No Filler Music Podcast - 200th Episode: Chillwave and Dream Pop in the Music Blog Era (with Josh Stewart)

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

For our 200th episode, we chat with our old pal Josh Stewart about our short-lived indie music blog, Newdust. We reminisce about the glory days of the 2010s blog era, putting on house shows in Denton TX, and the rise of chillwave and modern dream pop. Tracklist: Balkans - Edita V Toro Y Moi - You Hid Small Black - Camouflage Beach Fossils - Youth Tennis - Marathon Long Walks On The Beach - metaPhysical This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Pantheon is a proud partner of AKG by Harman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Boarding for flight 246 to Toronto is delayed 50 minutes. Ugh, what? Sounds like Ojo time. Play Ojo? Great idea. Feel the fun with all the latest slots in live casino games and with no wagering requirements. What you win is yours to keep groovy. Hey, I won! Feel the fun!

The meeting will begin when passenger Fisher is done celebrating. 19 plus Ontario only. Please play responsibly concerned by your gambling or that if someone close, you call 1-8665330 or visit Comex Ontario.ca. With Amex Platinum. You have access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. So your experience before takeoff is a taste of what's to come. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply.

It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get a nice rank on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Goaltenders, no. But chicken tenders, yes. Because those are groceries, and we deliver those too.

Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Okay, so with every episode, shit. So every week...

What? Oh, okay. So... Okay, I got it, bro. All right. So we try to... Yeah. So along with every episode halfway through the week, we release.

Forget it, man. Travis, my dear brother. Another milestone reached, dude. This is our 200th episode, man. We did it. Throw in the towel, dude. It's over. Let's end on a high note.

Yeah. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that we would be sitting here, dude? 200 episodes. I can't wrap my head around it, dude. Yeah, when you think of how many artists and albums we talked about and how many more artists and albums we for sure could talk about, like we could do another 200 easy, you know?

Easy. Yeah. And we will. We'll be talking to each other on the 400th episode in another, you know, two and a half years or so. For sure, dude. We had always planned on doing an episode like this with our guests today. And we thought that the 200th episode would be. be the perfect opportunity to sort of

reminisce. Go back to the origins of just our, our passion for sharing music with people, I guess. And it goes back to the music blog, which we've talked about quite a bit on this podcast. You've heard us refer to New Dust. That is the name of the blog, indie music blog. I feel like once a month, we'll mention it.

So like every, every fourth. episode will bring up new dust and we'll talk about Josh and the old days running that music blog together. Yeah. And if you listened to our episode where we had Joel Fruth, which was that, he was a, he was a producer from Deep Ellum. Yeah, he was the sound guy at the door. Yeah, a sound guy at the door. A historic music venue in Deep Ellum, Dallas. I know you guys talked about your days, days old dream, the band that you and Josh, we're in. So yeah, if you've been a long-time listener, you've heard Josh's name get thrown around quite a bit. Well, we finally had the chance to sit down and talk with them and we reminisce about

what it was like being, you know, one in a million Indian music blogs in the 2010s because, you know, this was the era. It's even referred to as like the blog era. Yeah, the music blog era where, you know, the radio wasn't the source for people who were looking to find new music anymore, you know. Yeah, it was right before music streaming like Spotify and SoundCloud even. I mean, SoundCloud was there, but like this was before music streaming became accessible enough and cheap enough, I guess, that just everyone has access now to streaming music. It's not hard. you can find new music and really you can find fairly unheard of, you know, kind of quote unquote underground bands through like Spotify, you know, or SoundCloud.

And Band Camp even. I mean, Ban Camp was around a few years before we started, before the blog era. But yeah, we were, that was back when music blogs were the way to find new music. Yeah, because independent artists could essentially, you know, know, circumvent the need for a record label by throwing up a single on MySpace or Bandcamp, like you said, Q, or just emailing them directly to us and all the other music blogs out there. And they could get enough attention that way to be successful, right? And so, yeah, we talk about that with Josh.

Yeah, let's just get into it here before we spoil the whole episode here. But yeah, we're going to jump right into our combo with Josh here. Happy 200th, Traff. Here's to another 200 more. Indeed. And thank you to everyone for all your support and for continuing to listen to us. Chuckleheads, chit-chatting it up once a week. It's been a lot of fun, and we are really excited to continue to do this and to share

music with you all every week like we have been for the last few years. So thank you, everyone, for listening. All right, so we got Josh here with us. And as we joked about in the intro, there are several things that we have mentioned ad nauseum on this podcast. One of them is New Dust. And the other one, typically when we talk about New Dust, it's accompanied by the name Josh. And now listeners get to hear the myth. The legend.

I mean, there's nothing mythical about him. Wow. Here he is. His name is Josh Stewart. He's joining us. Yeah. There's quite the windup. Travis, I appreciate it.

I think, like, what do we, where do we start, guys? So we, along with many other music fans out there, had our own little music blog. It was an indie music blog. We used to jokingly refer to it as a glorified MP3 blog, if you guys remember that. Maybe I was someone who referred it to it. No, no, that was Josh, dude. That was all Josh. That was all Josh.

But yeah, that's because, you know, we didn't really do, it wasn't a true blog format where we were doing, like, hard-hitting journalism or anything like that. Like it wasn't long format at all. It was just, hey, there's a little quick little thing about this artist and here's a song. Like, check it out. Yeah. What do you think? And then Josh, you took it and did some cool stuff with it once you got kind of like rooted in DC and like you did shows and you were like a DJ and stuff like that.

