No Filler Music Podcast - Lighten Things Up A Little: The Presidents of the United States of America
Episode Date: April 12, 2021As lead-singer and two-string bass player Chris Ballew once observed of the grunge scene of the early nineties: "I wonder if we could lighten things up a little?" Thus The Presidents of the United Sta...tes was born, a three-piece rock group from grunge's birthplace with one mission: to make grunge and alt-rock music without the themes of angst, depression, etc. With unforgettable singles like "Lump", "Peaches", and "Dune Buggy", The Presidents injected a little bit of fun and left a lasting impression on the rock landscape of the early nineties. Tracklist: Presidents of the United States of America - Lump Caspar & Mollusk - Twig Presidents of the United States of America - Stranger Presidents of the United States of America - Boll Weevil Presidents of the United States of America - Body Presidents of the United States of America - Kitty Caspar Babypants - Baby Bear Presidents of the United States of America - Peaches 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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I've been making music like this my whole life that's fun and weird and surreal.
But I do distinctly remember watching the MTV Music Awards in 92 or 3 or something
and watching all the grunge bands getting the awards and stuff and thinking,
you know, that's great.
I love these bands, but I wonder if we could lighten things up a little.
And welcome to No Filler.
The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gym.
that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records.
My name is Quentin with me as always as my brother Travis,
and we are talking about the presidents of the United States of America today.
Dude, I'm fucking stoked, man.
Yeah, this is one of those bands that, like, I never forgot about.
You know, like, this was one of the CDs that our older brother Spencer had in his collection.
Yeah, dude, I vividly remember looking, like holding the CD case
my hand looking at the cover and flipping through the liner notes yeah it's like the little uh
animal like brass little statuettes playing some sort of ditty you know but like just like he said
in that clip you just played like you know i was listening to all these grunge bands and like
you know we just wanted to do something different yeah so it's funny is like among spencer's
cd collection was all those other grunge bands that he's referring to you know smashing pop goods
stone's of a pilots all that stuff so like there there they were among the among the among the
the grunge artist, just like he was talking about.
Yeah, man, like he was saying, I'm going to quote lead singer Chris Ballou here.
He said the timing was just right.
There was a hole in the cultural landscape for fun times to fall into, and we fell into that hole.
So let's name off the roster real quick, or at least the original lineup.
So we've got Chris Ballou.
He's the brains behind the band.
lead vocals, he wrote all the songs, he plays bass in the band, and then we've got David
Dieter on guitar and Jason Finn on drums. So Chris and David actually met in grade school.
It was a private K-12 school in Seattle, so they had been friends for a while.
I think it's perfect that they're from Seattle, right? Because that means they were in the grunge
scene, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
They were part of it.
Or at least they were most likely playing the same clubs and stuff like that.
Oh, yeah.
He was probably, he was probably witnessing it as it was happening, you know?
For sure.
Yeah, so here's a crazy story I just found out today, man.
So Chris Ballou was roommates with Beck in Los Angeles in the early 90s.
Dude, that's fucking awesome.
Yeah.
What are the odds of that shit going down?
I know, dude.
And if you think back to Beck's early stuff,
yeah.
Like he was into,
he was playing the most bizarre,
like super like rootsy blues kind of stuff that you can think of.
Right, yeah.
And him and Chris made music together briefly.
I want to hear that shit.
Under the names,
you want to hear it right now, dude?
But you have a recording of that?
Yeah.
Yeah, let's hear it.
Man, they should,
They should hook it back up and make another record together.
I was thinking that too.
But if you think back to, so I did a, I think you were with me, Trab.
I don't know if this was a solo side track that I did, but I covered some of Beck's early stuff.
It was right after we covered Sea Change, which is my favorite Beck album.
But from around the one foot in the grave time, so early Beck stuff, like early 90s, it was very bizarre.
Well, some of Beck's lyrics, too, you know, all his really well-known songs.
The lyrics are really wacky, you know.
Very wacky, yeah.
Yeah, and he was roommates with Chris Ballou, and they wrote music together.
So let's play a song from them.
I wasn't going to play this, but I have it saved on my computer.
How could you not?
It's weird, dude.
That's why.
Like, animal collective level weird.
Okay.
So here is a song of theirs called Twig.
Go.
It's like that, you know?
Go on.
Yeah.
It's like...
Gee!
It's a little bit of rugby shit.
Transcendant a way wheel can't have a real lid.
