No Filler Music Podcast - No Filler Rewind: Spoon - A Series Of Sneaks

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

In this early No Filler episode, we kicked off our deep dive into indie rock gods Spoon. We started with A Series of Sneaks, where Spoon still had their feet firmly planted in the alt rock post punk that came before them (think Pixies and Sonic Youth). We chat about how the label's lackluster support for the record jaded the band and how it ultimately helped set the tone for the album that followed, and the band we now know and love. Tracklist Car Radio Don't You Eva Don't Buy The Realistic The Minor Tough 30 Gallon Tank Quincy Punk Episode 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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Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Hey, everyone. Quentin here. This week we are coming at you with a no-filler rewind,

and we're going to revisit our episode on Spoons, a series of sneaks. This is a record of theirs that came out in 19. 1997. We were going to cover Man Man this week, but the recording fell through. And we thought it'd be cool to revisit this episode on Spoon. This was actually our first in a series of Spoons, which now, looking back at it, I feel like we should have called it that. We were trying to figure out what we should call it Spoonathon, Spoon Apalooza. But no, we ended up covering all of Spoon's albums, from a series of sneaks all the way up to Gimmie fiction. Spoon has always been top five bands for Travis and I. They will always be one of our favorites. Next week we'll be coming at you with a brand new What You Heard episode. And then after that's going to be our 200th episode.

We've got something fun in store for you for that one. And then we're going to come back and do man-man proper justice. So if you're a man-man fan and you were bummed out to not get a man-man episode today. Don't you worry. We will be covering them soon. All right. In the meantime, here is our rewind episode, looking back at our coverage of spoons, a series of sneaks. And welcome to No Filler, a music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. In each episode, we'll dive into a little history of the artist and the album of choice with snippets from

interviews and concerts as well as music from the album itself my name is Travis I've got my brother quentin here and this is the 10th episode but not really right because really we've we've got 19 episodes but this is our 10th full length episode and we are starting our deep deep dive into one of our favorite bands of all time spoon not just one of for me this is just period my favorite band. And here's why. The thing with Spoon, they're constantly evolving, but no matter how much they change,

they're still Spoon. Every time a new Spoon album comes out, I give it a listen all the way through. And every time by the end of the album, I'm just like, you know, wow, Spoon really can do no wrong. It doesn't matter. Right.

How far they still. steer off in a different direction from their previous albums. I fall in love with it every time. But here's the thing about them. And they've done this since like the beginning. And, you know, we'll, we'll hear that in this album. They're not afraid to, I don't want to say take risk. But I mean, there is no like spoon formula.

You know what I mean? As far as like. Really from album to album, dude. I mean, right. But that's what I'm saying. Like, you hear that early on. Like they, they have a lot of. different sounds. They have a lot of different vibes. They've got a lot of different genres too

that they throw in there. But it's all under the same, like, it's just spoon. Like they are their own sound. You know what I mean? Their own genre, if you will. Yeah. So I've got an idea here. What do you say we play a little snippet of one of the more popular spoon songs from their album, that came out in 2007 called Gaga, Gaga, Gaga. I feel like this album had their most popular songs on it. This is track four off that album. Just give you a little taste of spoon

in case you're like, who? We did play a little clip at the beginning from the album we're going to cover. But yeah, let's play a little clip from Don't You Ever from their 2007 album Gaga, Gaga, Gaga. Yeah. My favorite songs on that album, one of them.

There's a few of them that are great on that one. I'm just so happy right now, dude. That this moment has finally come. Yeah. First of all, one of the most memorable bass lines of all time. Fucking love that baseline, dude. You can't listen to that song and not get the urge to move something. You know what I mean?

