Heavyweight - #33 Bobby

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

How the worst McDonald’s commercial ever made came to be. And how Bobby got mixed up in it. Credits Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein. This episode was produced by Stevie Lan...e, along with Kalila Holt. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Blumberg, Chris Neary, Nazanin Rafsanjani, Phoebe Flanigan, Nabeel Chollampat, Jake Anderson, Billy Klein, Nicholas Papaleo, and Jackie Cohen. The show was mixed by Bobby Lord.  Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Michael Hearst, Podington Bear, Blue Dot Sessions, Lost Condors, Hew Time, and Bobby Lord. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Yeah. I'm looking out my window. I'm looking at the clouds. Yeah. And I could tell you about the things that I see, and you could tell me about the things that you see. All right, what do you see, Don? I see...
Starting point is 00:00:13 My daughter just whispered over to me. She doesn't know where this is going. But I know where this is going. Wait, why... From nowhere. No, this is two friends sharing their, you know, what they see in the clouds. Nothing wrong with that.
Starting point is 00:00:25 Why does it have to go somewhere? Okay, now what I see is a wheelbarrow full of what looks like teddy bears. What do you see? I see just a gray cloud. Oh, that's not good at all. Very bad sign. I come from Lithuanian stock, and we're cloud readers. We see prophetic visions in the clouds.
Starting point is 00:00:46 Did you know that? That's why I wanted to trick you into looking at the clouds so that I could tell you your future. Yeah, I should have seen that coming. From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Bobby. Right after the break. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning.
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Starting point is 00:02:24 Thanks, Jonathan. We're rolling. Thanks, Bobby. Bobby Lord is my music composer and sound engineer. Each word I lay down goes through Bobby's complex network of accelerometers and acorn tubes. Jonathan, I don't think acorn tubes have been used since World War II. Can I get a schmear of music here, Bob? As a sound engineer,
Starting point is 00:02:56 Bobby normally has to keep his yap shut. Should he feel compelled to sneeze or, say, have a heart attack, he cannot do so until the on-air light is safely extinguished. But today, we turn the microphone around and aim it back towards one too often shrouded in darkness and obscurity. Today, we tell Bobby's story, the story of the greatest public embarrassment of Bobby's entire musical career. I think that's a little dramatic. I would say not dramatic enough.
Starting point is 00:03:30 Don't be stingy with the music, Bob. More acorns. Okay. A little bit of treble. Give me the full bass. Bobby joins me in the studio and tells me how his love of music first blossomed back in middle school,
Starting point is 00:03:51 around the time he met a boy named Jake. He sat in the back of the bus where the cool kids sat, and I think he was wearing, like, the leather jacket, a punk band T-shirt, and he had blue hair. Bobby's hair was a nerdy brown. He played nerdy sax in the nerdy school band. And here was Jake, who played punk rock electric guitar. Bobby was starstruck. He started dressing like Jake in band t-shirts and tight punky jeans he found in the girls section
Starting point is 00:04:19 at Kohl's. He even begged his parents for a drum kit so he and Jake could form a band. He even begged his parents for a drum kit so he and Jake could form a band. I credit Jake 100% with teaching me everything about being in a band and punk music. And then he taught me everything. You know, there were a lot of times we'd be sitting together and both with our own CD players and headphones on. Like in different worlds and listening to different records, but just together, you know? Bobby listening to Jimmy Eat World, Jake to No Effects, both of them eating gummy sharks and dreaming about the music they wanted to make. With a couple more friends, they formed a band. And even though they were so young, it wasn't long before they were booking shows.
