Podcast: The Ride - Unlocked: Chris Gaines

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Enjoy this sample of P:TR - The Second Gate. Find even more Second Gate episodes at Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide We take at Garth Brook's alter ego, Chris Gaines. The unmade movie, the "Greatest Hits" album, and his fully produced VH1 Behind The Music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Welcome to Podcast The Ride, the, what is that? I'm sorry, I can't, I'm having trouble reading through my long black bangs. They're getting right into my eyes. I have a trife. Who is that over there?

Is that Mike Carlson? Yeah, hey, it's me, Mike Carlson. My regular, that's my regular name mike carlson wow that's so crazy that's like a nuts kind of goth glam rock kind of name just like chris gaines jason sheridan too what a that'd be an amazing stage name thanks to get into real angsty thanks so much uh i want to thank you guys for giving me the eight to ten months off due to my hideous face defigurement. Oh, yeah. Of course.

You look radically different. Much worse. You look like dog shit now. I looked like that piece of shit Garth Brooks because my face was horribly disfigured. Ugly, ugly man. Who could think of an uglier fatter man than garth if you don't okay if you're coming into this if this suddenly now seems like we're launching an attack well you're if um there it will look wait what does that mean are you are you saying that

no one listening has any sense of the of the garth brooks chris gaines situation what what's your percentage what are you putting i've been 95 of the audience has maybe heard the name chris gaines knows that it was a alter ego and that's where the line is could be that might be wrong yes happy to be wrong by the way i think we got some troopers born between the years of 1984 and 1986 who had very weird media diets as preteens like i did yeah yeah i think we're the same this thing when you had less going on when you when you when you didn't have a social life yeah i was early high school for me i had nowhere to be no i had nothing to do i had no social event when something like chris gaines falls in your lap and just and and you have nothing but time on your hands that's great one nothing but time to to think about it to solve the riddle and the conundrum and to absorb every piece of media all all three of them you have to

come up with small talk for extended relatives at parties where you can't remember why family functions you know actually garth brooks is chris you know there's an snl where where garth brooks hosts but chris gaines is the musical guy and i don't know anything beyond that i don't know it's like you know that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying that you don't know anything beyond that that's all that's what i'm drawing the line at i would say mostly i didn't you're yes you're correct People might know that for a while, there was a stretch of time where Garth Brooks kind of became another guy named Chris Gaines. It's still not ever fully, really.

I was getting into some, you too, Jason. We're getting into some deep cut. If it sounded like we were suddenly really insulting Garth Brooks, here's a preview. We weren't saying anything about him that he didn't already say about himself that is his k-fabe that is his storyline that he made for himself in the i don't even know where to start there is so much more in this story than i i did not know about the unmade movie the lamb i didn't know about the in-character fictional behind the music there's a lot and then and then

still another an nbc concert special i have a notion of the of the order but i don't you know i'm grasping its problems it's it's it's gonna be an experimental process much like the creation of the chris gaines persona yeah we'll figure it out together we're just we're we're blowing it up you know we've been doing just like garth we've been doing the same thing for a long time riding high global superstars yeah yep and now it's time to time to shake it up time to break the entire mold finally get on the billboard charts because you insisted on them not playing your songs for some reason i don't know i don't know what this means exactly i i garth brooks one i think the billboard pop charts he did not release his music to the pop radio stations so he didn't chart on one of them

it's very confusing you're talking garth's music not not chris gaines no chris gaines's music charts on the pop charts of course it does it's not music because it's pop music it's not there's nothing country about nothing he completely absorbed into the pop world so authentically without any trace of country anywhere in the voice or look or band or songwriting that's right yeah i i had to really put myself back in that 1999 2000 headspace because they would say things like the album was a total failure only sold two million copies it's like what oh right 12 million was like a big hit okay yeah yeah no this this really does reek of like pre-collapse like it's they they don't know what's coming for them and i mean by that i mean like nabster and that whole implosion not i do jason want to give you the opportunity whenever you

feel fit to contextualize chris gaines in terms of 9-11 i it feels like it's how many days before 9-11 did the album come out over 365 yeah yeah yeah like yeah like 600 days probably okay all right but it's you know but that's something there's there has to be some correlation between the two of them we'll find it we'll figure it out you know i'm sure he did some of those charity events, some of those TV special fundraisers, you know. Chris Gaines. Chris Gaines did? No, not Chris Gaines.

