Indiecast - The Lost Episode

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

There's no fresh, funny, and incisive commentary on Indiecast this week due to technical issues. But here's a rundown of what you would have heard, including musing about Bluesky, The Bear's soundtrack, and the 30th anniversary of U2's Zooropa.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprox's Indy Mix tape. Hello everyone and welcome to Indycast. On this show we talk about the biggest indie news of the week. We review albums and we hash out trends. In this episode, there was a technical issue. Yes, I'm afraid to report that this week's episode of Indycast will go down in history as the lost episode of Indicast. And it's entirely my fault. We have this microphone set up here, and you have to plug a cord into the recorder thing, and there's two channels, and you're supposed to plug it into channel one, and I plugged it into channel two.

And I didn't realize this until after Ian and I had recorded an entire episode for this week, and I went, and I downloaded the wave file, and sure enough, an hour of dead air on my end. Ian's end, presumably is fine. My end, dead air. So we had three options, basically. We could have re-recorded the episode. We could have posted the episode with Ian's side and then just blankness for me. And then we had the third option, which was to beg this week's episode, and that is the option that we're going with.

And again, I just want to be publicly and perfectly clear about this. It's entirely my fault. I am the dufus. I messed it up. I am the reason why you are not getting fresh and funny and incisive indie cast content this week. What did we talk about? Well, we had a long conversation about social media because we both joined Blue Sky this week. Quite frankly, that was a little self-indulgent.

I don't mind you not hearing that. I mean, I always wonder how many of you are as like Twitter poisoned as Ian and I are. I suspect that all of you or most of you are, have rich lives and you're not going on these platforms and you just tolerate it whenever Ian and I go at length talking about these things. It's probably pretty tedious for you. So that part of the episode, I'm fine with losing. We also talked about the bear, the hit FX show, and the soundtrack of that show. I spoke with two of the creative masterminds of that show, Christopher Storer, who's the creator, the co-show runner, basically like the David Chase of the bear, and then Josh Sr., who is one of the executive producers.

And these two guys, they're involved in picking the music that goes on the bear. and if you've seen the show you know it's a very distinctive soundtrack. It's a very dad rock-heavy soundtrack, a lot of Wilco, a lot of R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Counting Crows. And they use the songs in that show, I think, in a very interesting way. The soundtrack almost feels like another character on that show. It's very much like a Greek chorus commenting on the action. So we talked a lot about that. And again, I wrote about that on Up Rocks this week.

I did interview with Storrhoer and senior. as I did last year about the first season. That was a good conversation. I would have liked for you all to hear that. We also talked about the 30th anniversary of Zuropa, the U2 record, which I also wrote about this week. And we also talked about this phenomenon that was common in the 90s, where you would have a band or an artist that had a very successful record.

And then their next record would be like this deliberate left turn, sort of like uncommercial type record. You have in utero by Nirvana. You have no code by Pearl Jam. You have a door by smashing pumpkins. You have obviously Zuropa being an example of this. You have Pinkerton by Weezer. You have The Fraddle by Nine Inch Nails.

You have Kid A by Radiohead. That's in 2000. But it's in line with this 90s tradition. You have Garth Brooks. becoming Chris Gaines. Even the biggest selling artist of the 90s felt a need to make the left turn on commercial record. And it's something you don't see as much now. I mean, the examples that I thought of were you have the last Kendrick Lamar record, Mr. Morrell and the Big Stepers. That's a pretty big left turn from what we were used to from Kendrick Lamar.

Very confrontational record. It feels like it's in line with this sort of 90s Gen X culture jamming. if I can use a outmoded term, culture jamming, to describe that. That seems like an example of that. I would also put the Arctic monkeys in this category. You know, they put out AM, big radio hit, and then they have a hotel, they have Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, as their next record, very much a left turn.

And then they made another left turn with their latest record, the car. You know, they're sort of continuing the left-turnedness over a couple of records in many years. So that was a good conversation. I wish you could have heard that. Then we answered two mailbag letters. And, you know, I actually won't talk about the mailbag because maybe we will just carry those over into our next episode, which will presumably, you know, actually be captured on tape.

And it won't just be me doing a recap for you of the lost episode. I recommended the Joanna Sternberg record. I've got me, which is a beautiful singer-songwriter record. One of my favorites of the year, very critically acclaimed. I'm joining the chorus of people who love that record. If you can't listen to this episode,

I'd recommend listening to Joanna Sternberg's I've Got Me. It's a great way to spend the hour or so that you would have spent listening to this episode. Again, I feel terrible. Ian and I had a fun conversation, So hopefully that's enough. You know, can you just enjoy a conversation without it being recorded? Is that still possible in 2023?

Can I just be like, hey, I had a good hour-long time with my friend and we weren't able to turn it into content, but we still shared that moment. Is that good enough? I think it's good enough. I still feel a little empty inside, though, that we didn't turn into content. I feel like we missed an opportunity and it's all my fault. Anyway, I apologize to the. Indycast listener for my mistake.

I promise it won't happen again. I'm going to be doubly careful with wherever I plug this thing. I'll plug it in the first channel next time. I promise. Won't happen again. Yeah, that's it. Thank you all for listening. This is a much shorter episode than you would have normally gotten in this time.

Hopefully it was like a, it was enough. I feel like I've had enough talking right now. Rambling. Time to wrap up. Thank you all. We'll be back with a regular. episode and more hashing out of trends and all that next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the indie mixtape newsletter. You can go to uprocks.com

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