No Filler Music Podcast - Distinctly Grunge, Distinctly Texan: Toadies - Rubberneck

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

When frontman Todd Lewis ventured from Texas to California to record Rubberneck, he fully expected to be back working at the record store in Fort Worth with his fellow bandmates in a year or so. And he was almost right, until "Possum Kingdom" received some airplay on LA's KROQ radio and the album skyrocketed the band into the grunge limelight and cemented this record as a classic from that era. Influenced by Talking Heads, Sex Pistols, and the Pixies, the Toadies had a uniquely heavy-punk rock sound with a slight bend toward pop sensibilities. Tracklist: Velvet Quitter Mexican Hairless Happyface I Burn I Come From The Water Eagles of Death Metal - Midnight Creeper 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

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So your experience before takeoff is a taste of what's to come. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. Todd's singing was always like, it's like a force of nature almost. Just hearing this deep, guttural, primal scream coming out of this skinny kid, you know, is like, how can that sound be coming out of that guy? He went for it because we figured this is the only chance we get. This is going to be our album.

And welcome to No Filler. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked, hidden gyms that filled the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Travis. I got my brother Quentin with me as always. And just like us, Q, these guys, the Toadies, they're native Texans. They were out of Dallas, is that right? Fort Worth.

Or Cowtown, as they call it sometimes, Q. Yeah. Not too far from where we grew up, dude. No, not too far. 45 minutes, you know. But yeah, that was one of the, one of the bandmates of front man Todd Lewis talking about the sound that would come out of his mouth when he opened his, well, when he opened his mouth, that's how it goes. But just talk about like, you know, if you look at photos of these guys back in the 90s, he was a skinny dude.

But he could, he could scream and do the guttural, you know, growl of a metal artist and stuff like. that sometimes, a metal vocalist. Or you're, you know, fill in the blank, like grunge artist, right? And like, you know, basically kind of what they were saying. Like, they brought all of their energy into this record that we're going to be talking about today because they thought it was like, this is it. This is our shot. Like, we're probably not going to.

And I'll talk about this a little bit more of it. Like, they didn't think it was going to do anything. They didn't think it was going to go anywhere, you know. So their mindset was, we're in the studio now. We might not ever get this opportunity again. Exactly. So let's just, you know, put it all out there, see what happens. So we're talking about the Toadies and we're talking about their debut record Rubberneck

came out in 1994 on Interscope Records. I'm only familiar with the singles. Let's name those off, dude. So there are five singles on this record. Good God. Okay. Nope. I only know probably two of them.

And you're probably familiar with Tyler and Possum Kingdom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Possum Kingdom is what sort of skyrocketed their career. But it's Mr. Love, Possum Kingdom, Away, Tyler, and Backslider. Possum Kingdom and Tyler, like I said, got a ton of radio play. Possum Kingdom is the first one that was played by like a major radio station. It was played by K. Rock in L.A., and that's what sort of did it. Yeah.

That's the song that put them on the map. So yeah, let's go over this a little bit. So they formed in 89 in Texas, Fort Worth, or Fort Worth, Texas, sometimes. You know, you'll see the state name first. They met in Fort Worth. They were, several of the band members were working at a record store called Sound Warehouse or something like that. Some sort of warehouse, right? Like, I don't know why, but CD stores are always named like Warehouse, you know, like CD Warehouse.

But yeah, they're working at this place called Sound Warehouse of a Camp Bowie Boulevard. And so, you know, perfect place for a band to form, right? Because you've got a bunch of music lovers working at a record store, talking about music. So all the members of the band worked at this record store? I don't think all of them did, but several of them did. Let me name the roster and then I'll say, I'll kind of talk about the origin here. So Vaden Todd Lewis, he goes by Todd. He's the main guy.

He's the lead singer, songwriter. He does rhythm guitar. you've got Daryl Herbert, or Herbert, lead guitar, Lisa Umbarger bass, Mark Reznecheck on drums. So of those four, it was Lewis Umbarger and another guy was actually their original drummer named Charles Mooney met at this place called Sound Warehouse where they all worked. So from what I have heard, bass player Lisa, she's like, I, I, I don't even know how to play. I don't even know how to play bass.

And Todd was like, oh, don't worry about it. I'll teach you. Which I thought it was cool because it's like, that's kind of how it is with rock music. You don't have to be a seasoned, classically trained person. Just pick up a base and start plucking, you know. We'll figure it out as we go along, you know. Start slapping. When they formed, yeah, exactly.