Garth Brooks came out of semi-retirement, I'm assuming. Chris Gaines died on one of the planes. Oh, no. Yeah. They, in universe, killed him. Wow, really? Ironically, just like his crush bandmate died in a plane crash yes that's right yeah and what yeah one just a one man plane crash and then the other

much bigger scale just as big of a scale as chris's solo career grew to yeah that's it's a dark joke i was gonna make but i won't won't. I won't. You're in dicey territory. Let's veer out of, like, let's, and that's what we get to do. We don't have to think about the dark days of 2001. No. We can think about how much, just the freedom and the silliness of 1999 when we could pay attention to this. To, let's just, let's calibrate this. How about let's just do basics.

It's kind of what we say. I think, Mike, as you said, kind of all anybody all anybody knew then really if your life didn't revolve around garth brooks and mine did not uh i would say that i did not listen to any garth brooks i was i'm not i was not a country person then are there we all i don't think i don't feel like this group is big garth or garth brooks fans at least then no certainly not then certainly not then now i've listened a little more garth makes it hard to stream music too really like like i can't really find his album you can find his albums but they're not on apple music because there's been a couple times over the last few years as i grow i've gotten more into more modern

90s style country music 2000s and I've been like I should probably do a Garth but every time I run into a wall Garth put a wall up so now I have to get go like physically into a store or something and buy them that's how he made his money you know like this is the the level of music sales oh my god astronomical this guy yeah I when I think about 90s crazy music selling I definitely think about him and mariah carey right like the two of them just the astounding amounts of money for themselves and for for everyone involved like celebrated to such an extreme degree especially on those other awards like the american music awards are always touting you know 10 times more than the bia the beatles

are nothing right they they worship they grovel at garth brooks and mariah carey's feet i think this made my mom mad when she would hear this stuff she'd be like well we don't listen to garth brook we don't know someone who likes garth brooks because the bia she was a big beatles fan so she would be like well he's can't be better than the beatles i said but i'm sorry but he is yeah that's it makes it a shame that i listened to so little of the music that i'm missing out on music that is we it has to be better than the beatles right now yeah as of today the only full garth brooks album i've listened to is chris gaines's album wow well you went further than i did i didn't listen to the album you didn't i didn't i don't oh my gosh now you can you can correct me down the road i my assessment is

i don't think that and maybe i'm probably i may i could be wrong because i haven't listened to it i don't i'm not sure that to me the album is a primary chris gaines text i i know what i consider the main text um and it could be uh well my impression certainly is that it's kind of like uh boring well i went hunting for it i tried spotify i tried apple music oh well i tried the itunes store and then i found it i i didn't order it because i was looking last night but it's on ebay anywhere from 99 cents to like 30 dollars you know you got to dig a little bit but it didn't take me too long there's a reddit and somebody has a link to this site i've never heard of that just has it okay streaming on there probably illegally so garth if he hears this he's gonna be upset yeah yeah um the link is to it's a

link from the alternate dimension that chris gaines comes from right it's that you it took you to that the itunes of that universe right right it's a different yeah whole different interface website very confusing looking um i'll say this you're not wrong that it's a boring album i think there's one song on it that has to be included in the the chris gaines text okay record of chris gaines existing yes that is maybe you know what i'm talking about there that is unlike the other songs in a lot of ways oh i've been wondering i only barely caught that this is on the i think i know what you're talking about yeah i'm sure you do um and it's called right now oh actually no i thought you were talking about the song that he made with his band before his solo career, Crush.

Oh, oh. He made kind of a neo-psychedelic monkeys influence type song, which I think somewhere on this earth you can listen to the whole thing. But I couldn't quite find it. I like the sound of that. But no, right now I think it to be included sure in the conversation that is the one that samples a 60s song or like he covers a chunk of people now yeah smile on your brother it's that song it's that song with it's the chorus from that but with like almost a rap talk singing sort of like uh the chicka cherry cola band what's that uh savage garden or that's

kind of his vibe isn't it like physically too he's kind of like savage garden there's a lot of yes now i think the album is interesting i don't want to do rail because you this is god this is your train i'm not trying to do rail it here i have to allow for discussion of chris gaines music in the chris gaines episode but right right now is very funny right now is embarrassing and very funny and shitty and sucks really really bad i remember it from the time i didn't re-listen to the whole thing we probably should re-listen to it together on here because it is i think it's funny and do you want to pull a clip up yes i do that one is available that song is in its entirety on youtube yes it is a music video told me there's there's music videos for lost in you which i found and right now and i only saw a little snippet of the right now music video which like lost in you seems uh very stupid um music video wise so i all of the songs on the album and this happens a lot i feel like are diff are ripoffs of different