Starting point is 00:05:01 Their first gig was at a local record store. I was super, super nervous. And I was kind of just trying to hide behind my drums. But Jake just kind of has this like British punk rock sneer, singing in this snotty little kind of punk singing voice and like looking very cool with his bass. This is a song of theirs called Nun Divided. Bobby, age 13, is on drums. and Jake, age 12, is singing. Now, I don't know how old the guys in Green Day are,
Starting point is 00:05:39 and I don't particularly like Green Day, but if you told me this was Green Day, I'd say, hey, Green Day's not as bad as I thought they were. That's how good Bobby and Jake were, even as children. And through their teens, Bobby and Jake continued booking gigs. The dream was to live off their music. But after college, it became clear they'd need day jobs. So Bobby found one as an audio engineer at a Chicago advertising agency. Bobby was company man by day, punk by night,
Starting point is 00:06:11 until one morning in the spring of 2014 when his worlds collided. I came into work and my boss said, we have an ad that I need you to sing. And I said,
Starting point is 00:06:22 sing? Sing. But not like Sid Vicious or Joey Ramone or that guy who screams in that song at the beginning of CSI Miami, because those guys never sang advertising jingles for McDonald's, which was exactly what Bobby was being asked to do. The creative in charge, a guy named Tim, knew that Bobby was a musician. So he asked Bobby to record the demo track for an ad he was working on. He wrote a song called Random Red Couch. And they had shot all this footage of hipstery-looking models holding McDonald's bags of food and kind of dancing on this couch, this red couch. kind of like dancing on this couch, this red couch.
Starting point is 00:07:10 Tim was in his, like, 50s and is trying to write, like, a comedy thing for younger people. And he, I think he thought that at the time, like, a comedic sensibility amongst young people was, like, randomness, like, absurd randomness. By 2014, the word random had served the youth of America well and was ready for the retirement home where it could play shuffleboard with chill pill and booyah. But this didn't stop Tim.
Starting point is 00:07:38 I remember it by heart how it goes. It starts like, we got a random red couch, don't ask me why. People eating burgers with a girl or a guy. On the weekends, Bobby was a mother-freaking antichrist, hanging with punk rockers who'd sooner sell the nose rings infecting their noses than sell out. And here he was, crooning about 99-cent chicken cutlets sold by a clown. But lucky for Bobby, no one would ever hear it. Random Red Couch was just a demo, one of many ideas circulated internally that never got greenlit.
Starting point is 00:08:12 Things got killed all the time. So I never thought that the thing would get made. But every step of the way, we just kept hearing that it's not getting killed, it's not getting killed, it's still going. And going, and going. Random Red Couch was like this unstoppable, unkillable monster.
Starting point is 00:08:31 For whatever reason, Bobby's bosses were ba-da-ba-ba-ba, loving it. And so, Random Red Couch was suddenly greenlit. was suddenly greenlit. Bobby Lord was now the voice of a national advertising campaign for McDonald's. And this is where it became not fun because it starts to air and, like, it played a lot. McDonald's bought so much airtime that during the 2014 NHL playoffs,
Starting point is 00:09:08 Bobby says he couldn't walk into a bar without seeing the ad. It was everywhere. And from the moment it started airing, Random Red Couch was immediately and universally and passionately reviled. A good illustration of how hated this ad
Starting point is 00:09:24 was is that it was on McDonald's official YouTube channel and it got so extremely ratioed with thumbs downs and negative comments that they took it off their own page. Like, the hatred and the vitriol on Twitter about this ad was,
Starting point is 00:09:39 I've never seen anything quite like it. Can you read some of those tweets? Yeah. One sec. Okay. That McDonald's random red couch commercial is annoying as hell. There better not be a random red couch in jail after I stabbed the writers
Starting point is 00:09:55 of that horrendous commercial. Hey McDonald's, if I see the random red couch commercial one more time, I'm going to kill someone and the blood will be on your hands. I want to kill the random red couch. Fuck your random red couch. Everyone involved with the writing, performing, and recording of this Random Red Couch McDonald's jingle should be rounded up and executed. Wow. That's really harsh. People on the internet are mean. I know. I know. At this point, I'm so amped up on all the reviews slash death threats,
Starting point is 00:10:24 I can't wait to experience the ad for myself. I don't think I've ever wanted to click on a link more in my entire life. Oh, man. I'm so excited. Okay, here we go. Shit. Okay. We got a random red couch.