We're trippy face down, tripping so damn hard.
The kids can say, as long as long as long as long as long as long.
You drink a cup of dirty water and a lonely boated frog.
$77 out a pump in hell is small.
Pay a lucky little bit overland.
New Sound town.
He started with a smile and he come up with a frown.
Just a twig in the wind.
Twig in the wind.
Twig in the wind.
Twig in the wind.
Twig in the wind.
Twig in the wind.
Twig in the wind.
Twig in the wind.
Twig in the wind.
All right.
You're drunk in a bar.
Take your order of a sturdy-geon machine.
Spokes model dipped in refrived beans.
And the sluggish mrs.
Stachieckon down to the dump.
With dusty dust and zealotts and pay at the pump.
You know you look a rotating D.
D.J. Sapp.
Bump, shoulder high and crap.
I told you, man. Weird. I guess I didn't know exactly what to expect, but that's exactly what that would sound like, you know. Right. Yeah. Especially if this is them in college, right? It just sounds like a couple of friends fucking around with the microphone, you know.
Exactly what it was, dude. So I couldn't really figure out the exact timing on when all this happened in relation to other things that went to.
between him and Beck, because they shared an apartment in L.A.
But Chris saw Beck.
Now, I think they were already friends by now, but Chris saw one of Beck's shows in Seattle
right before Mellow Gold came out.
And for whatever reason, Chris jumped up on stage and played a few songs with Beck.
And then he drove down to Olympia, so that's a good, I don't know, two hours from Seattle
or so. And Beck was gearing up to record one foot in the grave, and Chris is actually laying down,
he lays down, I believe, bass tracks for One Foot in the Grave. And then he went on tour with Beck
for Mellow Gold. So that was in, and that came out in 94-95. So let's get back to that
classic Presidents of the United States of America Sound. I've got another clip. I'm just,
it's just a quick one. I'm going to play. It's from the same interview that,
I played for our intro.
Here is again Chris Ballou
talking grunge.
For me, when I put on Nevermind,
I was like, oh, okay, I was trying to do that
for a long time, but I didn't have the angst.
But musically, you know, the chords,
the melodies, the dynamics,
I was all about that.
And so when I put that on, I just went,
oh, well, I don't have to make that record.
Somebody else already made it.
So yeah, man, if you listen to
presidents, it's grunge, right?
Right.
Really, the only difference is the subject matter, like he's saying.
Like, his stuff is more fun, surreal, and weird.
It's not as, you know, the guitar sound isn't exactly there.
But, I mean, it's got the same energy.
You know, I'd compare them their sound at least to like the toadies or something like that,
which is not, you know, on the scale, it's not, it's not Alice and Jane's, but, you know,
It's also not smashing pumpkins.
It's like sort of maybe in between.
Yeah.
And that's a point that he makes as well.
Like for early 90s music out of Seattle, all anyone ever thinks about is the
grunge side.
But he said, and I can't think of all the different artists that he mentions, but there's
a whole other side to Seattle rock in the early 90s.
And it's the more like party bands, the more fun and lighthearted kind of stuff.
And that's that whole.
they fit into. So, Travis, I don't know if you remember this, but this is always something that stuck
out in my mind and it's almost become like a folklore, uh, that he played like a two-stringed bass.
The guitar player played a three-stringed guitar. That's all true. Did you know that, dude?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, which was really interesting to me. Um, but also part of,
part of the whole
schick almost, you know?
Yeah.
Like he's playing a, it's a three string.
They call it a bass guitar and a git bass.
So this was actually something that Ballou did in another band that he was in briefly
called the Super Group with a guy that he knew named Mark Sandman, who was a frontman.
And that was actually when that idea to kind of modify the bass and guitar, that's
when that originally happened.
That modified guitar playing was usually in drop D tuning,
but for presidents, they played it even a half step lower than that in C sharp.
And then for the bass guitar, the strings were placed in the D and B positions.
Now that's kind of, this is more technical for the guitar players out there.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So it was a really unique sound.
Really interesting stuff.
Let's play a song, dude.
Yeah, man.
Let's get into it here.
Let's have some fun with the presidents.
Let's have some fun, man.
So we're going to play songs from their self-titled that came out in 1995.
So I'm going to play track four first.
Now, this song, I just found out the story behind it today, and it makes me really happy, dude.
So the song is called Stranger.
Now, there's a, I think it's a weekly paper that comes out up here in Seattle called The Stranger.