90s kind of uh temporarily popular genres in a way yeah yeah well because it is all the one album that was put out is a best of and right yes yes of course mythology but he was chris gaines this alter ego was scoring hits in the world in this universe mega hits right in the late 80s early 90s all through so so it would make sense that it would kind of like jump genres yeah yeah it doesn't i think there was more of a dividing line in the 90s of like oh if you're a country guy you can't do pop music whereas now that song fancy like the applebee's on date night song the remix has a kesha verse i see there's a music video with her and the guy. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yes. A lot of your guys' country view stems entirely from that song. From the song Fancy Like that we heard on an Applebee's commercial. No, we know about Fancy Like, so we can assess the industry as a whole. Fancy Like, what's one from like 10 years ago? Chicken Fried? Chicken Fried, Zac Brown Band. A Country Girl, Shake It For Me, Shake It For Me Girl by Luke Bryan, I think, right? Oh, yeah. Is that one of his songs? I know a lot of these. fried zach brown uh a country girl shake it for me shake it for me girl by luke bryan i think

right yeah is that one of his songs i know a lot of these i know that toby key's 10 year old songs yeah jane's been teaching me a lot about jody messina who sang heads carolina tails california which is also covered in a new hit country song oh interesting i don't know about this this is new to me i'm gonna have to go home yeah but i i right now i have to talk about right now yeah yeah um what so the like and just really right before we get there i think just the other thing to say like all of this music is packaged under there's really one photo that you saw a lot and there's a lot of chris gaines photos but the main thing to know is that we know what garth brooks looks like just kind of like good old boy regular guy but chris gaines is a pouty moody black bangs eyeliner like trench coat all black there's kind of a crow thing going on he's kind of a crow lighter i believe he's garth brooks says at some point in universe he's 50 pounds today is all

in canon it's not you guys saying that that's what you were saying before exactly sure this episode is about chris gaines but really ultimately it's about garth brooks body issues that's truly what we're gonna get to and analyze right right but anyway i just wanted to establish the vibe but i don't know now that i've said the vibe and the look of chris gaines does that help explain right now i don't think it does because what is that type when right now? I don't think it does. Because what is that type? When have you ever seen, besides, I think we finally thought of it with Savage Garden,

who looks like Chris Gaines? What artist? I have an answer. And it's if you type the term alt-rock into that website, wikiHow, that has the weird, bad illustrations of how to soft-boil an egg. And the people look very cartoony. Like it looks like the shitty AI art before the shitty AI art, you know? He looks like Criss Angel.

Yes. He's got some angel in there. Yeah. A little bit cleaned. I don't sense like tats. Cause he's not. No, no, he would not do that. He's not goth.

He's very like, he's not. No, no. He would not do that. He's not goth. He's very like. He's very like sensitive. And then the music is very like. And it's not punk. I think what it is. Is he's thinking of himself as more of like a beat poet. A coffee house acoustic rocker. Which is what some of these songs on the album are.

Yeah. It's very soft. It's very emotional. In touch with his feelings and i think in his mind like that like beret ish wearing guy with a little soul patch i forgot the soul patch oh my god he's got a soul patch yes and that's like that's what i think he thinks he's doing it's more of a quiet rocker pop rocker guy he's making music i think i don't know it's music that would score the cafe within a border's books yes that's good yeah that's not bad yeah it's a description some of

some of the songs are a little louder but a lot of them are pretty quiet some of them are there's like some tony braxton ripoff thing in one of these songs i feel like that's a good way to put it yes all little like baby face tinged and he's like a he's a part of it a little bit there is a straight up wallflowers ripoff song oh just a one headlight ripoff that even has the same drum fill like exactly the same but it's and he's singing like jacob dylan it's so weird well he's looking at what's popular now as I'm starting this project in 97. And I guess it was that. It was one headlight.