Just start slapping. Keep in pace with the drummer. You're good to go. But when they formed, they were originally doing covers. They were a cover band. and they would play local shows at Fort Worth venues. And then Todd started writing his own stuff. He was influenced by talking heads, the sex pistols, and the pixies, which I thought was a really interesting mix.

Oh, yeah, I can hear that. And, you know, when I hear that he was listening to a lot of talking heads back then, like, you can hear a little bit of David Byrne, just a hint of that kind of stuff, that kind of. A little bit in his vocal delivery. In the vocal delivery, like I said early, he's got a range on him. He will do, he will deliver a line. If you think about Tyler, there's not much guttural screaming in there. No. But then you'll listen to some of his other songs like Quitter, which is one of the songs we're going to play,

where it's like a guttural, almost heavy metal vocal sound. So he had quite the range on him, which really kind of contribute to the unique sound that Toties was bringing to the landscape of. rock music back then. So anyway, he starts writing his own music and then he sort of brings it to the, he brings like a demo tape to the band. And then they put it on this little EP on this record label called Grass. And so this EP had Mr. Love and Possum Kingdom on it. And that's what they started taking around to record labels and stuff like that. And it found its way into the hands of this guy named Ray Santa Maria, which was an A&R guy at Interscope. And here's a quote from him.

He says, how do I articulate it? It was heavy rock, punkish music with some pop sensibilities. In the world of grunge and everything that was happening at that time, what they were doing was very unique. So not entirely similar to presidents of the United States of America, who we talked about last week. They were doing something slightly different than the, then the, the sort of like textbook grunge sound, you know, but I would say with the toties, they were way closer to grunge than the presidents were, but they were doing some really interesting things as well, like mixing it in there. And like one of the things, which I thought was, this is Todd Lewis speaking, the lead singer. He was saying that like, looking back on it, he heard a lot of

lot of Tejas-era Zizi Top in there. The boogie kind of Texas kind of stuff. Cool. And you definitely hear that in, I come from the water, which is, maybe we'll play a little bit of it just so you can hear that sound. But anyway, let's play our first clip here, dude. We're just going to go right into it here, okay? Let's do it.

We're going to go right into it. So this is all around the same time, too. That's one cool thing about it. presidents drops their debut self-titled, what was it, 94, 95? Yeah, right. This came out in, what, 94? 94, yeah. Yeah, man.

So it is cool to think about all this stuff happening with, you know, your proper grunge. And then, I mean, and Travis, I know you've been diving deep into the 90s, alt rock rabbit hole. Just like you said last week, man, like this 90s really was like the last. moment of real creativity and something different with rock you're totally right man i mean grunge grunge was like the last i mean you could talk about you could throw shugays in there too like grange and shugays seemed like they were the last um sort of like new movement in rock you know i mean and that's not necessarily a tragic thing no you know like i love where rock has gone from there i love what is what is like evolved.

Yeah. I mean, people could say, you know, maybe like the garage rock post-punk stuff that happened in the 2000s was kind of a unique movement. But it was all based on 60s garage rock sound. You know what I mean? Like it was kind of a recycled thing. Right. But anyway.

All right. Let's play a clip here. I've got a little bit more of the story of how they went on to record the record. Like, you know, like I said, they met this guy at Interscope. And basically he said, we will get some people from. the label to come out if you guys can book a gig in L.A. And so they kept pestering the only club that they had heard of at the time in L.A., which was Whiskey a Go-Go-Go, which is a very famous club, right? Oh, yeah. So they got a showbook there, and then this guy from Introscope was at the show,

signed him on the spot, and that was it. So the way that they describe it, the guitar player, Darrell Herbert described it as like winning the lottery. He said they drove up and down, Sunset Boulevard, screaming out the windows of the car, getting drunk, having a blast. I mean, think about it. Like, you're a band from, just imagine, though, dude, like you and your friends met at a record store, and then a few months later, you're in L.A. playing a show at the Whiskey Go-Go, and you just got signed to a major label.