And we're going to get into this heavily. But even with that song, You can hear in that intro, you know, how they kind of sampled in what sounded like it was Brit talking to Jim, you know, in the studio, you know, and that's the kind of stuff that they do and that they've always done. It's like the way that they compose their songs, the way that they put in things. They always know how to surprise you, you know, as a listener. Yeah. Or do things that you're not expecting in a song, you know. So anyway, that's something that we're going to hear with a lot of the songs.

that we play over the next few episodes. All right, so let's transition now to a segment that we'd like to do at the beginning of every episode called What You Heard, where we bring a song to the table from an artist that we've kind of been listening to lately, just to kind of throw in a couple more songs for you to listen to before we dive into the album of the week. So I will go first. We were talking about quiet storm last week, the genre quiet storm. I went back and listened to Toro Imois.

I assume that's how it's pronounced. But yeah, I think he, if you're familiar with him, he was sort of, you know, kind of the first graduating class, if you will, of the chill wave genre, you know. he was right there with washed out and all those other chill wave artists that that were all over the place in 2009, 2010. The guy's name is Chaz Bundwick. He is Toro Imois. That's his name. Let me back up just a second by saying that the reason that I thought to go listen to him after talking about Quiet Storm is that I feel like a lot of the bass lines and stuff that, sometimes would get thrown into

chill wave songs were kind of in that same like slow jam kind of vibe, you know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, he put out a couple of records under a different name, Les Sins, and it's

sort of electronic dance house music. Cool. And I've been listening to this one particular song on pretty heavy repeat over the last week because it's really, really catchy and has a certain sound that I have always been drawn to. And I'll talk about that after we play the clip. So this song is called Grind, and it is off his EP that he came out with in 2013 called Grind and Prelim.

So it was a single. This is a side A. It's called Grind. You know, great vibes, right? And particularly about the song, the instrumental bit at the end that sounds like, you know, like the soundtrack to like a Sega Genesis game or something, right? Yeah. I've always been drawn to that, you know, not so much chip tunes, right, that genre. But there are artists out there that pretty much do what.

what he just did, that sound, they get that sound on their, on their synthesizer or whatever instrument they're using to make that sound. And they make music with it, right? Specifically, you know, there's guys like disaster piece. And there's a ton of others out there. Yeah, you know, that's...

I've always been drawn to that. That falls into that hypnagogic pop category that we talked about a little bit on our second episode on Tyco. You know, where it kind of digs into the, that nostalgic sound that we 30-some things are so latched on to. The reason that I'm drawn to that sound is because it reminds me of the old video games that I used to play. Like that's the reason.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Let's get into what I've been listening to lately. Yeah. So what you've been listening to lately? Aren't you going to ask me what chef heard? So what you heard? Thanks.

There you go. Guess what, Travis. Hold on. Can I take a guess? Yeah, of course. Is this a psychedelic band, buddy jazz? Correct. Okay.

So let's just, let's just get this straight. You've been listening to psychedelic rock for literally the entire run of this podcast. Not exclusively. But listen, dude, it's a long time coming, man. I've always been a fan of psychedelic rock, but like that's fine, but damn, dude. Well, these guys are a little bit different. They go by Frankie and the Witch Fingers. And guess what?

There's not one member in this band named Frankie. They are based out of Los Angeles. The album that I latched on to, the first one that I listened to all the way through from them, is an album called Heavy Roller, which came out in 2016. And I'm just going to play the first track on the album. not all the way through. But yeah, just for an opener, like an intro track for an album, this just kind of got me hooked, man.

This song is called 6,000 horns. So yeah, they got kind of a, you know, temples, you know, vibe where they're like... They're tapping into the 60s rock, dude. Obviously doing a complete knockoff of that vibe. That's how I kind of feel sometimes with those psychedelic bands where it's like, this sounds too much like the 70s and 60s. You know what I mean? I don't know.

Maybe that's just me. Yeah. For me, I just appreciate that... That the sounds are coming, that that music is still being made? Well, yeah. And I think it's a beautiful thing, man, you know? Like, you don't... I hear what you're saying.

Like, you know, that's kind of cool because maybe they can... bring this sound back into the top radio playlist or whatever and maybe bring back the sound and bring back, you know, rock and roll. That's what I love the most about music. That it goes in cycles? Yeah. Yeah. And a whole new generations can tap back into that sound.