I think maybe I'd say the equivalent maybe in Dallas is the observer, Trev.
So there's a section in The Stranger.
It's like an I saw you.
Like, you know, like a I just missed you section.
Yeah, yeah.
Classifieds, yeah.
Where like you saw somebody and you didn't have the courage to talk to them or whatever.
So you post something in the classifieds hoping that they read it.
Yeah, like you had on a purple blouse.
Yep, exactly.
And I had on a smile.
exactly
so he literally just
handpicked classifieds
from the stranger
and that's the lyrics for this song dude
he didn't have any other input
so the way he put it the citizens
of Seattle wrote this song for me
that's cool yeah dude
so here is track four on the president's
self-titled this one is called
Stranger
Leonard Skinnerd hat
and me
little kitty
sat across with a velvet jacket wild orange hair and dark dark eyes
I got like a 12-year-old smitten
Carla the stripper
Straight from out
You seem cool for a naked chick in a booth
Let's be pal someday
in other words
put some clothes on and call me
I mean it's so obviously just
you know reading off the class the classifieds
yeah so I wonder if anybody
you know the people that
wrote these if they ever
you know put the CD on and were like wait a second
I was looking for the guy with the Leonard Skinner hat on
I'm that stripper that he's talking about
like I wonder if Leonard Skinner hat
and Little Kitty ever got together.
And I wonder if this song had anything to do with it.
Talk about a platform.
Yeah.
And dude, how, like how perfect that the name of the publication is called The Stranger.
Right.
It's perfect for this song.
Yeah.
So like, you know, that chorus there where they sort of started screaming, very punk rock almost a little bit.
You know, it's got a little bit of a punk flare.
But yeah, like you said, it's, it's, it's.
It's, you know, it sounds like the kind of harder alt rock that was coming out around that time.
It's not really on the grunge side, but like it's somewhere in there.
It's just the lyrics are so much like fun and goofy.
And that's, you know, what this album is especially, it's just a hell of a lot of fun to sing along to, you know.
Oh, yeah, dude.
Especially like peaches.
Man, everybody remembers peaches.
Lump.
That was a song that we introed in.
It's just a fucking blast, man.
Yeah, and here's the thing about Chris Ballou in these songs.
So most, if not all, these songs were already written, and some of them he had been sitting on for years.
So they just played shows, I think mostly just local shows, just nonstop before this came out.
And that's kind of where they got discovered was from one of their live shows.
So really, they were just taking all that energy and performance from their live shows and recording it.
So I mentioned this band he was in called Supergroup.
This I thought was interesting, and this kind of speaks to Chris as a songwriter.
So again, frontman for this group, his name's Mark Sandman.
And it says here, the whole idea behind Supergroup was that they would come up with the song names while having a beer before the gig.
Then they would make up the songs on stage during the show.
So, and then they would also do what they called a super challenge, where they would shout out words on stage.
and then the other one had to make up a song on the spot using those words.
It's like freaking whose line is it anyway?
Yeah, that whole band was just to have a good time.
And then, of course, Chris took that with his buddy, Dave from school.
And that's how presidents was born.
So they were a duo at first.
And then Jason saw them performing as a duo as presidents and said,
I got to be in this band, like whatever I got to do.
I want to be your drummer.
And they became a trio.
What have I been saying about three pieces?
dude. I know, man. You're right. There's no argument in that, dude. Because I feel like in order to be a
really solid sounding three-piece, they all got to be super tight as far as like, and like polished,
you know, as far as, you know, the three of them working together. And what were the other
three pieces we've talked about? I think we had a couple on our what you heard last week. So
something about the three-piece band, man. Like when it's right, it's like perfect, you know.
Dude, I mean, I'm finding this out about, like, I'm starting to cook a lot more.
Hear me out.
Okay.
Simple is always better, dude.
Always.
Well, hey, man, what do they say?
That's a classic rule to live by in graphic design and whatnot, web design, like less is more, you know?
Less is more with ingredients and a recipe.
Less is more with a rock band as well, man.
Yeah, because, I mean, you don't, you know, you're stripping out all the unnecessary bullshit.
Yeah.
And everybody's got their part and that's it.
Dude, and not only are they just a three piece, but they're saying, you know what,
I don't need two more strings on this bass.
I'm going to take away to them.
I don't need six strings on this guitar.
Right.
They are the epitome of less is more.