And you're driving up and down Sunset Boulevard. Just having a fucking blast. Amazing. I got a lot of clips that I'm going to play from this little mini documentary called Dark Secrets, the Stories of Rubberneck. It's a 23-minute documentary. It's showing like behind-the-scenes footage of them recording it, video camera footage from Lisa, the bass player, like in the studio. And it's just really like serene location, the studio that they recorded in. It was in like this California, like, so they're surrounded by like red.

woods and stuff like that. This place called Mindicino, California, this remote recording studio with basically like this big ranch-style home. Here's Resichick saying that they stayed in this cabin surrounded by animals in nature, all these giant redwoods. And they're coming from Fort Worth, like concrete jungle, just... Right. Yeah, man. Right. That's paradise. If I'm ever in a rock band that gets to record, a record. That would be like the ideal way to do it. You just go disappear in the woods for a few weeks

with your bandmates. Floating on cloud 9. Yeah, exactly. All right, so here's the song. Our first pick here, it's called Quitter. Was getting some Josh Hami vibes. Really? What part in particular? The, uh,

getting something right. Yeah. The way he repeated that over and over. it, that felt like a Queens of the Stone Age moment. Like the way that Josh would craft a song, yeah. Yeah, really digging that. It's the first time I've heard that song. Okay. That's what I was going to ask.

You've never listened to this record all the way through. I never, nope. Dude, this is one of those start to finish, just hit, fucking play and let it rip. I'm kind of surprised that I never went back and listened to this album, dude. That's homework, dude. You got to listen to this and report back next week for what you heard. So anyway, some of the things I love about this song, I guess you can call it a chorus. It sounds like he's almost screaming into a megaphone.

Like when he says, lover, are you happy now? Quitter. It sounds like he's talking into a megaphone or something like that. But I just love the delivery on that. It's cool. And again, like, you know, his range, you can totally hear it in this song. The way he delivers the verse. And then the chorus is kind of a screaming.

It's obviously about a past love. or something he's talking about like you know someone who gave up on him and yeah like am i supposed to walk away with nothing just like convince myself we never happened yeah um are you happy now quitter you know i mean just some angry young male you know classic classic rock and roll stuff dude classic classic lyrics man uh but there's a couple of songs on here about uh about heartache you know. But so here's here's a little story about this record, a couple of stories. So it seems like they were at odds with Interscope on a couple of things. They held strong on one and I think it paid off. They caved into the record on a second part, which was a good move, obviously. And I'll

explain why in a second. So the first one is the first track on this record is an instrumental song called Mexican Hairless. It's a really cool song. Maybe we'll even play a little bit of it. But they were, you know, the record label was like, are you sure you want to start with an instrumental? You know, what if people like listen and they're like, some guy was like, they were saying that one of the record people were like,

what if they think that they got a defective record or something like that? And they thought that they got some weird print of the CD where the vocal track was turned off. Yeah, because that's how it works. It's like nobody's that dumb, dude. I would have been like, there's the door, dude. Don't ever come back. Basically, one of the guys in the documentary, one of the bandmage was like, you know,

the record label's like, are you guys sure you want to do this? And we're like, yeah, that's what we want to do. And they did it. But anyway, they were influenced by this band called Reverend Horton Heat, which I've heard of, but I've never really listened to them. Yeah, me neither. Never got into them. But anyway, they had an instrumental track, I think, that opened one of their records.

And they're like, oh, we want to do that. That's really cool. So, you know what? why don't we just play a little bit? It's only like a minute 49, but this is how the record starts. So I'm, you know, usually we try to play the songs in record order, but, you know, hey, why not? Let's play a little bit of Mexican hairless. I hate when this happens, dude. I hate when this happens. What? What? They left the vocals out on this copy, dude.

I know. Defective, man. God, I might as well just throw this in the trash. Yeah. How many people do you think said that? Zero. It's got to be zero. It has to be. But anyway, I personally, I don't. I love that. I love it when a band starts with an instrumental like that.

And I can't, it's like I can name off examples of that in my head, but I know that that's not unique, right? I think what it does is like it, especially when it's nice and short like that, it sort of sets the tone. It eases you to the record. And then it hits right into Mr. Love, which was a single. And I love when bands defy orders from their record. Yeah, exactly. It almost always ends up well. Yeah. Now, like I was saying, the other thing where they actually took the advice of the record label was that they didn't want to put Possum Kingdom on the record because they are in their minds, it was like, that was on the EP and it was also on this other tape that we put out. So in their minds, they were like, our listeners don't want to hear Possum Kingdom on another record. They were thinking to like, again, they were thinking, we're not, this isn't going to go anywhere. Like, this is just something we're going to be able to sell at our shows in Fort Worth or when we go on tour. Basically, like the way that Todd, the.