Doesn't matter what decade it is. Right, right. So yeah, that's what I've been listening to lately. again, that was a song called 6,000 Horns off of Frankie and the Witch Fingers' 2016 album Heavy Roller. So let's dive into Spoon, shall we? With this episode being the first one where we talk about Spoon, we're going to do a little brief history of the band, and then we're just going to talk a little bit about this album.

Moving forward over the next few months, we'll just kind of pick up where we left off. So Spoon basically is Britt Daniel, who is the lead singer songwriter, and Jim Eno, who has been playing drums with Britt Daniels since before there was a band called Spoon. Yeah, yeah. He actually, we have a clip from an interview. Look at that segue, brother. I didn't even mean to do that. Did you?

You didn't? No. I was going to say. Okay. So Jim Eno, I'm not sure the year, but he was interviewed. Or I guess it wasn't really an interview as more of a conversation with a professor at the Ohio University School of Media Arts and Studies. They talk about the history of Spoon. And this clip in particular, he has.

has asked, how did he and Britt Daniel meet up and start playing together? Let's see. Britt and I met because he was working, going to school at UT, University of Texas, in the radio, television, and film group. And he had to do a recording project. And he was playing with this friend of his name Brad Shenfield. They had a band and they needed a drummer. I had done a gig with Brad, maybe one or two of them.

and so they called me to do the session. I went there, recorded maybe five or six songs that I had never heard before and they were, you know, wow, how can he do this? He's never heard these songs before, but when I was in Houston I played jazz for two years straight. That's all I played big band in combo. So I was used to charts and just sort of mapping things out and so it was sort of easy for me. But then I started playing with that band. Me, Britt and Brad, it was a band called the Alien Beats, which was a rockabilly

country band. And then that band broke up. And then Britt and I, Britt and is like, hey, I got these songs. Do you want to come listen to them? And we played about five or six songs off a telephono and it just like blew me away. Let me just say

that I'm so glad that they broke away from Rockabilly. I can't stand it. Isn't that kind of weird? that they, that Jim and Brian, or not Brian, Jim and Britt started out playing Rockabilly together. Like that was the first music that they wrote together. Dude, he said Rockabilly Country.

Right. I mean, that's just, it's just, yeah, it's bizarre because, I mean, that, they never revisit that in any Spoon song. Like, you never hear a hint of Rockabilly, like. Not at all. You know what I mean? Not even in their earlier stuff like Telephone and Soft Effects. So anyway, that's good.

Thank God. But yeah, as he mentioned there, they were in a band called Alien Beats. Brett Daniel was actually in a band before that, his first band that he played with was a band called Skellington, which is a cooler name. Skellington? I like that. Skellington. Yeah, that's cool. He said that these earlier bands that he was in, this is Brett Daniel.

He said that in another interview I was listening to that, um, he said that, um, he said that, um, he said that, um, he said that, um, he said that, um, he said. They were kind of doing a Pixies Nirvana influenced, like rip off. Like that was the sound that they were doing at the time. I'm glad you said that, dude. Everybody was, yeah, everybody was doing that. No, because, so I have a confession to make, brother. I just listened to Telefono all the way through for the first time last week. You should be ashamed, number one, but go ahead.

Yeah, so I'd heard a few songs from it, but I hadn't listened to it all way through. How have you not listened to that album all the way through yet, dude? I just hadn't, man. I don't know what to tell you. Okay. And yeah, right off the bat, I just thought this is the perfect mix of like Nirvana and the Pixies. Should we play a clip? Let's play a clip from it, man.

What song? Let's play. Because, I mean, let's play the one that you're saying reminded you of Nirvana. Okay, probably the first track on the album. It's called Don't Buy the Realistic. So this was an album that came out in 96, you know? right in the right in the middle of that

grunge wave. Yes, it absolutely had that influence on it. But at the same time, this is their first full-length album, first track, and you can hear like the making of spoon. You can't. You know what I mean?