Let's hear some right now. But let's hear right now, which is extremely crappy for this album. For in the standards of the Chris Gaines album. In the standards of this Chris Gaines album, This thing sucks ten times harder. It's Savage Garden. It's like the Walker theme. Moody like... I'm moody like... colors that were burned maybe it's high schools maybe it's a teacher's tent maybe it's a music maybe it's a crack maybe it's survival or could it be the last now it sucks so much shit that's really that's really weak that's that's major weak and also like he

this is this is some we're we're not at 9-11 but we are post columbine so we're trying to reckon with that yeah and you gotta that song you just played and the come on people now he can't do that as garth he had to put on a wig and a soul patch to make that radically different music maybe he wanted to do like he like i better be in disguise in case people don't like this there is and i i did not come here to do this but now i have to there are bands that do this all the time where i go i don't know what the point of this was i feel like they got in their own heads about the their sound or what people expect from them so they end up doing something different green day for instance has done this a couple times something bad what

do you mean i'm not no no no wait wait wait hold on never never no no no no no no no no no no never ever in their career they have alter ego they have different bands they have the foxborough hot tubs they have off yeah god. I didn't know they did this. Yes. They have a band called Network Something Something, but that is a little more like a Kraftwerk band. I don't like that. Oh, I'm sure that's very successfully achieved.

That was not very good. Masters of Synth Green Day. Yeah. I haven't revisited that in many years. But you won't cede that it's bad. You refuse to cede that it's bad. The Kraftwerk one? Yeah. It might be bad. Yeah. It might be bad. I can't remember. Finally some honesty from Mike. um but but you won't see that it's bad you refuse to see that the craftwork one yeah

it might be bad yeah it might be bad finally some honesty from mike finally on the subject i'm saying um um so yeah garth i don't know why garth couldn't have done this dog shit piece of music on his own regular album because it's not too it's like got the little country like kind of acoustic vibe there i guess he just felt like it was too big of a departure if i'm gonna make this even shittier with the information that this might have been from a stereo gum profile of chris gaines that had some great info in it in general but um the uh so it's not just stolen from who did the original song what's the come on people now oh yeah oh shit i don't know uh the i have a name in my head and i'm not gonna say it to not embarrass me yeah i know i feel the same way uh chorus is from one source versus the little rap he didn't

write that either that is a poem uh or a spoken word piece or something by cheryl wheeler called if it were up to me and so all of that stuff maybe it's the movies maybe it's the books and the government and the crooks and all that uh pulled from cheryl wheeler but he made one change he removed maybe it's the guns because he did not agree with the notion that guns could be the, as many smart people have. Oh, no, guns are not. Get that off that list. Probably the parents. No, that bums me out.

The books. Probably books are causing the shootings. It feels like Chris Gaines would keep the guns in. That feels like a Garth Brooks move. Well, it's almost as if Garth Brooks was not fully committed to the character. No. Which is a shame. Honestly, all this storyline stuff, I am kind of into the commitment of making a world around

a character who is tangential to the plot of a movie that never comes out. Yeah, that's bonkers. There is such a... First of all, it's the young bloods and i actually didn't know that okay the young boats i know in my i'm like i know in my heart it's not crosby stills and nash and i will say it's stupid i almost thought it was buffalo springfield yeah but i'm thinking i'm thinking the other one what it's worth yes exactly okay um yeah there's such a fine line though between this stuff that works and like ziggy stardust i was watching that moon age daydream

that's on hbo which is a very like psychedelic video documentary essay of david bowie i don't know if you guys have seen this i did him uh and ziggy stardust is cool he's got cool outfits but it's a dumb fake name and a fake character is not as much supplemental material as there is for chris gaines i would say none i would say never in all of that did we really dive into what is we never got a bio on ziggy stardust right just used the name and was cool which is all you can do so the other closest equivalent to this is sergeant pepper where it's not like and now to learn all about right billy shears but even though yes that goes a long way to not like if you give too much information it's always gonna i think it's gonna be bad if you're a rock star creating a new persona

yeah because the writing is not gonna be so hot right but there chris gaines doesn't work at all and other other people have tried this and i feel like it rarely works it's usually silly this is probably the one of the greatest silly examples of all time which is the main i know like for anyone who's like theme parks the only way i can justify it is that this is as silly as things that happen in theme park this was a theme park of the mind to be in 1999 you asked me to do mcfisto so we could at least have a straight line from so we could be here today i thought of it as a prequel yes i know because every part of me that was not into mcfisto well at least sets the precedent that fake rock star alter egos are theme parks we are we get to decide this and we did and bono is smart because he just stuffed it into this tour

yeah you didn't need to know like before you go to the concert right please know that he is not bono he is mr mcphisto right and it was not an album called you two plus mcphisto or something it was just by the way you're here already you paid for it already you gotta deal with me and my alter ego well and he also bombarded people of like oh he's always doing this there's the fly there's the mirror ball man there's mr mcphisto you know sure there was a well yeah on that tour specifically yeah uh can i have i said this to you guys even in private i have tickets to the sphere what oh you're going to sphere i got tickets to the octagon baby tour. Wow. You did it. Very excited.