Lewis put it, the lead singer was like, actually I'm going to try to quote him. I'm going to find the quote. Hold on them. So it's like he was trying, it was thinking more about his current fans rather than like. Exactly. They weren't thinking like big because they didn't think that anything would happen. So they basically, here's him talking about this. He says, I thought, we'll do the record. The label has to put it out contractually. They have to put us on tour contractually. And then they'll realize we tricked them into signing us. We'd get dropped at some point and I'd go back to working in the record store. I'd already talk to my boss and told him, I'd be. back to work in a year or so. That is classic

imposter syndrome, dude. Right? Yeah, exactly. Straight up. That's exactly what it is. Exactly. But anyway, so they weren't thinking about like, oh, the rest of the country hasn't heard Possum Kingdom before. Right. But anyway, Possum Kimum is what put them on the map. So Possum Kingdom

starts to get radio play in the LA radio station, K-Rock. And as they said, like, you know, apparently with K-Rock, it's like if you get play airplay on k rock at least back then every other alternate station in the country alternative station in the country would pick it up and play it and that's basically what happened but yeah so actual proper credit needs to go to this DJ in florida i didn't mention uh i'm reading back on this

like it made its way to k rock and that's when it took off but apparently a dj in florida got his hands on rubberneck and started playing every track on the record on a daily basis. Cool. So apparently back then, DJs could play whatever they wanted to play. And like,

that's kind of sometimes how it happened like organically. Let's take a quick break. All right, let's get to the next track here. This song, I love the explanation

behind the lyrics for this song. So I'm going to let the lead singer talk about it again here. So this is a song called Happy Face. Happy Face is kind of just an ambiguous fuck you to to glib people.

I've got no real good story there. There's a lot of animosity in my life at that time. So people that smiled kind of bugged me. I just thought that was funny. Wait. Basically he wrote a song called Happy Face because people who smiled bugged the shit out of him back then. I don't know what the word glib means.

I don't know if I've ever... Let's look it up together, Q. Yeah. Let's learn a word together. I mean, I can use context clues. I can use context clues. Yeah. Glib, when, um, for those in the audience who are, you know, didn't take the SATs like me,

they are, uh, shallow, shallow, shallow. Insincere and shallow. So fake people, fake happy faces, just walking around, smile. That's a good vocaboard, dude. They're fucking fake. I like it. Yeah. All right.

So let's listen to, um, talk. Louis' message to these glib shallow people walking around back in the 90s. This song is called Happy Face. I just picture him like just wailing on a boxing bag while he's in the studio. He's this little guy too, man. I mean, I'm a little dude. I'm a skinny kid. Sure.

Still. But I mean, yeah, so it's funny to picture this, like, you know, maybe he was picked on. He was a kid or something like that. he's like, no, son of a bitch. I'll fucking end you, you know, I mean, like walking around, getting pissed. Once you turn that as a little. Turn that, damn it.

Turn that, turn that smile. Upside down. Because they're smiling already, dude. So like, in those moments where he's, you know, really screaming and, you know, he shifts it to that next level. That's the heavy sound of grunge there, man, that's like more...

Yeah, well, I was going to say it kind of reminds me of like Chris Cornell a little bit of Yeah, that's what I was thinking. That register that he would hit. But yeah, I just... Yeah, I love some of these lyrics, man. If I could find the will to kill. That's like classic Grun's stuff right there, dude. Yeah.

I'll try to wish you your way, but I'll do more than wishing someday. Classic, like, you know, I feel like Grun's lyrics a lot of times were, you know, you think about, I mean, obviously, Jeremy from Pearl Jam was talking about the kid who walked into class and shot up the classroom, right? Well, this sounds like just scribbling down thoughts running through your head and in like your journal or your diary. You know what I mean? Yeah, but I mean, a lot of times they, you know, grunge lyrics, they just straight up say it. They're like, I'm going to do more than wishing someday. I'm going to kill you, basically.

Like if I could find the will to kill, he doesn't write it out, but he would say, I fucking will. That's basically what he's saying. All right. I got one more song for us. And this one is going to, you know, shake things up a little bit. It's going to the tempo is going to change. It's going to be a little bit softer. But I really love the delivery of this song.