Right off the bat, dude, you notice. And this is something that Britt Daniel does probably in every single record. He provides his own harmonies. He always has done that, always. That's a good point. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, at the same time, like, yes, the guitar had some grunge hints, you know, but I think Brett Daniels guitar riffs are some of the most like, like, he's a riff machine, you know what I mean? Yeah, dude. For real. I mean, he writes some of the, some of the coolest stuff I've heard on a guitar comes from that dude. Yeah.

Especially the first clip from this album. But do we want to kind of give a brief history of the album first? Yeah, let's do that real quick. So Telephono came out in 96. And the song that we're covering on this episode is called a series of sneaks, which came out in May of 1998. So a couple of years later. Here's something that he said in an interview in 2014 with Pitchfork.

he says that with a series of sneaks, this was the first time that they had figured out that the distorted electric guitar was something that seemed too used, it was too simple, too alt rock, and it took up too much space. That's the way he put it.

So when you listen to a series of sneaks, you know, right off the heels of telephono, the first thing that you notice is a much more clean sounding approach to to his guitar sound. Yeah, there's still some distortion on his guitar playing, no doubt. But yeah, they step away from the really heavy distortion cranked up, which is what you would expect from a grunge band, right? So they step away from the grunge distortion for sure. Yeah. And it still blows my mind that this was an album that came out in 98, you know.

You know, I mean, it's because we were way too young. This was nowhere near our radar. But the fact that this kind of music was out around 98, even though they didn't get, you know, we'll get into this, but they didn't really get much recognition from this album at all. It still just blows my mind that this kind of stuff was around in 98. So let's go ahead and play our first clip, shall we? Yeah, so. And I had teased that my favorite spoon song,

date is on this album. This was, so maybe let's just say this as well. They had put out telephono and an EP called Soft Effects on Matador records. They got signed on to Elektra for series of sneaks. And so this is their first album on a major record label. So, you know, a lot of, a lot was going into this record. and we'll get into its success later. But this was them kind of transitioning, in their minds, transitioning from like, you know, small band playing smaller clubs to, hey, this is our first record on a major label and, you know, we're going.

We're going places. Yeah. So anyway, this is my favorite spoon track of all time, which is saying a lot. but there is just something about the mood of this song. The guitar playing is phenomenal. And as always, Jim Eno on the drums is, he's probably one of the best rock drummers of all time. I haven't said this yet,

but Jim Eno is by far my favorite drummer of all time. So yeah, let's get in it. So we're going to play this song all the way through. It's track two on the album. it's called the minor tough for that being a track of theirs this early on that's got just all the little details you know if you if you actually pay attention to a spoon song that that I appreciate so much you know like like I said the guitar um is what kind of does it for me on this particular the song in particular, but the whole

composition of the song, right? Like, there's just sort of back and forth, the guitar sort of changes with every verse, if you will. There's not really a structure to this song as far as like

verse, chorus, verse, whatever. Yeah. Which is another thing that I've always appreciated about Spoon, too, is their songs are always really complex. They're straightforward. Transitioning between each vocal part, this guitar sort of builds up each time, you know, it sort of starts as more simple.

And then at the end, when it's just the guitar that plays out the song, it's just, you know, it's just, he's going, I don't want to say going ham, but there's a coworker that says he's going ham all the time. And so I started saying that, which, you know, whatever. But, you know, he's just going, going all in, I guess, used to say, on that guitar part. And there was a cool vocal effect that I had noticed paying attention to this song just now, where he kind of has an echo on his voice for a brief period of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's really cool. It's just those minor details that Brett always throws into his songs. And one thing that I found out, too, with this deal that they made with Electra, they actually recorded a series of sneaks on their own before licensing it to the label. So not only did Spoon have complete control on the sound, but they ultimately would own the recording themselves, which is kind of cool. And that also shows that everything that you're hearing on this album is being produced

and it's exactly how Britt Daniel would have done. You know, like there's no influence. There's no influence from a producer or anything. Yeah. So let's talk about the demise here real quick. Of this record? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's a guy by the name of Ron Lafitte. I think that's how you say it. Who was at the time, the head of Electrus A&R division. That's the department that oversees the development of new talent. and he was the one that convinced the label to sign Spoon on. And within four months of them being signed on, he ditched the label, went and started working for another record label company.