But here we are, you know, almost 10 years later. I think I remember you guys sort of like set the stage. It's like I was out of college, I believe, right out of college. I think. And, you know, we had all tried to play music. You know, Quentin and I were in a band together. And none of that really, none of that really popped off. Though we had a lot of good times. Yeah, we had a lot of good times with it. Your show's always popped off. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Travis. They were a blast, man. I will never be as cool as I was in Days old dream, dude. That was peak coolness. You're right. Yeah. Only downhill from there. Um, No, but I think the, I think, and I think a lot of people like make this transition where it's like, I'm not going to be the one that makes like the next good or even okay indie album, right? So what can I do to like be in the mix, right?

And like continue to contribute. Yeah. And I remember, I think it was it two Charlies and Denton. I have to like really think about it. But I remember getting beers with y'all and just talking about it. You talked about building a website and I kind of thought you were a little nuts. because I was like, I don't know, this sounds expensive. I didn't really know how easy it was to build a site through WordPress,

which Travis you did quite well and quite on the cheap, I might say. So yeah, I mean, to me, it's like it kind of started with failure in a way because we were like, well, what do we do? How do we contribute? Like, we're no longer like touring around and you kind of lose that. Like you miss that, like even though we weren't that great or that popular or anything, right? And so it was like a great way to like stay involved and like meet people and just write. And the expectations were so low.

And then when people started sharing and people started liking and even as it slowly started to grow, you started to wonder like what can we do with it, you know? And it kind of mixed with music changing and that the internet was causing like genres to break down in like a significant way. people were making up all kinds of new genres because nobody knew how to talk about music. And I think that's what was really cool is because there was a breakdown of genres, but there was also a breakdown in how people distributed music, right? And so tumblers, WordPress blogs, and in our case, we were just kind of a niche like NP3 blog, right? I think Travis, correct me, but there was a while when we had like guest writers.

And I remember having to like people would write like three or 400 words and I would cut it in half. Because I'd be like, y'all, y'all people need to be able to read this in 30 seconds and then decide whether they want to read an MP3, which is probably why I'm obsessed with Twitter now. Writing for the blog probably rotted my brain out. And so I'm like a perfect person for Twitter. But that's kind of like my big picture, you know, takeaway and how it kind of got going, you know. Yeah. So that was, so let's try to figure out like when did we start this? It must have been 2008, June of 2009 was the first.

post and it was White's Boy Live. So I feel like the first week or two of posts queue was just us that, you know, maybe the three of us just talking about because we weren't getting emails yet from artists. Like indie artists weren't sending us stuff until a little bit later. So we would just throw stuff up that we liked, you know, basically and just talk about it. Yeah. I had a post on this band called the Botticelli's that I saw open at Andy's bar like I was in Denton, I think hang out with you, Josh, for some reason.

and like this band Poticelli's was on. So like we posted about them. But then we started getting like little indie artists to email us and with a little write-ups from their PR person or from them. Usually it was just from them. And then we would just go from there. And then it kind of went from there. And like, and yeah, thank you for unlocking that memory, Josh. I totally forgot about two Charlie's.

That was a cool bar. They had like that nice little outdoor patio. Yeah, that was the one place that we always went to. And we made the track up to Denton. So do we want to start off? with um i feel like that's a good segue for balkins if we wanted to do that first because they were the first one of the first bands that i remember that we got an email from a band and we actually liked the music and decided to post about it yeah so we could do that and then we could segue into chill wave

can i say something about that before you play them because it's like the weird thing about this is like this era for those that didn't participate or for those that don't know it was like really it was a little bit of the wild west where like nobody was sure how much anyone was reading a blog or like how popular a blog was. You knew the big fish were Gorilla versus Bear, stereo gum. But like I remember getting those like first emails and just being so excited that like a band wanted us to like listen to their music. Yeah. It was really cool.

You know that that fades into something different obviously later on and like you kind of like wrestle with it. But there was like a naive excitement like to starting it and just being like. like, it goes back to wanting to contribute, which this was like the earnest part where it was like, oh my gosh, like a band like just just trying to get their name out there. And we can do our little thing. Yeah, we can give them a platform to share their music. And Balkans was within the first few months of us starting the blog. So like this was like probably the first band that reached out to us. Do you remember them at all, Josh? I don't. I'm looking forward to hearing. They're like a super fast-paced post-punk bands.

They were certainly channeling like the strokes. Yeah, we refer to them as like the first graduating class. The torchbearers, you know. Yeah, of like the garage rock revival of the early 2000s. Because they were probably in high school, if not freshman in college, when they reached out to us. So it's like they were keeping that sound alive, if you will, because, you know, obviously the strokes had kind of already came and went but at that point right julian was doing his own

thing around that time all right so this is again a post-punk indie rock band called balkins this song is called adida v a little bit of the libertines in there too yeah totally i did i love that song always well always will have a special place in my heart for balkins but yeah if you want to hear more about these guys go check check out our our episode that we did it was one of of our early, early episodes. It was a sidetrack for the strokes. Side track for the strokes. Yeah, okay.

What I liked about these guys is like they were, the picture that they sent us, if it's the one we use on the website, it probably is. They're just so young. And it was kind of encouraging to see that like, you know, the next generation of post-punkers, you know, was still doing it, you know, just like the strokes were and stuff like that. You know, obviously that sound is still happening. But like, you know, this was the next generation of it. And it was cool to get that track in our email, you know.

Yeah, it was unclear who was going to pick up the mantle after the bubble burst because they threw record labels at every band that had the in the title. Right. Yeah. And then it blew up, you know, meet me in the bathroom. There was a book. Strokes were on heroin. Everyone got sober.