And this is the very last song on the record. So it's a good way to close a record. So again, now this one is a little bit more of an explanation behind the lyrics by Todd. It's not just him being like, I just didn't like people who smiled at me. this one's got a little bit more of a story to it. So this is called I Burn. And I'm going to let him tell us the story here. Let's see.

Let me back up. I was dating a girl and I had this dream that she had invited me to a party. So I'm going to go to this party. I'm walking down the street. And as I get closer to the party, there's a mailbox on fire, then there's a trash can on fire. And then eventually there's just whole houses engulfed in flames. And so I'm getting closer to the party.

and I get to this house and I kind of walk around the back where the party is and it's all these people jumping around and dancing around with there's music, there's drums and there's a giant bonfire and one by one these people are throwing themselves into the fire. What? Hang on now. So he's, yeah, he's this dream where we're like he just. Dude, I missed. I missed that part. So you thought he was like walking into like a suicide pack or something like that? No, no. Oh, man. Okay.

Yeah. So he was describing a dream that he was having. That's a nightmare, man. But yeah, you want to talk about your subconscious being like, do not go to any parties in the next few weeks. And don't jump into any flames. Stay away from open flames. Fire hurts us. Fire hurts us.

So he's having a dream where he's walking to this party and like he's getting closer to the party and like the mailbox is on fire. Like all these things are on fire. Like he gets at the house, the house is on fire. And then he walks around back and people are just tossing themselves into this fire. It's a really cool imagery. And like talk about your subconscious telling you something. But anyway, let's listen to the song here. This is called I Burn.

That was intense. The lyrics are great. Yeah, man. Lots of imagery in there. Immediately reminded me of the Buddhist monks that set themselves on fire during the Vietnam War. I don't know if it was the same kind of deal with what he was writing about. But his lyrics were sounding more like it was a, what a sweet. poetic way to

to die. Yeah, become the flame kind of thing. Yeah, I don't think it was a protest song necessarily. So you're talking about the picture that was on the self-titled record from Rage Against Machine? The Rage,

yeah, that's the picture I was thinking of. That famous, famous photo. Yeah, dude. But yeah, well, speaking of like monks,

monks and religion, that should, like, one of the lyrics is like, which I thought stood out to me because I know a little bit about Todd's Todd, listen to me

first name basis yeah Todd's upbringing he says feel the lick of bad religion the finish and the start in the beginning

we were smarter and the flame was heaven sent through the ages we got stupid now we must repent I thought that was pretty interesting so apparently like he was raised in Tyler Texas

which is you know the name of that song, Tyler, is about Tyler, as in Tyler, Texas, East Texas. So like, you know, super religious upbringing, like his dad was a very religious person. So, yeah, I'm not surprised he thinks about, like, themes of religion and stuff like that. The funny thing is I come from the water, which is another song on this record, which is about, like, what you think it is, like evolution coming out of the water kind of stuff. apparently his dad, although he was super religious, was a Christian who believed in evolution. So, like, he was taught evolution despite having a strict religious upbringing. But I come from the water is about, you know, flopping up onto the shore as a fish or whatever.

Yeah, right. Walking around. But let's play a little bit from that song, actually, because I said I would earlier. Just as one final thing, just so you can hear some of that, like, Texas boogie zizi type sound that they would bring. Yeah, let's hear it. Yeah, let's just listen to this real quick. All we got to do really listen to the intro to hear it, but this is a song called I Come from the Water.

Dude, that's some straight up Chris Ballou president stuff right there, man. Yeah, a little bit. Even the lyrics too. Yeah, you're right. But yeah, you know, to the point that like the Interscope, A&R guy, what he saw in them when he heard their demo back in the day was like, they're doing some of unique things. They're doing grunge type stuff, but then they're throwing in things like this.

And, like, you know, as they've been described, they are distinctly grunge and distinctly Texan. Nice. And that's this sound here. So like, Nirvana wasn't doing this, right? Texas grunge, dude. Right. Exactly. So that's, and, you know, obviously ZZ Top, ZZ Top, I think is from, are they from Fort Worth, too?

I think. That sounds right, man. Yeah, I think they're from Fort Worth. I know they're from Texas, obviously. Houston. Houston. Anyway, so after Rubberneck came out, they got their success. They were on MTV.