Right. So they correctly sort of place blame on the failure of this record on the fact that their A&R guy was pretty much, you know, MIA for like the most important like time of an album release like the first few months, you know. Yeah, from what I heard, he wouldn't answer their, he wouldn't return their phone calls. Right. They had, they got barely any advertising for the album. Their tour budget got like slashed basically.

And within that same week from Lafitte leaving the label, within that same week, from Lafitte leaving the label, within that same week they were dropped from the label, from the record label. Right. So this was how Britt Daniel refers to the aftermath of all this as a lost period in his career as a musician. After this, he moved to New York and basically took a day job as an administrative assistant at Citibank. Did you read that job? I also heard that he was a substitute teacher for a short work. run and a video game maker or tester or something developer.

Yeah, he says that, you know, he says, quote, I did think for a time that I'd have to stop making music, which I could have handled, but it was going to break my heart. So this was not good. There's another interview that he did on consequence of sound that he did back last year in August in 2017 where he says I was bummed that the band had put out two albums

and very little notice had come to it you know at first we were in the indie world which we weren't really accepted by very well then we were in the major label world which definitely had no interest in us so it was a bit disappointing which I could see that for sure man like you know you get signed to a major

record label and you think all right things are looking up like this is this is you know a good sign uh and then you just i mean what they had to go through with with round lafitte and getting dropped from the record label and i mean it must have been so frustrating man yeah i think when you're in a band you know what i mean and you hit those those those those milestones early on you know what i mean yeah yeah and you're like you know hey this is like this is the plan you know we're on a major label like we're we're going to get to you know, do the tours and stuff. And like, we're,

this is the dream's about to happen. And then you just buy like bad luck, your, your record label, you know, you're working with a guy that, that has a falling out with, with,

with the label and, and, and, and, and, and, it seems to me like this, this,

this Ron guy just stopped giving a shit. Yeah. It's, it's, like, you know, unfortunate, uh,

timing and whatnot. But, yeah, you know, as we, as we know, obviously they get picked up by merge and go from there. But I mean...

Yeah, and we'll dive into that in our, in the following episodes. But hopefully with the three songs that we're going to share with you from this album, a series of sneaks, hopefully you can kind of pick up on just how great of an album this is, you know? Yeah, it's, you know, it's probably one of my favorite spoon albums. Actually, you know, I would think that the first four are my favorite spoon albums, like, as a whole, you know what I mean? I think so too.

Honestly, they're two most recent albums for me are pretty goddamn special. Hot thoughts and they won my soul. Really, really good, man. Like, I feel like they've tapped into something special now, which just makes me even more excited, you know? Like we've always said, dude, Spoon is unsinkable.

And they continue to prove that with every album that they release. So let's go ahead and play our, second song that we're going to share with you. This is my favorite song on the album, I think, mainly because of Jim Eno's drumbeat in this song. It's just so cool. And it's a really unique song. Let's play it before we talk too much about it. So this is a song called 30 gallon tank, and this is track five on the album. I'm not, dude. Yeah, that's good stuff, man. I love it. Yeah, there's, and again, like, like he had mentioned earlier, like, from the beginning, you know what I mean, with Spoon, even with Telephono and Soft Effects, he just does things that you're not expecting, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Like, for example, doing an entire verse of just kind of, I don't want to call it Scat, because it's not Scat, but like. Yeah, that's the word that, you know, that works. But, bop, bop, bop. Basically, he's just, like, he's just, you know, playing along with, with Jimino. You know, it's like an entire verse that's just rhythm, you know, and percussion. And he's just doing it with his voice.