You know, there was the whole like arc of it. And then it was like, okay, like what's rock and roll going to sound like? And then we'll get to this a little bit, but it turns out it was going to sound like a lot different. I think the Balkans are an exception to most of the bands we covered. Totally. That's almost like a novelty when you kind of look at like the, like most of what we posted was like bands pushing in a new direction or bringing back old genres or, you know, all kinds

of stuff. Yeah. And it's worth noting that that Balkans really didn't have much success beyond. You know, they put out of a full length in 2011, just a self-titled full-length album. But beyond that, like, yeah, and that's probably because they weren't transitioning into, you know, what the 2010s was dominated by, which was like the dream pop or like the electronic type stuff. The juggernaut of chill wave. Yeah, or the chill wave stuff, you know what I mean? Even Phoenix.

I mean, think about 1901 with that like ripping synth like in the beginning. Yeah. You know, and they were huge, obviously. But, I mean, their album before that, it's never been like that was essentially like them trying to do a strokes record. and then they did Wolfgang Amadeus and they transcend, you know, all of a sudden they were doing like arenas. You know, I mean, that song was, that song was huge. I hear 1901 in Target like every other week still, you know, to this day. Good for them. Get that money.

Yeah. But like you said, like, you know, what Balkans didn't do was have some dancey synthiness to it. And I feel like that's kind of what happened with rock. Like if you were doing the post-punk sound, like you had to have. some synth in there. Yeah, and we covered some great rock and roll bands and we were lucky to have them. But I do remember when a rock band came through, it was kind of like, whoa. It was like, and a rock band that we liked, like, you know, because there's a lot of bad, bad rock bands.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Like, yeah, the ones that stood out were really, like, few and far between. Yeah, I remember getting to Broncho, like, this is later, like, 20, 2012, 2013. maybe and being like, I think they're from Philly. Somebody will, can at me if I'm wrong. But, you know, I think they're from Philly. But it was just great, like rock and roll. And then now, you know, they've done like two great records in a row.

You know, I think they were best new music that like last record they did. And, you know, they've really blown up. Unknown Morto Orchestra, Tame and Paul, you can own down the list. Right. That's psychedelic. Maybe that's another direction that rock went in is kind of embracing like the 60s psych sound, psych rock sound. But I think it was all grounded by like what was trendy and I think we can get into this now maybe is like the defining genre of like the like 2009 to like 2012.

It's got to be like chill wave like yeah without without a doubt. Right. And everything that comes with it. Washed out changed everything man. Life of leisure. Yeah. So let's talk about that. Life of leisure came out in 2009.

Did it not? Yeah. And you posted on it, John. Gosh, you were my introduction to washed out. Good, sir. And therefore, your introduction to chill wave, cube. Yeah, and the weird thing is, too, is, like, this was, like, what was weird about the blog kind of echo chamber was that, like, I don't remember exactly, but I had to have seen it on Gorilla versus Bear first because they were pushing all that stuff out, either first or, like, as an exclusive. They were pushing the aesthetic, too.

Yeah, exactly. Polaroid aesthetics. Absolutely. Acid washed and just like everything about it. I heard it almost positive on Gorilla versus Bear and I threw it up because like there's really not rules, right? It was just like I got the MP3 from them and then I put it up. And then it's kind of that seemed to be the intent, right?

It's like they want to get this stuff out there and then people to buy the record and like go to the shows. We were just bombarded with Chill Wave. And Tribe, do you want to play a tour? Toro-I-Mois? Yeah. Or is it Moi? Can we get down to the bottom of this? Is it Toro-I-Mois or Toro-I-Moy?

I think it's Mois. I'm embarrassed every time I say his name because I have the fear that I'm saying it wrong. Yeah, I don't know. I've seen him live like three times, too. We mispronounce things all the time. I think it's Mois. Toro-I-M-A. I mean, that definitely sounds more like sophisticated.

It's French. It's French. He's from South Carolina, so I mean, like, I don't know what's going on there. But he was, he actually became good friends with Mr. Washedout. What was his name? Mr. Washed out. It's doctor. That's, that's, yeah.

Now he's got a doctorate in Chillwave. But anyway, all right, let's play a track. So this was, I feel like these, so Life of Leisure and then this record to me were like my intro to Chill Wave. I'm actually going to play a song here called You Hid. There it is. There it is. He is great because I feel like he is.

because I feel like he is someone that took an opportunity with a genre that was kind of doing something different. And I don't even think like chill wave songs are like the best kind of song, so to speak. But the sound and like the mood and like everything about it was so interesting and it like drew you in. And the songs got better as the genre kind of like evolved and him and washed out like just like it like hits you immediately. like the bounce to it and like, I mean, that record especially is like, you know, what the dads out there would call like a real headphone band, you know, like you just like put, put the headphones on and like vibe out, right? That era, like 2008, I feel like that was also about the time that we were seeing more and

more like bedroom pop, like literal like DIY stuff. And we were getting all the MP3s from these artists, you know, that were just literally like, hey, I just recorded this with my little, you know, synth keyboard. Let me know what you think. And it just happened to be like, it just turned into that whole hypnagogic pop kind of thing, which we talk about all the time on this podcast. Yeah. But like nostalgia kind of drippy, like just yearning for like the past.

Like our generation still has access to our old Sega Genesis, you know, games and stuff. You know, like we we just love that old like eight bit sound. And I feel like that's part of it. And you could watch old commercials on YouTube. Like there's whole channels devoted to 90s commercials. And you can just hit play and like get your build of cereal and pretend like you're watching Saturday morning cartoons again, you know. I think that some of it. And I think the other piece is though it was really like a new sound.

Right. Like it just sounded completely different like in terms of like what it was offering you. Yeah. And that's what's interesting about it because that's the kind of the hypnotic. hypnagogic pop thing. It's like, it sounds older, but it's familiar.