Yeah, really.
So like I said, dude, they were just playing shows all the time in the early days.
And this album, dude, it reached number one in, uh,
Billboard's modern rock tracks chart for 95, and they were nominated for Gramies in both 96 and 97.
And there was lump specifically that got on the reach number one.
They got a lot of love from MTV as well.
They had a few music videos that was on heavy rotation on MTV back in the day.
So like he said, man, like there was just a hole that needed to be filled for, you know, just lighthearted fun stuff amidst all these
plaid t-shirt wearing grunge boys, you know? Yeah. All right, let's play another one, dude. So,
we're all familiar with Bull Weevil, right? Oh, yeah. Classic, dude. This was not a single.
Also, I'm just super excited at the thought of people hearing presidents for the first time through us,
dude. It's possible. If you're a younger listener, I think it's very possible that you may not have any
clue who presidents of the United States of America are.
It makes me really happy to think that we're the ones dropping him on you for the first time
because this is just one of those bands that, I mean, they're just the best, dude.
Nothing but love for these guys.
And I'm just so stoked to be sharing this planet with these dudes.
All right, let's play some Bull Weevil.
Here we go.
Let me tell you about a friend of mine.
Bo Weevil check a mouse bands all day.
Yeah.
There's so much cool in that song, dude.
I was feeling some ska a little bit.
Yeah, yes.
Yeah, there's a lot.
Like you said, there's a lot going on in that.
He sings a lot about animals and insects.
Like, that's just kind of where his head goes to.
Bull Weevil's a beetle.
And he's trying to coax him out of his little home there.
Yeah, so, you know, I think, and we may not play the song, but the song, Kitty on this record.
That's a single.
I think we, it's a single, really?
Yeah.
That's really funny that that's a song.
single. So like, you know, what, it almost seems like he's literally just sitting in his living
room observing his cat and writing lyrics about what, what he's observing. So like, there's a kitty on
my foot and I want to touch it. Exactly. Kitty on my foot and I want to touch it. Yeah. I mean,
it's like a stream of thought kind of thing. Well, that's a thing that he, he would do. Apparently,
he had this little tape recorder that he would just kind of spew these weird thoughts into and then just
kind of go back to and work on.
And he said he would have,
he would just fill entire,
you know,
sides of,
of cassettes with just weird ideas.
I mean,
that's the thing.
There's no,
there's no rules here,
you know,
for,
for a contender on,
on a president's record.
Dude,
do we need to start crediting your cats
for their appearances?
I feel like they need to get into credits at least.
Yeah,
one of them just knocked over a lamp,
but it's not a big deal.
Is that kitty?
On your foot?
It is.
No.
Okay.
This kitty is on my desk.
And these cats are going to cat queue, you know, and we just kind of let it.
Cats are going to cat.
We got to let him cat.
Totally.
So, let's play another song, dude.
I mean, I don't have much else to say about these dudes.
What else is there to say, Q?
But no, that's hilarious that Kitty was a single.
I didn't remember.
What were the singles anyway?
So was it, it was lump, peaches, kitty.
And Dune Buggie.
Dune Buggy.
I love Dune Buggy.
Dune Buggy is fun.
Yeah.
They're all fun, man.
It's a blast.
Let's just put it.
Dude, Lump starts out, like the way the lump just charges into that song, it's one of the best, like, introses of any song.
Iconic.
Any rock song from that area.
Yeah.
It's just great, man.
Yeah, dude.
All right, so I only had one more song in Mines to Play.
We're going to jump down to track 10 here.
This song is called.
called body.
Little salamander, where did you go?
The edge of the yard.
I found you, you know.
All brown and hard.
I can't get your body out of my mind.
I can't get your body.
I can't get your body.
You want to talk about like stream of thought.
Yeah, dude.
That's his whole thing, man.
Like, is he, are we supposed to believe that he ate the salamander?
Is that what he said?
Well, he says it's going smooth.
Smooth through my body?
Yeah.
Maybe, man.
Again, man, goofiest lyrics.
Yeah.
And that's, like, when you go into this record and hit play, like, you're, you know what you're in for, you know what I mean?
Or at least, you know, if you're a fan of this, of this record and this band, like, that's what you,
sign up for, you know what I mean?
When you hit play, you're like, let's just having fun, you know,
especially when the first song is fucking Kitty.
Like, they're telling you, hey, here's what you're in for.
You know what I mean?