That's sad, dude. That's got. But, you know, who does that? I feel like he may have, maybe he did that like during a, like a jam session when they were kind of, you know, playing out this song for the first time and kind of bouncing off ideas with each other. Yeah, I mean, musicians do that all the time

when they're coming up with songs. The band that I was in for a hot, minute grass fight. Like, yeah, during, when we were working on songs, a lot of times he, he didn't have the lyrics done yet. So he would do exactly that, you know what I mean? So I mean, for all we know, that's, that's Britt filling in a verse that he didn't have lyrics for.

And he just went with it, you know what I mean? And it works out great. Yeah, I love that song. Going back to this pitchfork interview that he did back in 2014, Bridgett-General says that 30-gallon tank was probably the, weirdest tune we'd done to date at the time. And it might still be the weirdest. It's a song that never repeats a section.

And so they kind of had this idea to kind of make these fairly long, weird alternating drum loops for the song. So it just kind of, it kind of seems like the drumbeat is always changing. Like it never, I mean, it repeats itself. But, you know, there's always something different that you pick up on it. you know, so it's a really long loop. What's cool is if you listen to any live recordings of them playing 30-gallon tank, Jim Eno just somehow does that drumbeat perfectly.

Well, as we heard in that interview clip, he was a jazz drummer. Right. Right. And that's what impressed Brit so much is, you know, Jim joins this band and he could just tell when to do a fill, you know, or when to change it up, even just. kind of jumping in and playing along with him for the first time, like even before hearing these songs for the first time, Jim was trained, you know, I guess quote unquote,

classically trained enough. For me as a drummer, if you're trained in jazz drumming, you're classically trained, you know, like you can pretty much do anything. Right. I mean, with any instrument, jazz is one of the hardest genres to master. So if he's coming into a rock band as a jazz drummer, that's why he's such an amazing rock drummer, you know what I mean?

Yeah. He's able to do things, and as he kind of mentioned, like he's used to charts and improvising and stuff like that, which is what makes, you know, those are the markings of an excellent jazz musician. So it's no surprise to hear that, you know what I mean?

Yeah, one other cool thing that I read from that same pitchfork interview. We didn't play this part, but at the very end of 30-gallon tank, there's this weird distorted sound that comes up at the very end. Britt says that was an accident that happened on a four track, and they actually used that as a sample on the song I Turned My Camera on, which came out on Gimmie Fiction, which was released back in 2005, which I think I turned my camera on is probably one of their other. pretty well well-known songs. Anyways. I thought that was cool.

You know, that those little happy accidents, and he just kind of kept it. You know, he just had it all these years, this little four-track accident and just threw it on as a sample later on. And actually, we'll get into this in the coming episodes, but there's a lot of instances with Spoon

where they kind of shelf these song ideas and we'll revisit them years and years down the line, which I think is cool. So I guess to keep this episode from being too lengthy, I want to go ahead and play our last pick for the album? Let's do it. All right, so this is track 13 on the album. There's a lot about the song that I love.

This is called Quincy. Punk episode. You know, it's interesting with that drum fill toward the end of the clip. That sounds like Dave Grohl Nirvana. Yeah. Yeah, this is definitely a more heavier track on the album.

That sounds like the kind of the grunge, the grunge drum beat that yeah. I like when he does that. He came up with. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. He's always been such a killer vocalist.

You know, he's got one of the most. Such a wide range. Unique rock vocal sounds, I think. Well, yeah. But yeah, like you said, wide range. We have to cover this when we do... Kill the Moonlight. Kill the Moonlight.

Yeah, you know. Yeah. Right. We'll get that. He's got a very wide range. Let's just put that way with his vocals. And one thing, too, about this song, and this shows, I mean, my ignorance, there's that distorted, uh, effect on his vocal that for me as a 30 year old who was obsessed with the strokes when they hit the scene

I at the time thought that Julian Casablanca's and the strokes were like one of the first bands to do that you know to throw a distorted effect on their voice like that you ignorant motherfucker bring it on to me brother what I'm just saying that's but that's I mean who else has done that. Off the top of your head, dude. Come on. Off top of my head? Yeah.