They toured. They opened for a bunch of bands. Like they go through the roster here, but they opened for like Radiohead, stuff like that. Actually, I want to say they went on, they claimed that they went on after Radiohead during some sort of music festival. And they were like, that was crazy to us that we, you know, here we are. So see, I mean, exactly like what Todd Lewis, the lead singer was saying, like, yeah, we'll put the record out. Like, we'll go on tour and then I'll just be back at the record shop. So, yeah, it was playing out exactly like you thought it was.

It wasn't going anywhere when it first came out because the record company wasn't putting any resources behind it. Apparently, they weren't, which I think we've heard stories like that before in some of our. All the time, dude. Some of our episodes where it's like. It happened to Spoon. Yeah, exactly. Because apparently they were putting all their resources toward other bands that were like, already taking off and like that they felt had more mass appeal and something like that.

That's the agony of Lafitte, man. Right, exactly. So anyway, according to, like, this was going exactly how, as Lewis thought it would play out. But then they got some radio play and that's what did it. So like, anyway, they go on to, you know, play with bands like Food Fighters, Sonic Youth, redout chili peppers, and like they were saying, radiohead. So, like, they saw their moment. And then when they go to put out their next record, which was called,

called feelers. Now, to me, I don't, I guess this wasn't in the contract or something like that, but Interscope rejected it, which I thought was weird because like, I guess I've never really heard of that happening before. We're like, the band's like, hey, here's our next record. And the label's like, nah, that's right. You know what I mean? Well, I wonder what kind of contract they had signed originally because usually.

Right. I guess it wasn't in the contract. Yeah. Maybe it was just one CD and then we'll go from there kind of thing. My guess is that Grunge had already passed. So the inner scope was probably like, we got to search for these new metal bands. Let's find, let's sign our own corn. You know what I mean?

We've got to find the next corn. And Todies were like, you know, probably not, you know, doing the music that they do. And then that was it, right? So anyway, they put out this record in 2001 called Hell Below Stars Above with some of the stuff from the feelers session that they did for the second record. But long story short, like the bands sort of slowly fell apart after that. So, you know, 2001, like rock music had shifted again already, you know. Big time. Big time.

But anyway, Todd Lewis, he reassembled the band five years later and then they've been active ever since. So they put out lots of stuff. But basically, it sounds like they, just like with presidents, they came out at the perfect time to put out that sound. They had that moment, you know, they wrote it, they wrote that wave. and then they crashed, if you will. And then basically, as Todd Lewis puts it, he's been gone on ever since,

ever since they reassembled the band in like 2005 or whatever. They're on album number seven, or at least when this interview came out. This was an interview. I guess this would have been shit. So I'm reading an interview from Fort Worth, a Fort Worth magazine, 25 years after. So shit, 2019. So, okay, not too long ago. So this interview was a couple years ago, but he was saying that, you know, they're on

the seventh album. And as far as he's concerned, he just wants to have fun, putting out music and then having people show up and listen to it. And I think they've been doing that ever since, right? But anyway, I haven't, I've never listened to any of their other stuff. It's kind of like presidents. It's like, I got, I have rubber neck. I don't know if I need anything else.

I know it's like a shitty thing to say. You don't want to spoil it. Right. But it's kind of a shitty thing to say. It is. You got to give a band the chance to evolve. I mean. Right.

But, you know, anyway. So, yeah, that's that. They put out this record rubberneck that is just this fucking amazing rock record. And if you haven't listened to all the way through, Quentin, you should go back and listen to it. Hey, man. I need that. I'm looking at the grass in my backyard right now, dude. It's getting long again.

So. So, so you're. You like to queue up a record when you're mowing that lawn. Of course. But how long does it take you to mow the lawn, dude? Well, I got to do front and back. Okay. Dude, I can get...

We're talking an hour here? I could probably get at least two albums in. Okay. Well, this record's 36 minutes long. So, I think you got time. Anyway, Possum Kingdom and Tyler are just classic 90s rock songs, man. Those, you want to talk about nostalgia? They're up there with peaches and lump.

Yes. I would say so. And in some of those other iconic songs for me, at least, that I associate with the 90s and the nostalgia I have to the 90s rock music. Yeah, me too. It's Tyler and Possum Keevan. Tyler especially. I fucking love Tyler. It's a creepy-ass song.

The lyrics about this guy, apparently there's this guy going around East Texas like peeping into windows and shit. And he wrote the song from the perspective of that guy. Like, what would it be like to be in this guy's head? And so when you listen to the lyrics of Tyler, it's like. It's like Midnight Creeper. Remember that Eagles of Death? The old song? That's exactly what I thought of the other day when I was, it's exactly like midnight.