You're either in or you're out.
Let's just play some Kitty.
Okay.
I don't have any other songs.
Let's just play some Kitty.
It's just catchy as hell, man.
Dude, yeah.
I feel like this is the perfect snapshot of what it was like to grow up in the 90s.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
And I feel like everyone says that about the era that they grew up in.
But there's some carefree times, man.
And we were the perfect age for this.
We were, what, eight when this came out?
Yeah.
Man, I was, you know, nostalgia for our generation is like super accessible.
And like, you can dial up old commercials on YouTube.
I mean, that's true for going back decades.
But I mean, I'm just saying, like, I think we've talked about this before.
on the show, if not you and I talk about it all the time, how like our generation, we were born
in the late 80s, you know, we were literally, our age group specifically, the last generation
to grow up and have a childhood without the internet.
Yeah.
I mean, we were pretty young when we got our first like, quote unquote, home PC and we,
you know, it was dial up AOL online.
Right.
I mean, we were in AOL chat rooms and stuff like that.
at and aim and all that stuff. But like it was the infancy of the internet. There was no TikTok or
Instagram. So we didn't have to, we weren't bogged down by all that stuff. We lucked out in that,
dude. Yeah. We really did. But I feel like all of this stuff kind of plays into that. Like,
if you go back and watch like toy commercials from our generation, it was so wacky, man,
especially like, um. Dude, the 90s were weird, man. Yeah, but it was fun, man. Nickelodeon kind of played into
that spirit of just like really wacky advertisements and um did you watch that documentary about
Nickelodeon that I sent you guys no no no I need if you're out there you got to pull this up if
you're from our generation especially you'll relate uh there's a documentary called the orange
years about Nickelodeon that uh kind of talks about all this but yeah it's just something about the 90s
uh you know and we've we've said it before that like it might have been the last decade of of a really
a creative new direction in rock you know what i mean it seems like everything else after that
has been recycling stuff from the 80s stuff from the 90s now see that's what i'm saying like
bands like narrowhead are recycling 90s right but i'm just saying like grunge was the last
seems like it was the last creative uh like branch uh new branch of the of rock and roll or whatever
because what else what what else is there now yeah no that's a good
Good point, dude. And to spin it back to presidents here, like I think what's so great about them, like I say, we were seven or eight when this came out, super accessible to us as kids. But then on top of that, everyone was listening to presidents, dude. Number one hit.
That's actually a really good point, though.
For our age, and we listened to this, we were probably around that age because Spencer had this record.
Like, this was a very accessible rock album, and it was like a freaking, like a, man, I had the word in my head just a second ago.
It's like a starter, I guess, a segue into grunge, just like that, a segue into rock music.
Into rock, yeah.
Because, you know, like you said, it's really accessible.
I mean, there's some sexual innuendo.
Right, but we didn't do that.
But yeah.
So I saved this juicy tidbit for the end, dude, because you're going to be just as stoked when you hear this.
For the last decade or so, Chris Ballou has been releasing music under the name Casper Baby Pants, and he writes kids' music.
Dude, that's a perfect segue from what we just talked about.
Well, and isn't that like the best, like, of course he writes kids' music now.
Yeah.
He's always written kids' music.
Right.
But yeah, the story goes that he, his now wife, you know, when he was dating her or whatever,
I don't know how when this was, but he was always fond of this, these crafts that she did,
these kind of like paper crafts.
Let me pull up his discography, dude.
show you. All of his album art is art that his wife makes. And the story goes that he looked at her
art and said, I want to make music that looks like that. And look at this stuff, dude. This is her
art. Oh, wow. Yeah. So her art is his album art? Yep. Okay. And I mean,
it's just a perfect marriage, dude, of like imagery and the way that his, his,
his music, it's just perfect, dude.
Right.
So that's what he does, man.
His name, he goes by Casper Baby Pants.
So I mentioned earlier that I was going to circle back to that name, Casper.
That was a nickname that he had, but the baby pants part actually came from, so he was
living in Boston for a brief moment in the early 90s when he was in that group, super group.
And he, they were living poor, living dirt cheap.
And he went to a food co-op and upstairs they had this free clothing store that he found
this like really pretty like hand knitted pair of baby pants in this box of free clothing.
And it fit nice and snug on his head.
So he wore it like a hat.
And the kids in the neighborhood that he was living in in Boston would call him baby pants.