What was that kick out the jams, dudes, man? They were doing it back then, weren't they? Kick out the jams. Who? What? What did you say? The MC5. Kick out the jams.

MC5. Ew. They were just, they were on the Hall of Fame nominee list for this, this round. I don't think they got picked, but. Is you talking about, dude?

Yeah, maybe not. Maybe they didn't do that. Okay. Well, maybe they didn't do it. But I'm just saying like, it's not the, it's,

I mean. Well, that's my point, dude. Like, I, you know, I just didn't,

I never noticed it until, until is this it came out by the strokes, which we'll cover at some point. But, Bratiel's, if you, Braddianel's doing it here in, in 1998.

Just to, uh, to provide some history here. Um, there's a Wikipedia page on distorted vocals. Okay. Screaming. Yeah, I mean, heavy metal bands were doing it back in the 60s.

Well, that's a, that's a, I mean, if you're doing that and you're in a heavy metal band, you're fucking cheating, dude. You're what? You're cheating? I mean, maybe. Anyways, I love that song. And I love the fact that, like we said earlier, Spoon brought all this to the table. you know here's a series of sneaks it's already recorded

you know before they they were licensed to the label that's I mean this is all their brainchild now let's also say this I think this is a great album like I said it's got one of my favorite

spoon tracks of all times on this record but I guess it's no surprise that it didn't have much success when we play or when we cover the next album in the in a couple weeks, girls can tell.

It's kind of no surprise that that one did have success because, but especially with this, the, the, the, the girls can tell,

uh, is a spoon sound that kind of like, like, as, I feel like it's the most, um, cohesive spoon album as far as like, okay,

the vibe, the overall vibe of the album. Absolutely. But yeah, but, there's such a strong vibe to that album. Yeah, all the way through.

I love girls can tell, dude. Me too. Uh, the vibe. in that album are great. But what's interesting is like, so we just heard a few clips from a series of snakes.

We're going to listen to Girls Can Tell. That's the next Spoon album that we're going to cover. They both have very different spoon sounds, but both of those versions of Spoon, if you will, come back in every other album. You know what I mean? Yeah. After that.

Yeah. Like they've got such a wide palette that they paint from with each song. I mean? Yeah. That they revisit each, like, each sound, if you will. And that's what makes every Spoon album so enjoyable. That's a good way to put it, dude. Yeah.

It's like every, every album has these different vibes and sounds, but they revisit each individual. Yeah. And that's what makes Spoon so enjoyable to listen to. And why every album, you're sure to find a track on there that you like, if not the whole thing, obviously. Yeah. And let's just, I just want to say real quick.

quick here because I'm pretty sure they're on tour right now. If you have not seen Spoon live yet, now's the time. I mean, I've seen them, I've seen them like four times and I'm going to go see him again in a month. I'm going to see them in May. I saw them a couple months back at the showbox in downtown Seattle. Yeah. Oh my God, man. There's no reason not to see Spoon if you get the opportunity. Yeah. They're unbelievable. And the members of the band now, um, besides Jim and Brit, God, dude,

the things that these guys bring to the table, their bass player is killer right now. They've got two

keyboardists that add their own unique touch to the songs. I mean, it's just, oh, it's so good. Anyways,

so that's our picks for this album. This is, we're kicking off our biweekly or bi-monthly spoon. We're kicking

off our spoon episode. episodes. Yeah, we haven't decided if we're going to do this back to back to back, but I think we're going to spread it out. So we're going to do, we'll do a sidetrack next week, and then we'll do another band, and then we'll come back and do spoon. Yeah, yeah. Let's space it out a little bit.

Yeah, okay. Well, do we want to, we have our master plan here. I think next week, so after our side track, we're going to cover. dude, I don't know yet. I haven't decided, but we're going to do Keep It Like a Secret by Build Spill or we're going to do Clarity by Jimmy Eat World. Either way, we're going to cover both of those albums at some point.