Yeah, it's familiar. So yeah, did we want to queue up that small black track? Quick anecdote about Tori Muad, though, I remember,

and Travis, you may remember this because you did some of the backend stuff, but the later record he did. He had a song called Still Sound, which was funkier, right,

and had like these kind of Stevie Wonder almost like as keyboards. We put it up and folks got a hold of our blog in Japan. Do you remember this? And it drove crazy traffic. Huh. Like 20,000. What?

You don't remember. It was like 20,000 like visits like a day, which for us was like insane. I'm sure our phones were blowing up between the three of us at that point, just freaking out. But was it something to do with that song? I think I just put it on and it might have been it might have been Reddit. It might have been Tumblr. But somebody picked up our like link to us. Right.

And then it just went viral. And I posted it. So it may be why like I remember this. Yeah. Because like, you know, you would follow your own post to see who is like reading them or how many people like downloaded the link or whatever. But I'm pretty sure we embedded his SoundCloud, but you can't remember. I want to get something straight here real quick before we play this song. I've convinced myself that our blog put Foster the People on the map.

No way. I'm saying. Oh, you're right. I think we played pumped up kicks before it blew up. It was even on the radio. So they also had PR people bullied us to remove the photo because they changed band members. Do you remember this? Dude, my memory is shot.

Man, you were getting all the action, Josh. Yeah, because we put up a photo of them that they sent us to be clear. And or that was on their promo materials, you know, one of the two. Like, you know, we weren't, we weren't crazy. Like, we would just get, oh, we'll just put the album artwork. Like, we weren't trying to be, you know. We would do whatever until someone told us to take it down. Yeah.

And so I remember, I remember they were like, oh, you got to take this photo down. It either had somebody or didn't have somebody. And I was like, okay. And then I think I was like, can I get tickets to your show? And then they like stopped email. So. But yeah, pumped up kicks blew up. And I think we did.

Thanks to New Dust. It's our, yeah. We can take credit for that. But a better song, and in my opinion, a better band was Small Black. And this is the track one off of their album, New Chain, which just some context for this era, too, is like, not only was this all like, show waste of stuff happening was like a band like small black and watched out. They toured together and also did like a split seven inch where they remixed each other's songs. So there was also this cool era of like collaboration where bands were like,

you're doing something very similar. And it was just really exciting as a fan, right, to like participate in that, which is like a lot of what we were doing on the blog, you know, maybe 10% journalism, 50% fanboy. And then like the rest is like content, like the other 40% is like content curation and, you know, aggregating. Mix tapes and MP3s. Yeah, yeah, essentially.

but this is camouflaged by small black off the album New Chain came out in 2010. After playing that, Travis You're Right. It is like something a little bit familiar with like a wall of sound that is really sort of unique and like something you've never heard before. Yeah. But at the same time, you're like, am I getting some beach boys? Is that like a little beach boys in there? You know? Dude, perfect segue because I wanted to bring this up.

again when you said Beach Boys, and we're going to cover this album in a couple weeks, Panda Bear's person pitch, which came out in 2007, so that was just a couple years before all this stuff went down, is considered like a huge influence on Chill Wave and numerous other indie bands. And that's, yeah, it's that it's like steeped in that 60s rock style, but like it was just nothing but like sample based in like later. and layers of reverb, you know? And that's kind of that whole wall of sound thing, but not in like a,

not in a shoegaze way at all. It was like something totally different. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right. And it's like they were the, and Panda Bear was coming out of something different, which was like the freak folk stuff.

And then you can hear like small black tape pieces of other versions of chill wave. And then they're adding like kind of 80s pop sensibilities, like more. Yeah. Because you're immediately like, I am in my bedroom in a John Hughes movie, kind of like. Totally. Yeah. And even their lyrics, they're all kind of about heartbreak or like being like kind of young and confused.

And anyways, great record. Highly recommend New Chain. Absolutely. That's my favorite of theirs for sure. Great band. You know, they continue to put out good stuff. But New Chain is really good one. Yeah.

So kind of in the same vein. And this was another subject. genre that we that was very very much a part of of new dust and the types of bands that we would cover is sort of this this new wave of dream pop artists and you know we kind of point to beach houses team dream as sort of like the the starter of all of that and then plenty of other bands that just basically like through a dart at a dart board with like you know ocean beach sea sounding uh names right like like sea pony beach fossils which is what am I to play right now but yeah it was kind of this mashup of

the dream pop like shoegazy sound with like surf rocky type of stuff think real estate too real estate was a big one I think that's the big the big change is like sure it's dream pop but like not the classic dream pop that's that's tied with shoe gaze yeah and that's I think why why q you and I have we're so like taken it back by that because our our exposure our intro to dream pop was stuff like this Right. And then we kind of dove deep into shoe gaze and was, you know, we read that the terms were interchangeable. Yeah. But like these pants don't sound like shoegaze, but it's all sort of it's the next wave. Yeah, I think, I mean, it's like a lot of what we're talking about. It's like all made up and kind of like silly. And it's mostly writers and nerds that use this stuff to categorize it.

Yeah. But like they did kind of bring back a sound. But it was very much not like, you know, it was previously. but I think it is, I think it is interesting. But like this to me, I can't think of the old stuff. Like, I didn't know they called that shoegaze. I didn't know they called Shugay's Dream Pop. Yep. Maybe that was, maybe there's like a British too, like British American way of talking about it. That was part of it.

