Ultimately, the sound from this video was the noise of freight train. shunting, which is apparently slowing and changing direction. So we responded and we're like, wow, this is cool. This could be a whole episode in itself. And Joshua got back and said, I started digging into it again. And some other internet people have called them Sky Trumpets or Gabriel's trumpet for very revelationsy reasons, which makes sense seeing that if my memory serves me right, I stumbled across this stuff when I was reading about some doomsday.

cult as one does. Nice message, Joshua. So either it's Gabriel's trumpet, or maybe it's someone making an adjustment on a dam, like a water level adjustment with a dam. Or maybe it's some elephants blowing on a rusty trombone. I like that theory. Anyway, listeners, please give us all of your theories on that weird heavy metal band and... McCulley Culkin. Give us all your theories on Culkin. Special thanks to Brett Davis, Sally Bertnick, and Frank Flaherty at the Bell House for letting us use audio from the Macaulay Culkin Show's summer comedy fest. I only wish I had been in the audience to see McCauley's guest appearance, but I hope to catch the show sometime.

Okay, that's it for snack time this week. We'll be back next week with a full episode. Also, by the way, we got a message from somebody named Jamie Moody. and Jamie said, Can R slash Stickers Exchange Club get a mention we are connected to R slash free stickers which just reached over 30,000 subscribers? Woot!

So if you're into sticker exchanges, head over to Stickers Exchange Club. Check it out. And we'll talk to you next week.