I'm just not sure which one I want to do next. Yeah, maybe we'll figure it out by the sidetrack next week. Yeah, we'll have it figured out. So that's our, yeah, so again, we didn't want to dive too much into Spoon as far as, you know, so everything that happens to Spoon post a series of sneaks we'll get into in the next few months.

Yeah. And then we'll go, yeah, well, basically, when we do the Girls Can Tell episode, we'll cover Spoon history up to that point, you know what I mean? And then we'll go from there. Yep. So, yeah, so that is our episode on Spoon's second studio album, A Series of Sneaks, which came out in May of 1998. and again, you can always find us online at no-filler podcast.com.

There you can check out our show notes. So on our homepage, you can see a list of all our episodes and you can click on read show notes and that'll bring you to a page for that episode. And we've got our track list of every song that we cover, including the the intro and outro tracks, the What You Heard tracks. You know, we've got our artist and track name on there. We've got links to YouTube videos, even if it's not from, you know, a video that we actually play a clip from in the episode. Sometimes we'll just throw up links to videos, you know, from concerts and things that we thought were interesting or something that we really liked that we think you'd enjoy.

And we've got links to all of the sources. so if you want to dive a little bit deeper into what we covered, chances are you'll find more information on our show notes. There you can hear our sidetrack episodes as well. You can listen to all of our episodes on SoundCloud, and you can subscribe to us on iTunes or any other app that you use to listen to podcasts. We should be up there. And for our outro song for this week,

We are going to play a song called Spoon by a German experimental rock band from the 60s and 70s called Can. Which I'm actually a pretty big. I was a pretty big Can fan in my early 20s. Yeah, I got into them. I can't say I ever really got into them. Oh, maybe we should do one of their albums. I really liked Tago Mago, which came out in 71. It's, I got it.

I was going to say, dude, if we're going to have my, my friend Larry on this podcast, we should do a can episode with him. He's the one who got me into them. But anyways, Brett Daniel was a huge can fan. I like that. Can fan. And he named his band off of this song called Spoon.

Well, it's funny because there's an interview that I listened to where he was talking about. there were a lot of bands out there with, you know, just one-word bands, like Can and Ride and some other ones out there. So he wanted his band to be one of those one-word bands, you know. So that's why he, it's funny that he picked a, you know, he went to the can album and looked for a song that was one word. Which is funny because on this album, there's also a song called Pinch and Soup. I'm really glad they didn't go with soup, dude. Yeah, yeah. We wouldn't even be talking right now, dude.

Because they would not have had success. Well, Spoon is such a... Anytime I mention that, you know, my favorite band is Spoon, for one, most people don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. And then I always say... Right. No, you do. You just don't realize it.

Right. Everybody has heard... Everyone has heard a Spoon song, yeah. But anyways, this album came out in 1972, and... Good God. I'm going to... to butcher this pronunciation. You know what, man?

See if I can find how to pronounce it real quick because I don't want to do it, man. I don't want to do it. Nobody's going to judge. You know what? Type it into Google translation. I got it. I got it. I got it.

Hmm. Nope. Okay, well, fuck it, dude. It's not. All right. So it's, God damn it, man. You know, there's no such thing.

This is America. We don't have grammar police that are going to come and get you, dude. It's fine. Well, this album is called Eijpamasi. Yeah, you fucked that up for sure. How do you know? I just didn't bet it in the sun right at all. That's right.

All right. So, again, this album came out in 1972. This is a psychedelic rock band called Cannes. Yeah, they're kind of like an avant-garde experimental. Extremely, dude. They've got songs that go from roughly three minutes long to, you know, 13, 16 minute tracks. They're really cool. Definitely smoke a J before you listen to some can.

Travis, light it up, brother. Who me? Yeah, spark it up. All right, so that's going to do it for us this week. And catch us next Sunday for our sidetrack episode for Spoons, a series of Sneaks. and yeah thanks as always for listening and uh we'll uh what do you usually say chab chat at you next time shout at you next time or you know catch you on the flip-flop uh later's on the minje