Starting point is 00:10:45 Don't ask me why. People eating favorites with a girl or a guy. Got a random red couch. Pull up a seat. You don't want to be the one with nothing to eat. We got a random red couch. Fly your guests to France with a McDonald's bag. It never ends.
Starting point is 00:11:04 McChicken, McDouble, beef and cheese galore Now that's the flavor of dollar menu and more On a random red couch The ad features a group of young actors, each of them looking like one of those kids who would have smoked a pipe in college. They dance about with the desperate energy of hostages in a hostage video,
Starting point is 00:11:34 who, instead of being forced to recite from cue cards, are being forced to eat, laugh, and gaze flirtatiously at cheeseburgers. It looks like something a spam bot would generate if you typed in key words like mustache, bacon, and kombucha. Pandering yet clueless, chummy yet dead-eyed, Random Red Couch is a paradox
Starting point is 00:11:59 wrapped in a sofa. Point of fact, I hate it, and yet. Can I listen to it again? Yeah, sure. Don't ask me why. Which, by the way, a couch is a seat.
Starting point is 00:12:21 You don't need to pull up a seat. And this guy's wearing a pork pie hat. a couch is a seat. You don't need to pull up a seat. And this guy's wearing a pork pie hat. Oh, this is like my personal hell. Like, what is it? What is it? There's nothing random
Starting point is 00:12:41 about this couch. Like, it's... I know. There's nothing random. It's the only set piece. There's nothing random about this couch. I know. There's nothing random. It's the only set piece. It's very pointed. Despite years of practice, years of playing gigs and paying his dues,
Starting point is 00:12:56 Bobby's most widely played song was his worst. Bobby was mortified. This horrible, annoying commercial would come on a lot all the time and you didn't want to be like, that's me. It was, like, really embarrassing. You just wouldn't say anything. You'd be with people.
Starting point is 00:13:10 I didn't tell anyone. I knew it was his voice, like, instantaneously. This is Bobby's oldest, coolest, bluest-haired friend, Jake. As embarrassed as Bobby was about the ad, he was especially embarrassed that Jake might hear it. Then he'd not only lose his punk cred, but also the respect of the person who taught him everything about music in the first place. So even though Jake and Bobby spoke every day,
Starting point is 00:13:40 had practice each week, Bobby never said a thing about the ad. But then one day, Jake was hanging out with Billy, a third member of Jake and Bobby's band. We're watching the Blackhawks, and then all of a sudden we hear this song come on. And we start kind of like giggling at the song. And then I was like, holy shit.
Starting point is 00:14:01 I was like, that's Bobby. And he goes, no, no, no, it's not. And I go, dude, that is Bobby. I know Bobby's voice. There's no one else that sounds like him. That's Bobby. We had a TV that we had the access to rewind it. So we rewinded and rewatched.
Starting point is 00:14:14 This is Billy. And then there's a tagline at the very end. He speaks it. On a random red couch. So it's clearly him. Billy. And he's like, oh my God, it is Bobby. And we started laughing and freaking out.
Starting point is 00:14:28 Later that day, they saw Bobby. Jake asked him about the ad. And his face just drops. Just drops. And he's like, oh my god. He's like, don't tell anyone about this. And until this moment, have you kept the promise that you made to Bobby?
Starting point is 00:14:44 Have you never told anybody? Oh, no, I told people. Of course Bobby's best friend and bandmate was going to dine out on Bobby's humiliation. And so, group texts were sent, links were forwarded, and everyone laughed. For Bobby, it was a huge embarrassment. But the thing that's outlived that embarrassment is a lingering question. What the hell happened? If you were to see this on TV, you would just be like, how did this happen?