There's nothing as creepy as that song. It is a creepy song. We should have it close us out just for grins. Okay. Let's do it. All right. Well, we're talking my Eagles of Death Metal. This is a song called Midnight Creeper.

What a random song to close off. We'll do it. What the hell? Why not? Anyway, if you listen to Tyler and you listen to the lyrics, he's singing about this guy who is peeping and creeping in East Texas, looking through people's windows and stuff. It's peeping and midnight creeping. Peeping and creeping. What would happen if he actually climbed through the window kind of thing?

And that's what the song is about. Anyway, like I said, there's a lot of grunge songs back then were about this kind of darker stuff, right? Yeah, really dark. So that's it, man. That's our look at Rubber Neck, one of my favorite records from the 90s. And yeah, like I said, go listen to the record if you haven't already. if you've only listened to the singles before, hopefully you liked the three songs I brought to the table here.

These were not singles. Like I said, there's fucking five singles on this record. So that just tells you how many great songs around here because I think the songs I brought were pretty damn great. Yeah. I mean, shit, I mean, if you think about it, I played Mexican Hairless and I played I Come from the Water, those are two other non-singles on the record.

So anyway, the singles are bangers did. Mr. Love, Backslider, Possum Kingdom. Backslider, again, is about he was, basically he was baptized. When he was baptized, his dad was like warning him, you know, do not fall, you know, stay strong. Don't become a backslider. And that's what the song's about. Stay strong in your faith. Yeah.

He's like, why don't you stop smile on me? I'm going to write a song about you called Happy Face. All right, that's it, Q. Well, hey, dude, we got something that interesting that happened to us a couple weeks ago. We should talk about it. That's right. And that's the funny thing is I want to keep the entire track in for I burn. Well, we'll see if we end up fading it or not. But yeah, speaking of playing full-length songs, we got the Smackdown Q. So if you happen to be like, I don't know, scrolling through our old episodes, just playing random stuff like you do with podcasts sometimes.

And you're going, huh, that's weird. They were talking about. doing a top 10 of the 2010s episode. I just finished the 2019 recap, but it looks like they go straight from that into Paul McCartney unplugged. Where's the episode in between? I got removed from Universal. They did not like that we played

the entirety of the less I know the better by Mr. Kevin Parker, aka Tame Impala. Now, it's also worth noting that that's only on Spotify. You can still listen to it on iTunes. and probably some other platforms. But Spotify

yanked it from their feeds because Universal Media Group said, you better pay up if you're going to play Tame and Paula's music. Our first official cease and desist. I'm shocked it didn't happen earlier, dude. Yeah, but I mean, we don't usually play, we don't play singles and we don't play full-length songs, typically.

Typically. And, you know, a lot of the music we play is a little bit more obscure. But, dude, I need more than 10 fingers, I feel like, to count the number of songs that we have played all the way through on this. Yeah. I mean, we've been doing this for three years, so. Right, right. I mean, record labels aren't going to, you know, spend their effort on some of the stuff that we play. But on the one episode where we said, hey, let's play singles because we're talking about the best of the decade.

Yeah. Our best of the decade list. And let's play. And I don't know if we played every, like a, a. full-length track for every song on that episode. There's no way we did. But for whatever reason, we decided to do it for Taman Pala, which is arguably one of the, that's a song that would get taken down.

He's the biggest, so that would. He's the biggest artist to come out in the last 10 years, I feel like, one of them. One of them, yeah, one of them for sure. So anyway, not surprising that we got the SmackDown, but I think what we're going to do is re-upload the episode, but just take out that song, maybe. I'm going to try to put it back in, but fade it out. and see what happens.

But they've already warned us once, dude. I don't know. Yeah, let's just take it out. We'll play nice. We don't want Spotify to send it to goons knocking on our door here. But, yeah, I don't think it's going to happen too often. I don't think Interscope's going to be like, hey, you're playing that song from Toadies, the last track all the way through.

Like, they're not going to give a shit about Iburn. You know what I mean? Yeah. And if they do, then we'll fade it out. but we're going to play it all the way through. I mean, it's universe. Sometimes you got to hear that whole damn song.

It's funny that of all the record labels that give a shit. Dude, Universe has got some cash, man. Exactly. Why do they care? I still think we should reach out to Kevin Parker and see if he responds. He would probably get his lawyer to respond to Q. Well, you never know.