So he stuck with the name
Casper Baby Pants and that's his name now for
the kids music that he writes.
It's amazing.
And he puts on shows for kids, dude.
So what I want to know is how similar is Casper Baby Pants
to the stuff he was doing for president of the United States.
Well, let's play one now.
So I'm going to fade us out with a clip from one of his live shows
that he did on K-EXP.
It's great because the room is filled with kids.
So they brought a bunch of kids into the K-EXP.
studio for this show.
But I'm just going to pick a random one, dude.
Let's have some fun here.
So let's do one from his first.
So this one's called Here I Am.
His first kid's record is Casper Baby Pants.
Came out in 2009.
Try which one do you want to play?
You pick one.
If I'm going off of song title alone,
let's just go with Baby Bear.
Baby Bear.
This is a gamble.
We don't know how this is.
I bet you it's going to sound like presidents.
Here we go.
Name is baby, baby bear, and I found her in the woods.
She came into my life, and she made me feel good.
If I had a million kisses to spare, I'd give them all to my baby bear.
Her name is baby, baby bear.
I love her too much to say.
Every sunny morning is Valentine's.
Day. If I had a sea of sparkles to spare, I'd give them all to my baby bear. Her name is baby, baby
bear. She is a creature I'm found. A wild bear eyes are wide cute and round. I fucking love it, dude.
It's the best thing that I could ever have heard in my whole life. What an awesome ending for this guy.
Of course, he writes kids music. It couldn't have ended any other way, you know. And hopefully
He circled, you know, you said that they still make.
They still tore together sometimes.
I don't know if they're still writing stuff.
But that's fucking great, man.
He's like, he's like Andy Dwyer, Johnny Karate.
Johnny Karate, yeah.
Or Freddy spaghetti.
Dude, it's exactly that.
Holy shit, man.
Maybe that's what the character arc was based off of.
Because you think about it, he was in Mouse Rat.
He was in Mouse Rat.
This is Parks and Rec.
Parks and Rec reference.
We're nerding out a little bit here.
Yeah, we're picked.
fans of that show. Uh, yeah, dude, you're right. That's exactly what it is, man. But yeah, dude,
I read that now. It's just like, well, duh. Like, I'm good. I'm glad he is doing that. It's,
it's great. Uh, so that's all I got, man. That's our quick and dirty look at the presidents
of the United States of America. Nothing but love for this band, dude. Again, like, I'm just so
glad that we got to hear this record when it first came out at the perfect age.
just the stars are aligning, man, for us late 80s kids.
Yeah, and it was, it's just one of those classic records, you know.
I've never listened to anything else that they put out, admittedly.
It's almost like I don't need anything else.
I'm right there with you, dude.
Why would I?
Which is silly, because there could be some really great stuff out there.
But I feel like, kind of like what are you saying?
Like, this album came out at the exact time that it needed to come out.
Yeah.
I feel like the.
the band itself, the music, if it had came out later, which their later records obviously did,
probably wouldn't have seen the success that this record did.
Yeah.
No, it was a perfect timing with where MTV was at in the zeitgeist of everything.
Reping the music videos left and right with the top 10, whatever, this and that, MTV was doing back then.
They got all that love from MTV.
Yeah.
So yeah, dude, that's what I got.
I think it's a good way to kickstart our brief stints.
We're going to hang out in the 90s for a little bit.
Let's not do any actual, like, legit grunge.
Let's do different stuff.
Well, what I was thinking, I guess that, you know,
I don't know if these guys are considered grunge or not,
but since we talked about them,
and I think we've actually discussed talking about this record,
but we should do TOTES.
We should talk about TOTES, and we should talk about Rubberneck.
I think that's perfect, dude.
And that's a good album to do after this.
And there's a toad on the cover of the president's self-titled.
Perfect.
I mean, some of the songs on this record, like Backslider and Tyler, like these songs are so iconic.
You know what I mean?
There's a lot of other great tracks on here.
So yeah, let's do Rubbered Neck next week.
And that came out 94.
So, dude, right around the exact same time.
Yeah.
Well, right around the time of President's self-titled, man.
Yeah, it is.
So many good tunage.
Fucking love it.
Coming out around that time, dude.
Let's do it.
All right.
Awesome.
Well, that's that, friend.
Yeah, I was going to fade out with another Casper baby pants, but I didn't know we were
going to play one during.
So let's fade out with Peaches, the last, one of the last big ones that we didn't play.