Starting point is 00:15:18 How did this get into my TV? How did this get through? At the time, Bobby was a kid in his early 20s, the lowest on the ladder with no visibility into how the ad got greenlit. But now, as an adult, he wonders who ultimately greenlit the ad, and at what cost. Like, I heard a rumor that, like, Tim, the maker of the ad, had been seen, like, in the office of the big guy,
Starting point is 00:15:44 and he was, like, all red-faced and screaming. I started to feel like if you had worked on this commercial, you were like a pariah. It started to become a thing. You would hear people like, you guys worked on Random Red Couch? How's Tim's career doing? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:16:00 I don't know. I would like to know. He was a super, super nice guy. He would always wear a low baseball hat and glasses. And he talked like this, like real quiet, kind of like a stoner. Random red couch, right? This is Tim. It's all coming back to me now.
Starting point is 00:16:20 Unfortunately. Tim's now retired, but he was in advertising for over two decades. From OfficeMax to Budweiser, Tim's worked on tons of successful campaigns. But I'm calling to talk about his least successful one.
Starting point is 00:16:35 I ask if he would re-watch the ad with me while offering a running director's commentary. And Tim says yes. He is a super, super nice guy We got a random red couch Don't ask me why People eating favorites with a girl or a guy
Starting point is 00:16:53 Shit Got a random red couch Pull up a seat That's terrible You don't wanna be the one with nothing to eat We got a random red couch Flabbergast your friends Terrible
Starting point is 00:17:04 It never ends McChicken, McDouble, beef and cheese galore Now that's the flavor of dollar menu and more On a Random Red Couch It is the worst commercial ever made. Like Joe Cocker wouldn't have made that good. Random Red Couch is pretty bad, but is it the worst McDonald's commercial ever made?
Starting point is 00:17:28 Isn't that McDonald's hamburger delicious? Is it worse than this McDonald's ad from the 1960s, in which Ronald McDonald leaps out from behind a bush to accost a child on the street? Mom told me never to talk to strangers. But I'm Ronald McDonald. Here, I'll prove it. I'll give you three more hamburgers I'm not even sure Random Red Couch is the worst McDonald's jingle ever
Starting point is 00:17:53 Can it be worse than this one for Chicken McNuggets? I'm into nuggets, y'all I'm into nuggets, y'all I'm into nuggets, y'all Can it be worse than a pre-George Costanza Jason Alexander prancing down the street in pastel colors, singing about the virtues of the McDLT? I'm talking quarter pound of beef on the hot, hot side.
Starting point is 00:18:15 And the hot stays hot. The new McDLT. The McDLT. No more would beef and lettuce have to co-mingle. Through the miracle of a double styrofoam clamshell. The beef stays hot, the cool stays crisp. Put it together, you can't resist. Nick DLT.
Starting point is 00:18:34 Is Random Red Couch really worse than all that? We got a Random Red Couch. Don't ask me why. Yes. Yes it is. All those other ads might be forgiven due to their moment in cultural history. The pre-Stranger Danger atmosphere of the 60s, the delight in styrofoam and sherbet-colored blazers of the 80s. But Random Red Couch is free from cultural excuses,
Starting point is 00:19:00 a monolith of bad taste that rejects any context. I didn't actually think what I had written was ever going to see the light of day, but I was trying to get an assignment off my plate. It turns out that just like Bobby, Tim also thought Random Red Couch would be killed. He'd never written a jingle before, and was confused about why he was asked to write one now. Nonetheless. jingle before, and was confused about why he was asked to write one now. Nonetheless... I think I might have been let go because of that commercial.
Starting point is 00:19:30 Are you kidding? It wasn't explicit like that, but it was a thing where I had just heard through a couple of friends there that it had to have some influence on the decision. How long after the random redouch were you let go? I would say within months. Huh. Yeah. That was the end of a chapter for sure.