Maybe not. I would like to think that Kevin Parker is just, you know, He's just a guy like us. Yeah. You know what, Q, he puts his pants on one like at a time, too. I think he uses his trouser maidens to pull them up for him. The less I know, the better about that subject. All right.

Well, that's that. We got, you know, I feel like we've arrived, Q, if we've, we've garnered the attention of universal media group. I think that means we're doing something right. It seems like it's a right of passage for podcasters. It's a badge of honor. Yeah. Especially for music podcasters like us.

That's right. Anyway, so yeah, next week, I think it's time for another What You heard episode, Mike you? It's time, yeah. We're trying to have one What You heard per month, like calendar month. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's time for another What You Heard next week. I think we're going to stay in the 90s when we return from our What You Heard. Because like we've said, we could stay in this decade forever. but I think I don't know if it's time or not. Actually, we do have our idea, don't we? Okay. We're not going to, we'll reveal this next week, but we've got a sort of a fun idea for a 90s rock episode.

Oh, yeah. This is going to be awesome. It's going to be a little bit different, but not something that we haven't done before. We've done something similar. We did a few episodes like this, and we enjoyed doing it, so we're going to do it again. But we'll give you guys more details on that next week in the meeting. time, you can follow us on Twitter at No Filler Podcast. Reach out to us, give us ideas for albums you'd like us to talk about.

Send us a song that you've been listening to. And we may feature it on a what you heard episode. You know, which of our listeners has been listening to? What have y'all been heard? Maybe that'll be a new segment if we get enough tunes send in, send in to us. There's a podcast that I've been listening to for years. I'm not going to say the name. You know what it is, cute.

They used to close their episodes with songs submitted by listeners. These were usually like songs that these guys, that these listeners like recorded themselves like bands. So usually it was shit music. But it was still cool because it was like submitted content from the listeners. Yeah, that's cool. Well, apparently people listen to us. So all I'm hearing are crickets, man. I still, that's all I hear, crickets.

Reach out to us because like we know you're out there listening right now. So talk to us. You know, we'd love to hear from you. Tell us what you've been listening to. Tell us what you hate. Tell us what you love about the show. And we will probably interact with you on Twitter. Oh, we definitely will, man.

Yeah. Just talk to us. You know what I mean? We'll be nice to you. We may even talk about you on the show, you know, depending on what you say. I mean, I know that that's all you want in life is to be talked about on your favorite music podcast, not filler. You can make that happen today.

It's just three easy payments of $9.99. Free shipping, if you act now. All right. So that's that next week. We'll do our What You Heard episode for April. Yes. Which is always a blast. Did we mention Pantheon?

Nope. We are part of the Pantheon Podcast Network, the home of the music podcast, Q. If you like our show, there's a pretty good chance that you'll find several other shows on network that you will love. It is the home of nothing but music podcasts. So if you like content like ours, go over to pantheonpodcast.com. We've got tons of shows on that network. I feel like we're adding new ones every day. We're over 60 now, man. That's insane. Yeah. And there's a show for everything. It really is. No joke. Yeah, check it out, Pantheonpodcast.com. And we would also like to think are sponsors AKG by Harmon. Quentin is rocking an AKG microphone and headphones set right now.

It's the podcaster's Essentials kit. That's why he sounds so velvety smooth right now. And why I sound so velvety smooth and his ears because he's got those headphones on. So yeah, if you want to be a podcaster like us or, you know, start your own YouTube channel or... Or like you said a few weeks ago, Chabb, if you want to sound better than your dopy co-workers. Yeah. During the next meeting. Exactly.

There's plenty of reasons to have a good pair of microphones and headphones on. But, you know, it's called the podcaster's essentials kit. It's perfect for podcasting. So anyway, that's the podcaster's essentials kit by AKG. Check it out. Go get yourself a kit. Start creating content. All right.

That's that. That's all we got for this week. We will talk at you guys next week. My name is Travis. And I'm Quentin. Y'all take care. Well, I'm coming through your window. I see your family there.

Well, I'm living in a night creeper window creeping. You'll better be well. Your child is gently sleeping. There's dreams all in his head. That wife of yours is a sweet young thing when I leave your wife will be there. Well, my steel is sharp and silent, the devil guides my hand. Well, I just love to slip them throats and creep all around the town.