Yeah. It was part of it. And I was like mid to mid to late 80s, early 90s. And I think it was certain shoe, certain Shugee's bands had other elements to their sound. Cocktail Twins. Yeah, Cactout Twins and stuff like that. aside from like not separate from my bloody valentine stuff right it was a little more melodic not so much like drowning in a wall of sound kind of stuff but yeah i think what the 2010's dream pop wave was

was incorporating sounds of like shoegays sounds and the breathy vocals and stuff like that but then adding in like the surf rock sound to it all right so let's play a song here off of beach fossils self-titled record came out in 2010 i'm going to play the banger off the record here. This song is called Youth. It's weird looking, like listening to this stuff 11 years later and thinking that this wasn't always a thing. You know, like this wasn't always a sound

because bands have continued to do this since then. Yeah. And there's still, bands are still putting out great music that sounds just like this. And I never get tired of it. I mean, beach fossils put out a record in 2018, 2017? Did they really? They put out a record relatively recently.

Yeah, they're still doing it. Somersault came out in 2017. And there was some really good stuff on there. Tangerine was a good track off of here. But yeah, what's interesting about this first record, but it was written, recorded, and produced by the front man, Dustin Pacea. I remember even seeing old live record, like live videos of him doing concerts, and it was just him on stage with his guitar.

And like he had a drum track and and stuff like that. So like it was just like some of these chill wave artists like very like DIY like bedroom type stuff where you just kind of record this stuff in your in your dorm room kind of thing. You know what I mean? But yeah, this record just I remember it on full blast like that entire summer. So it came out in May 2010 and you know, everything about it just screams summer to me. And the lyrics are all about like kind of being nostalgic for youth and stuff like that. So I think a lot of our generation was kind of, you know, most of us were in our 20s around this time. You know, we were just trying to figure out our way in the world.

You know what I mean? And we were kind of longing back to our youth, I think. And I feel like chill wave and now vapor wave, right, which is a whole different thing. It all kind of points back to our youth, you know. and the nostalgia and all that kind of stuff. So much of the music that we covered on New Dust was exactly that. Yeah, so it seems like dream pop, chill wave, it's all kind of in the same like umbrella of like these, this sound of like sort of familiar but new, you know.

Just say it, Trayv. Hypnagogic is the word that we're looking for here. What's interesting about beach fossils though is like I don't think they, I think they kind of were hip and they kind of took off. But I don't think they punched through, right? And that was, like, kind of interesting to me. But that record, despite that not punching through, I think it held up well. I think people continued to find it and kind of, like, go back to it.

There's probably other records from the era that I'm not doing justice. But, like, I know for me, that's a record, like, all these bands, you forget their names. But I would go back to that one and be like, man, this is still, like, all the way through, like a great record there's like good songs on here it's like you can tell like the he put a little bit of him are a lot probably of himself

into it and then you know he grew it a little bit and there's definitely growth on the next record they did but it also kind of on top of being dream pop and encapsulated the aesthetic of like another thing that was very triny at the time which is like lo-fi right

the idea that like it's like fits in a deep It's like these words were kind of interchangeable to people because they were like all virtue signals that you were like you were kind of anti-corporate music, right? And so it's like your DIY or you're like low five. And it's like in some ways you were communicating some level you were getting back to basics in some way or like not getting like involved. But like there's like a fair amount of TLC and production involved. It's just like low tech. You know, I mean like those.

Yeah, that's part of the chill wave sound too. Yeah, those songs take some finesse. And maybe this is like a good segue way to play. There's like a band I think that encapsulates this, but like did punch through, right? And I think that's tennis, right? I think they're kind of a defining band of like dream pop and they pull obviously into that lofi kind of thing that was super triny when like we were writing about blogs. like all the blogs like tripped over themselves to cover tennis. We covered them certainly.

And they also, they fit in the low-fi, they fit into Dreampop. And they also pulled like kind of doo-wop and surf rock, like all into like one band. And so this is from like Pitchfork's review of the single marathon, which I believe the single came out in 2010. And I think the record came out in 2011, right? So this is from June 23rd of 2010. So let's see. Where does the band got its name when Alonimo was teasing your husband, Patrick Riley, for partaking in elitist rich man's sport?

So it's either terrifically ironic or perfectly fitting that they should instead base early songs on the New England aquatic pastime. Fortunately, this pop tune is so ingratiating that a debate over its intended irony seems moot, right? And so the other context is they wrote this while, uh, essentially getting a sailboat and sailing around together for several months. So they, unlike some of these other bands that had no story, they very much had a story that was like interesting and quirky and a little bit romantic. And then when you listen to their music, it just pushes the narrative forward,

which I think, I don't know about you guys, but it was like something I ate up as like somebody who contributed to the blog, rock economy, so to speak, you know. Yeah, and that was part of it too. Like with these indie musicians that were trying to break through, like having a narrative and the story is what helped with these, you know, in the era of the music blog where some, you know, some blogs did do nice little write-ups and stuff. And having a story helped you break through and stand out.

And yeah, that story. I always remember that. When I think of tennis, I'm like, hey, that's like that married couple that went out on the sea and wrote these cool songs. I'm not knocking them. I think it's like earnest too. I think they genuinely like they did this and they started this kind of like new life and they put out these singles and people really reacted to it. I mean, I don't even think they expected. Yeah. Because you can just, it all is part of the same package because you're right that it's the dream pop surf,

doop sound for some reason just fits perfectly with, you know, we're living on the sea. You can even see on Spotify, this is like a little like kind of insidery dumb stuff, but it's like this song has 12 million listens. And like some of the others we've been playing have like two or three million, which is still a lot. But I mean like I think tennis kind of broke through and like we can play it. And I think folks can if you don't know tennis, I think you'll hear why. But probably most of your listeners know this band. Yeah. And this is just my way of knowing if a band has made it.