Starting point is 00:19:57 After 25 years at the agency, Tim was fired, perhaps for something that wasn't even his idea in the first place. But if Random Red Couch wasn't Tim's fired, perhaps for something that wasn't even his idea in the first place. But if Random Red Couch wasn't Tim's idea, whose was it? Who ultimately gave Random Red Couch the green light? Super, super nice to the end, Tim hesitates to name names. But it's not long before he's singing like a young Jason Alexander. Kathy. Kathy. Kathy.
Starting point is 00:20:26 I had become good friends with Kathy, who I was working with on it, and she was the creative director, and there wasn't a lot of oversight, and she kind of pushed it through. While Tim was above Bobby, Kathy, apparently, was above Tim. Rung by rung, I was climbing a ladder, a ladder of blame,
Starting point is 00:20:49 to find out who bore responsibility for the abominable, and random, red couch. Boy, all this talk about ads sure is making me thirsty. For ads! Boy, all this talk about ads sure is making me thirsty for ads. And lucky for me, here comes a big fat thirst-quenching tub of them. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do.
Starting point is 00:21:33 Enjoy the number one feeling winning in an exciting live dealer studio exclusively on FanDuel Casino where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. I would say it was probably the biggest clunker that I had ever done in my career. This is Kathy, the creative director for Random Red Couch and the person Tim worked under. Tim's an excellent writer. Oh my God. He's an extremely talented guy.
Starting point is 00:22:04 Tim's an excellent writer. Oh, my God. He's an extremely talented guy. Like Tim, Kathy retired from advertising some years ago, but says Random Red Couch has stuck with her. I ask if she recalls any of the lyrics. Yeah. Which ones do you remember? Well, what is it? I got a random red couch. Maybe I have a bigger mental block against this spot than I thought. According to Tim, Kathy had approved the random red couch.
Starting point is 00:22:38 But according to Kathy, it wasn't as simple as that. As a creative director, you have a handful of bosses and people reviewing the work. Just when I think I've reached the top step of the blame ladder, Kathy tells me that she never had the authority to greenlight. That level of decision-making came from her bosses. And these guys, like, absolutely loved it. One boss in particular. So at that time, our group creative director tony malcolm was a brit and he really wanted to use a song you know he had a lot of success with that in the london market and he wanted to do this like the ants come marching home and i'm like tony we can't do a song with ants for a
Starting point is 00:23:21 mcdonald's commercial that's you know they definitely have their list of no-goes and insects of any kind is a no-go with McDonald's. Right. He definitely wanted to shake things up. You know what? You should try reaching out to Tony. And he's a super nice guy. Really super nice.
Starting point is 00:23:36 I did a commercial that was called Just Passing By in the UK. This is Tony, Kathy's boss. And Just Passing By was a poem Tony wrote for McDonald's in England. After it aired, actual sales went up 500%, and so Tony was offered the job in Chicago. The whole poem started saying, the laborers and cablers and council motion cablers were just passing by.
Starting point is 00:24:03 Then the coffee types and coffee types and like their coffee, swaffy types were just passing by. Then the coffee types, and coffee types, and like their coffee, swaffy types were just passing by. Those on their own whilst on the phone, dunking McNuggets and having a moan were just passing by. The driving through with hungry crew who just pulled off the A32 were just passing by. So how did this happen? How did Tony go from crafting odes to rival Wordsworth to...
Starting point is 00:24:28 Random Red Couch. Tony explains the genesis of Random Red Couch. He'd wanted a song that was funny, but funny in a uniquely American way. I think there's a brashness to American humor. There's no subtlety in it and there's no intellectualism in it. It's just very bawdy and very funny. I think it is probably a British psyche thing. We're very reserved and less likely to shout. And when I first came to Chicago, what I realised is culturally, we're very different, especially in humor terms.