Let's do it.
So real quick, I want to tell you that just the story behind Peaches is pretty funny.
I don't remember exactly the whole story, but apparently it's,
based on this girl that he had a crush on.
I don't know when.
Maybe he was a kid,
but her front yard had a peach tree in it.
And he apparently was like trying to build up the courage to go like knock on the door and,
you know, talk to her.
And he was just holding these peaches in his hand and just like squeezing them,
like just trying to build up courage and he chickened out.
But he was just holding these peaches in his hand and just like squeezing them.
Peaches isn't like squeezing them.
That's really funny.
But then he wrote a song about it.
Peaches could be a Casper Baby Pants song, you know, easily.
That's the thing, man.
Like so many of these songs.
The lines are blurred.
Yeah.
We don't know where presidents ends and Casper Baby Pants begins.
No, we really don't.
And we don't need to know.
Yeah, dude, he could have, I mean, he could have pulled a song from his old cassette tapes for Casper and just, you know.
dusted it off.
Took out some of the
some of the
NU windows and there you go.
Just like
Johnny Karani.
Sex hair.
I got
sex bears.
Big old sex bears.
But that's not.
What was the ultimate
version that he
ended up with for the kids?
It sounds exactly like
how Chris Ballet probably
approaches his music.
He writes a song.
Then he has to decide
is this for presidents
or is it for Casper Baby Pan?
Is this for Blinquin 82?
Or is this?
us for box car racer.
Yeah.
If it's for Casper,
let me change
some of the words here.
Boom.
All right.
Let's hear it.
And yeah,
so for all you listeners out there,
you can find us on Twitter.
Add No Filler podcast.
Tell us what you like,
didn't like,
just tell us something,
you know?
Anything.
We don't ever hear from you.
Apparently there are people
that listen to this show,
so we'd like to hear from you.
Why don't you?
That's what I keep hearing, dude.
Yeah.
Why don't you tweet at us?
Tell us,
give us ideas. What else do you want to hear us talk about? There's no place we won't go. That's not true. There's
plenty of records and genres that we probably wouldn't want to cover, but, you know, try us.
I don't think we're ever going to play Imagine Dragons on here. Just throwing that out there.
Right, right, exactly. No Imagine Dragons on no filler. No Imagine Dragons. Sorry to...
No, 21 pilots. No, none of that.
But, you know, other stuff, maybe. Yeah. No country.
Unless we have Mitchell on Mitchell.
Mitchell is the only person that we'll have on the show who will talk to about country music because I trust him.
Yeah.
But yeah, find us on Twitter at No Filler podcast.
You can also find us.
Go ahead.
I just wanted to say, man, we never do this, but if you like No Filler, hop on to Apple and give us a rating on iTunes.
Give us five stars.
We need more visibility.
I want to share this with more people.
And apparently, best way to do that is to reach the high stardom in the Apple reviews.
Five stars is what's going to do it for you.
You know, we never ask you for anything, you know.
Yeah, we really don't.
A little simple five stars in a review.
It would go a long way.
We would appreciate it.
Just don't give us a one star.
You know, if you hate us, fine.
Just keep that to yourself.
You know, you can tweet it at us if you want.
just don't tank our apple rating, you know.
We're sitting at a 4.8 right now, dude.
That looks...
Boom.
4.8.
4.8.
That's better than my grade point average in high school.
If that, however that equates, you know.
Yeah, no, me too, for sure.
I was a straight, straight C's baby.
Nah.
Not straight, but...
Yeah, it's bees sprinkled in there.
Probably a couple Bs, but anyway.
All right.
Find us also.
You can't.
That was like a Yoda way of saying that.
On the Pantheon Podcast Network, that's Pantheon Podcasts.com.
That is the home of many a great music podcast.
It's the podcast network for Music LoversQ.
So chances are if you like this show, you'll find plenty of other great content on the Pantheon Podcast Network.
So again, that's Pantheon Podcast.com.
and we'd also like to thank AKG by Harmon for sponsoring the network and the show.
And that's that.
Next week, we'll talk about the TOTES 1994 record Rubberneck.
That's going to be good times, man.
We're just going to keep this 90s train going.
And I feel like we could stay on this train for a long, long time queue.
Oh, hell yeah, man.
But we'll mix it up eventually.
All right.
That's that.
My name is Travis.
And I'm Quentin.
talk to you all next week
the country
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I'm moving to the country
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