to the mainstream is if I hear them in Target, and I hear probably some of their newer stuff, but I definitely hear tennis in Target. Anyway, all right, so here is a marathon off of tennis's 2011 album Cape Dory. Coconut Grove is a very small cove, separated from the sea by a shifting shawl. We didn't realize that we lived at high, died, high and died, barely made it out Overwhite fishermen working at night Not even once did we see a light We didn't realize it been revised by moonless skies and shifting winds and shifting winds

the gas on the sand a keel is heaving but tonight we got to be leaving travel through the day and into the evening great song yeah great song and yeah totally different than uh most of the other dream pop stuff that was coming on in that era and that's probably why they why they had such uh staying power and stuff like that because they they had this different dynamic to them that um that nobody else didn't. Maybe that was the do-wop stuff that they were doing. Maybe it was the story, the narrative, that that kind of helped them get such a following. But yeah, everything about them, they were just perfectly, perfectly packaged. Like, they knew what they were doing, you know. And there's nothing new about that song. That's the thing. Like, that's just a, like, that song could have come out in the

50s. Yeah. But to everyone that heard that song that was, like, listening to it online, that was, like, seeing the polaroids of her and her husband on the boat and like all of that stuff. It was like who like what is this? Like is this come, did this come out now? Like or is this like some old band, you know? Yeah. It was a weird time. I mean, people forget it was like 08 to 2010.

I mean, like what are these musicians reacting to around them? And it's like global financial meltdown, you know? And it's like the, you know, it was crazy. You know, I mean, when we started the blog, like I remember like you would read the news and like a million, you know, the like jobs numbers. It was like these crazy like, oh, we lost a million jobs this week. Oh, there's another million. And it was just like.

You can't wrap your head around. Yeah, car factories were shutting down. Like, you know. And so like a lot of this was like escapeism too, right? And maybe maybe that's a good thing about this. Maybe it's a bad thing. Like it didn't confront the politics head on. But like I remember listening to this as to escape like everything that was going on, you know.

DC, the war, you know, like all, all of, you know, the job market, like all of that stuff. And, you know, it's, it is like interesting to look back and like think about that as like context. And the fun part was like anyone could start a blog and like write about it, which was like, you know, it's definitely not true anymore. I think, you know, you got it, you can't just posting people's MP3s. It's like, that's very much not cool, you know. Yeah. We get away with it because we're technically an educational program with this podcast. Well, yeah, it's different.

You're not giving people a file. Like, we used to just give it away. And that was like part of the part of the thing. We actually had a disclaimer. We had a disclaimer on the site. And I don't think we actually stuck with this. But it says, these songs are available for listening purposes only for a limited time. Meaning we were supposed to go back and delete them.

We never did that. Yeah, that never happened. The more I think about like tennis too, the more I think about, like, imagine, like, somebody who was, like, R-Age at the time and, like, explaining to them the purpose of an MP3 blog, and it would just be so irrelevant to, like, a young 20-something music fans, music listening experience now, right? Because, like, Spotify changed everything.

Because, like, back when we were, it was, like, you had a few blogs, and you would scroll them for what was the newest, hippest thing. And, like, that's the other thing. It was, like, we were, there was, like, a small piece of the music pie. which was like music blogs and we were a tiny tiny tiny tiny fraction of that but it was like

we were already like music blogs were already a small piece but it did drive kind of this like online chatter that I think was like very like fun to be a part of it was clicky and it had its own lingo I mean there was even a satir like it was even satirized like hipster runoff

was a blog that like made fun of like all of the hipsters that like listen to things on music blogs. And Carl's is still on Sirius XM. I think he still has a radio show. Carl's is the guy that did hipster runoff and the alt report. Do you guys remember this? I remember the name, but I don't.

Yeah, hipster runoff. He's ringing a bill. Yeah, my one run in with Hipster Runoff was I went to a Best Coast concert in Georgetown. And the college kids that put on the show gave Bethany from Best Coast four locos. And she like took pictures with them. and then Hipser Runoff did this like tabloid post that was like, oh, Bethany, we're worried about you. Are you partying too hard?

And I was like at that show. Four Locos, classic. That's another, yeah, unfortunate thing for this era. We don't have to talk about that. That's one good thing the U.S. government did is I think they got in there with four loco. I was like, y'all can't do this. So you started to like put together new dust shows and D.

and you got kind of tied into that scene towards the end of our run with the blog. Yeah. You know, like I was very cool for me in D.C. to do to like start doing shows and start DJ and all this other stuff. But we did all get to go to one show together that we put on

like in Denton with what was the band called? Marmalakes and Mont Lions. Marmaligues and Montlines. That's right. I think there was there another opener, but I don't, maybe not. It was going to be Larry Lodra, my friend from Austin, but he felt, fell through at the yeah who we should say Larry Lodra is uh there there's a lyric that we

stole from one of his we asked him for permission but um that's right that's where the name new dust came yeah it was take this new blood wait take this old blood and make new dust yeah and then we turn that into the name of the block anyway that was that was a Larry Lodra song yeah but yeah but yeah the didn't show that was like I've you know that probably felt like at the time like all right we've we've we've made it like we're putting on a house show like this is this is this is Awesome. And it was awesome. It was a huge turnout. Yeah, it was cool. It was a blast. That was what was cool about it in that like it was very earnest, I think. And like both the bands and the blogs there was like it was it was transactional in that like the people wanted people to read your blog. Right. And the bands wanted them to listen to their bands. But there was this like sense of collaboration that it's like, well, it's impossible because newspapers were already dying. It's impossible to get any local. media to give her crap about any band um even like student paper like it's just you're not going to get it and so these blogs were just like something that bands held onto and so it created this opportunity

like we threw that house show in denton and then i threw several i threw a show at a carriage house in dc that the cop showed it was like 200 people came was like the cop showed up it was like i didn't know what i was doing it was just like a huge mess but it was like this band called long walks on the beach which maybe we can play a little bit of or you can play in the outro. It was a band called The Midnight Kids and then a guy named Delicate Steve who is still around playing like instrumental music. That sounds familiar. Yeah, he's still around.