Starting point is 00:25:07 You know, the improv scene, Second City, and I remember Kathy was a big fan of a program called Between Two Ferns. So instead of two ferns, Tony thought one couch. What could be more American than sitting on a couch? Tony hoped to achieve the so-bad-it's-good aesthetic of Between Two Ferns But Random Red Couch stalled at so bad It's bad In general, though, Tony is right about British and American comedy They're nothing alike Whereas British humor has a U in it
Starting point is 00:25:41 American humor has no U And whereas the American office is funny, the British office... I don't know what they're saying. Having not been raised with American comedy the way Americans and Canadians are, Tony made a leap of faith. Random Red Couch seemed to have
Starting point is 00:26:00 all the hallmarks of American comedy. It was shouty, stupid, and in-your-face. Tony might just have missed some of the subtleties. And to be honest, as Tony performs a post-mortem, it still feels like something might be getting lost in translation. If you take the music out and just put a great voice in there, Morgan Freeman, for instance, would have been ideal. And he'd have just invited you to join him
Starting point is 00:26:26 in a, you know, beef burger or some very, very tasty offerings. He's got that sort of gravitas. It would have been, pull up a chair. You know when you're climbing a ladder? Not just the blame kind, but any kind, really.
Starting point is 00:26:49 There's that step at the tippy top, the one that reads, this is not a step. Tony, as it turns out, is that not a step step. Which is to say, there's no one higher than Tony. I did have to rubber stamp everything that went out as an ad. Like, it all kind of came down to you. Yes, I'm to blame for it there, in that respect. I didn't want to say that.
Starting point is 00:27:15 I'm the one who passed it. I'm the one who said, yep, let's go with that. Within a year of the ad's release, Tony was sent back to the UK. with that. Within a year of the ad's release, Tony was sent back to the UK. I moved my family to Chicago
Starting point is 00:27:30 to try and be successful and I would be living there now still had things gone the right way, but they don't sometimes. Although Tim and Kathy are no longer in the ad business, Tony is.
Starting point is 00:27:45 And in general, it's been pretty good to him. For one thing, it's allowed him to buy a 13th century chateau, which is French for castle. But this is a quite modest chateau. Tony's been learning all about the history of his humble fortress and is even writing a book about it, filled with fun facts like this one about the stairway in his turret. If you're going up it, it goes anti-clockwise.
Starting point is 00:28:14 So if the people attack your castle, your chateau, and they start to come up the turret, then they will struggle to swing their sword in their right hand. You're coming down clockwise, and you can have a full swing, and these people, their swing is being restricted by the fact the stairs go up anti-clockwise. Anti-clockwise. That's what we here in the U.S. of A. call counterclockwise. And what goes up counterclockwise must come down anti-counterclockwise.
Starting point is 00:28:45 And it was time to go back down, to where this whole thing got started. Bobby? Hello. I ask Bobby if he's available to talk, and Bobby says why, and I say, don't ask me why. So, I, um, I went back to Chicago, as it were. Okay. Spoke to all as it were. Okay. Spoke to all kinds of people. Okay.
Starting point is 00:29:09 I fill Bobby in on how the random red couch came to be greenlit, as well as the arcane distinctions between British and American stair climbing. To Bobby's greater concern, I break the news about the fate of his co-workers. It does seem like they probably lost their jobs because of this thing. Really? That's true? But all of them seem to be, like, happy and happier in some ways. Tim told me that since leaving advertising, he finally has the time to write poems and short stories,
Starting point is 00:29:40 the thing he's always wanted to do. And Kathy has returned to her first passion, fine art. She spends her days happily painting. As for Tony, he's got a castle. A quite modest chateau. Sorry, a modest castle. That is genuinely nice to hear. That is really cool that they have moved on from that world.
Starting point is 00:30:04 For Tim, Kathy, and Tony, all the campaigns are now a blur. There's one thing, though, that they do hold on to. Tim used to come in and we'd sit there and chew the fat and laugh. You know, we became good friends, all these guys, and we'd had some fun. You know, I mean, the people that we worked with were all great. And Tim's just hilarious. I remember very fondly Kathy and Tim. We had a lot of fun. You know, I mean, the people that we worked with were all great. And Tim's just hilarious. I remember very fondly Kathy and Tim. We had a lot
Starting point is 00:30:28 of fun. Their happiest memories, it turns out, are not so much of the work, but of the people they made the work with. It's the same for Bobby. He remembers hanging out in practice spaces with his friends a lot more than he does the
Starting point is 00:30:45 actual gigs they were practicing for. In fact, Bobby says he never really got past feeling like that kid in the record store, hiding behind his drum kit at the back of the stage. I didn't like playing live, even though I did it a lot for many years, because I kind of felt like I was supposed to and that I would eventually grow into it. And it took many years to realize I was like, I don't like this. What Bobby really liked, what he still misses, is hanging out with his best friends. Jake still lives in Chicago and I miss him every day.
Starting point is 00:31:18 Billy moved to New York, but pandemic started and now he's going to leave. So I didn't even really get to see him that much in New York. I miss that built-in friendship of being in a band. I liked just spending time with them and just having this built-in reason, almost like, well, we have to hang out Tuesday night because that's what we do.
Starting point is 00:31:40 You were just in each other's lives in a real way. I miss that a lot. Playing together, we had an amazing time. Jake and Billy miss playing with Bobby also. Yeah, you stole him from me. Yeah, sorry for that. I mean, he was always a prodigy growing up, like on any instrument that he touched.
Starting point is 00:32:01 Yeah, he's probably the best songwriter I know. And for all of Bobby's worry, when I ask Jake and Billy if they judge Bobby for Random Red Couch, they say of course they don't. They never did. I think if anyone else had done that song, they wouldn't be as embarrassed as Bobby
Starting point is 00:32:18 because Bobby can make really good music. I think with what he was given, he did the best he could. That is so sweet. But it still turned into a pile of crap. A pile of crap that infuriated a nation. What can be more punk than that?
Starting point is 00:32:43 If we weren't in the middle of a pandemic, I would spare no expense in assembling the old gang to play together. I'd fly them all back to Chicago to Jake's parents' unfinished basement, and I'd play the role of the sound engineer, keeping quiet, handing out complimentary coconut water
Starting point is 00:32:59 and contractually obligated gummy sharks. Hey, how are you guys doing? Sup? Good. But we are in a pandemic. So instead, I spend 30 seconds creating a Zoom link. You got glasses? Yeah, they're pretty new.
Starting point is 00:33:15 That is, I offer to spend 30 seconds creating a Zoom link. But Bobby says it'd be easier if he just does it himself. What are we doing? it'd be easier if he just does it himself. What are we doing? The thing I want to give Bobby, after all the acorns he's given me, is a chance to play with his friends the way he used to as a kid,
Starting point is 00:33:36 when it didn't matter what they were playing, only that they were all playing it, together. Together. Yeah. Chicken with double beef and cheese galore Now that's the flavor of dollar menu and more Yeah! No, that was, I could tell that one was really good. Jesus Christ. Alright, one second. One, two, three, four. piano plays softly
Starting point is 00:34:27 Now that the furniture's Returned to its goodwill home With dishes and last week's paper Rumors and elections, crosswords and unending war The black in our fingers, smear their prints on every door pulled shut Smear the prints on every door pulled shut Now that the last month's rent is healing With the damage deposit Take this moment to decide
Starting point is 00:35:16 If we meant it, if we tried I felt around for far too much The things that accidentally touched This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Stevie Lane along with me, Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior producer is Kalila Holt. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Chris Neary, Nazanin Rafsanjani, Phoebe Flanagan,
Starting point is 00:35:51 Nabil Cholampat, Jake Anderson, Billy Klein, and Jackie Cohen. The titular Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Michael Hurst, and he himself, the eponymous Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight, or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com. We'll see you next week. Parallelograms of light On walls that we repainted white Sun in an empty room
Starting point is 00:36:31 Sun in an empty room Sun in an empty room Sun in an empty room Thank you. A shadow crossed the sun in an empty room We don't live here any longer A sun in an empty room Thank you.

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