You should look, you guys should look him up. You guys should probably do a great episode on him. He's kind of like an instrumental rock guy and does really fun stuff. Cool. That was like the first show. You know, I did another one with like synth guys that were a Baltimore band called Reindeer and a DC band called Painted Face. and, you know, like, DJed around.

And it was just really like, the main thing is, like, I got to, like, contribute in just, like, a tiny, tiny way and, like, be involved and, like, meet people because, you know, the Google ads money, we didn't make any money from that. So it was basically, like, free shows walking around money from DJing, and then occasionally putting together a show where you got to, like, curate, like, an evening for some people.

And I remember, like, I think I, one of the shows I sold at this place called the, The Velvet Lounge, which I think just closed down in D.C., but it's like a little room capacity is like 75 people. And I remember filling it up with for the show and was just like so happy because it was just like, you know, because it's like I'm not really a promoter. I'm not really a journalist. It's like this weird, it was this weird era where folks were trying to combine these different things. And like I have friends that have grown their sites into like big music festivals now and Gorilla versus Bears. like still around who we've rested in a bunch and stereo come is still surviving but you know it really

it really was weird that there like wasn't a rule book and if i could go back in time and tell myself to like be more focused i probably could have done more but the but it was just pulling you i think we even talked about starting a label like like come on like what were we but it was just like you could pick a thing and then use the blog to like help be the engine behind that thing yeah it is bizarre that all you needed was a music blog back then. Well, yeah, we were able to get, we were able to get press passes for shows. Yeah. Like, it's like, we're not the press, but here we are. And to have a band drive, you know, several hundred miles to play a house show for you. It's crazy. Really cool. Crazy. Yeah, definitely, definitely like, to me, that's like,

what I would love to know, and I'd love to, I would read like a long piece about this is what, like, folks that are 21, 22, 23, what that version is of this now, right? And, you know, I think, I'm sure it's like, you know, maybe it's like newsletter, you know, who I don't, I don't really know, like, have no idea, like, what it is, you know, and like, folks are like organized around things on TikTok, but that is, like, much more massive. Like, I don't know where, like, the niche stuff kind of, like, happens anymore. Right. Is it Fortnite? I mean, it's also, it's also different now, right? And this, this happened a little bit for us. Like, do you guys remember? like the blog like crossover where a lot of the indie blogs that we liked or like that we looked up

to would also cover like Kanye or like somebody like huge because it was like it became it wasn't like oh like the only music I listen to is like I go and I listen to sad rock music and I nod my head it's like no like I also like listen to Kanye or I listen to DFA records like Yacht or like LCD sound system or, you know, Hercules and Love Affair or like whatever like these bands are. Or I also listen to Daft Punk. You know, it's like, like, things were getting like mixed up more. And like that was also like a cool part. We didn't do that because I felt like it was like, well, we're not really. Nobody's coming to us to like find out about Kanye. But it's like some of these blogs were so big that like the big artists would want like their blessing because

they wanted to be cool or something. Well, there was a, There was a hip-hop music blog that I remember called Pigeons and Plains. Pigeons and Plains. Are they still around? Maybe. Pigeons and Plains. The fact that I don't know, it tells you everything you need to know about how old I am. It seems like they got wrapped up into this website called Complex.

Oh, yeah, Complex. And now Complex, I think, is Condi Nast. It's almost like Complex, like Pigeons and Plains got wrapped up into Complex, and it's like a section of the site. From what I can tell. So maybe they just grabbed all the articles. Whoever ran it may be going to buy out. That's the dream. Yeah, maybe.

Maybe. We never got bought out. Nope. Not even close. Nope. I will say our last redesign, I loved it. It was probably horrible for readership and horrible for like 88 compliance and like any kind of stuff.

Is it the spacey look? The spacey look. It was shout out to Nick Dinman. Yeah, Nick Denman. He was the one who put that together. He put it together. and it was the last I remember once that came out I was like when people land on this this is exactly the kind of vibe like I want people to like associate with whatever we're trying to do which I couldn't describe what we were trying to do in one sentence but I was just like yeah I still can but it was just like it felt cohesive at least at least the logo like worked well with the rest of the vibe of the site unlike because like before it was just like just random shit like we had a giant vinyl record at the top of the website with the logo written in it and stuff like that.

The arm wasn't attached correctly with the vinyl, so it would have just skid right off. That was my horrible Photoshop job, but. But then not that long after, the blog just completely died. Like, we lost it completely. What's the story? We essentially got, it was a, like, a malware attack of some kind that attacks WordPress blogs. Yeah, and that's the funny thing about WordPress is that it's known for like a few things. It's really easy to do and then it's really easy to get hacked because it's the biggest,

it's the biggest web platform ever. So like hackers just know how to basically like with WordPress like anybody can write a plugin that you can use. And we probably had a bunch of plugins that we used. And you're just kind of, you know, putting it out there for like, well, I guess I'm going to trust that my blog is not going to get hacked if I install this plugin because it might not be the most secure code. You know what I mean? And that's what happened. And I just wasn't up to snuff to be able to track down the bug and like remove it correctly and stuff like that. So we're just like, I guess it's over. We had a good run. Yeah. I guess that's it then because like I couldn't I couldn't do it. And I tried to

you know, for a second I like tried to start over and like we had kind of a redesign going and it just never it never happened. And I think we all had different things going on to at that point. So Well, I moved up to Washington by then. And not to mention, like, that was also sort of in line with when music blogs stopped being a thing, you know, so. As soon as New Dust died, that was the end of music blogs. Yeah, everywhere. No, but like, it does seem like you think that's what it was. You think that, you think that, yeah.

For sure. I think Hype Machine was like, guys, we got to shut it down, you know. We're not getting anything from New Dust anymore. Yeah, they said. Yeah, our traffic is. way down. It's just so funny to me. Imagine telling someone

it's like, oh, like, people used to send like these kinds of links. Gorilla versus Barre used to get links to there was a blog called Minneapolis fucking Rocks, I think. That was like a really good one. There was like, I think it's disco naivete,

which the guy, I think they're still around. They make do like playlists and stuff. But yeah. I mean, people just used to send links. And now it's just all Spotify playlist and Spotify links. Yeah. Folks use SoundCloud, but they use it differently than what we did.

Yeah, we use Spotify on no filler. We have playlist on Spotify. Electric Saturdays. Yeah, that was good stuff. Breezy Sundays, Josh, that was you, right? Breezy Sundays, Electric Saturdays. I remember you had some, you had a short-lived series called like Dad Tunes or something like that? You remember that?

Yeah. And it was like you would pair it with like a song that like an 80s sitcom dad would listen to or something like that. I don't remember exactly what it was. I vaguely remember that, but you can tell I was just reaching, reaching, grasping its trust. It seemed to make sense, though. It all kind of wrapped into the nostalgia. Everyone is so steeped in like layers of irony and like nostalgia and just trying to like flip that. add into like clicks somehow.

So yeah, we're going to post a bunch of these screenshots for this 200 episode blowout so that people know what we're talking about because this is not a visual medium. But yeah, you can still find remnants of New Dust on the way back machine. And then Q, you saw that random YouTube comment. Somebody mentioned New Dust. It was a Marble Lakes video. It's not a video. It's just a screenshot.

It's a picture from the house show. And it's a really poorly recorded Marmaladex song. And someone in the comments was like, that picture looks really familiar. I think I was there. And someone else was like, oh, yeah, that was the New Dust House show in Dent. I'm like, hell yeah. We're still living on in the YouTube comments, a comment from nine years ago. But the funny thing is like, it was Nick Denman who made the comment?

Maybe, let's see. No, but like the funny thing is it was a photo of Mont Lions, but the song was Marmaligues. No, the top two songs, the top two pictures were Mont Lions. The bottom two were Marmalikes. Okay, I think that was the photo we used on the post. It was. We were doing it right up about the show in general. So yeah, somebody pulled that from our website, the photo. I have a photo of us from that day. Do you like, I'm wearing this like tight-ed. We still have that too. You're wearing the chill shirt, right?

Yeah, it's like I got it at like a beach boardwalk. and it's like spray painted, it says chill. Yeah. God, just like, that pretty much sums it up, I think, that t-shirt. Yeah, the shirt is right on point, you know. Well, guys, it's been real. I can't, the YouTube comment, that kind of makes my day. How did you find this?

I was looking for Marmaliques because I could not find any songs from their EP. They're all just completely, like, like they, they re-released a bunch of the songs, We recorded them on a new album, and that's the farthest back it goes on Spotify. So I was just looking for songs. And this is a really crappy rip of the song, or else I probably would have played it. All right, Josh. Well, thanks for joining us. It's been a blast talking with you, catching up, getting nostalgic with you.

Yeah, I want to have you back on if you can. And a few weeks when we cover person pitch would be amazing to have you on, dude. Just have someone else who's in love with that album as I am. Yeah, that album was extremely formative for me, and I play it for my 10-mold-built son just to try and get him, you know. Awesome. Yeah, I know into the groove. And, you know, Panda Bear is kind of baby music, you know, if you think about it, you know, so it's like, it's got, it's just the drones kind of like wash over here. Brian Wilson.

Exactly. Exactly. But no, it's been great thinking about it and thinking about that era. and like even though we were very small, not even fish, you know, like minnows in like a very big like internet pond, I think we were very lucky. And I actually think it it forged our friendship in a way that like we can still return back and talk. And it's like we never like missed a beat. Totally. You know?

And I do think like there's probably a lot of people that were like involved in that era that have like. similar friendships just because it's like, you know, we were writing and reading the same stuff like obsessively. And it really was kind of a cool time to, you know, just be throwing stuff at the wall on the internet. So it's kind of fun to remember it. For sure. All right. So let's close us out with Long Walks on the Beach track. Arguably, well, for sure, the biggest new dust show that we ever threw together was this Long Walks on the Beach show. Cops got called and everything. Yeah. Awesome.

And if you were a cop at that show, give us a shout out. Reach out to us on Instagram. Send us your badge number, you know? Yeah. Let me see a copy. Let me get a copy of that report. They didn't shut us down. They just told us to turn it down and they let us finish, which in D.C., they can't do it

anymore. They passed a new noise ordinance that was like happened after this. And now, like, the cops have, like, way more power to shut down house shows. So here's what we learned tonight. Once New Dust got shut down, music blogs were no longer a thing. Once that house show went down, then the noise complaint thing got passed in D.C. So both of those things are because of New Dust. Yeah, that's true.

That's what I learned tonight. Both things are directly, they're directly related and strongly correlated. That's it. All right, Josh, well, thanks again for joining us here. We'll have you on again for Pitch Perfect. And maybe we'll, maybe you'll be the first. Perfect. Person pitch.

All right. Pitch Perfect is a guilty pleasure movie that my wife and I like to watch. All three of them are good, did. Pitch Perfect, one, two, three. For person pitch, and then maybe you'll be the first true recurring guest for no filler. Love to see it. We've been looking for one, man. Yeah, we found him.

All right. Here we go. This is long walks on the beach metaphysical that close us out. and we will talk to you guys next week.