Oh my God. When is that? End of October. Wow. Okay. So you're back to Vegas. Not long after. Not long after.

Vegas Groove Blender. Get your tickets now. Wednesday night. Oh my God. We'll see. Well, that's the day. It's a good kind of traffic-free time. Yeah.

Fingers crossed that it actually opens on time and that youtube actually honors commitments well they would never not honor their commitments i'm not saying anything about them i'm just saying like a lot of residencies have been moved around from what i've read about like vegas i don't think you can move this residency somewhere else i think there's only one venue oh no it's not not no i just mean move on the calendar well and you're right that the risk of the sphere not coming together seems very high i believe it's already a financial debacle uh he's calling it this is we're gonna be doing some sphere talk and like many financial debacles the sphere has already or had been planned for London, Los Angeles, and New York.

Different spheres. Wow. It's a Disney quest. Let's start. Yeah, we're doing so many. Oh, there'll be a sphere in your town no matter where you live. On every corner. On every.

Starbucks are going to get kicked out in favor of spheres. That's right. Yeah. So I at least picked three or four weeks after it starts or something. Okay. Happy spearing to you. That's good news. Yes. four weeks after it starts or something. Okay. Happy spearing to you. That's good news. Yes.

Let me back it up a little, and let's see if we can figure out why this happened. At the time, all I knew and all I read was, it was certainly framed to me in any article I read, is he wants to try to do pop music and stretch out out of the the country persona and this is how he the way he found to do it i didn't know about this movie well for well first of all just before the movie another thing stereo gum sheds light on um is that 1999 is a weird time for garth in general um there may you might maybe you call it midlife crisis. Maybe maybe it's the maybe it's the books. Maybe it's the age. I don't know what's causing it, but or just like that.

He's kind of climbed the mountain like the you know, where do you go when you're the biggest country's star in the world? One of the biggest selling artists in general of all time. I don't think he knows exactly what to do. So earlier in this same year in 1999 he announced that he was going to join the padres never heard this before um now you know it's the you can't just say that and then be on the padres you have to go through spring training but he's he was he was going to jordanordan it he was gonna like use the celebrity to at least get the leg up to go straight to training camp um he's 35 years old or something here older i think 30 i think 37 or 38 which means he is around our age right now the ages that we all are right right

imagine that now we decide we are going to start our baseball careers. Granted, he's like kind of a he's a big guy. Hang on. I don't know. I guess he's in shape. You know, concerts are more physical than anything that we do than touring the world. But still, I don't know that he does not necessarily seem like a given. That he's going to walk right on to a league baseball team at 38 at 38 years old. I don't know his baseball history or anything,

but it seems weird to me. I, you know, I've been watching, uh, I got the Phillies like one team package on MLB TV and there's a handful. There's guys on that team that are like 23, 24 on their first or second season.

There are some people who are like 34, 35 who've been playing for like eight or 10 years. I can't say like, there's even like a bull Durham level story of like, Oh, they were just stuck in the minors and they finally got called up when they were 38 or whatever. You know,

I don't, you're an ancient old man yeah at that age in baseball terms i feel like he maybe would have some luck playing for like the san bernardino padres as opposed to the san diego well maybe that was just whatever the triple a team that's what that's what jordan did when he was double a right right? But I don't think this ever came to pass. I don't think he, I think this was just something announced for sillies and then it didn't happen.

But important part of it is that he said, if I make it to the team or to the camp or whatever point where a salary would be involved, do not pay me a salary. I have all the money I need. Please just donate a salary amount to the children's organization i work with the touch them all foundation oh man my goodness garth is very concerned about children and that some of them aren't being touched

he really wants to make sure that we touch them all i words were a little different back then to be fair to the touch them all it's still pretty close to like kill them all or something like metallica's album yeah so i don't know it's pretty wild this organization still exists i hope that they've changed their name or could have considered is it em touch them yeah yeah yeah it's a casual yeah yeah touch them all okay yeah like so it's like metallica's get them touched it's like metallica's kill them all i work with the get them touched foundation get them it's not g-i-t-t yeah yeah yeah get them get them touched um so this is one part of where we're at gar Garth Brooks-wise. Then another announcement comes out.

Garth is starring in a movie. I didn't know any of this at the time, so I don't know why I'm watching a special with a goth or whatever he is, Garth Brooks, and why he's on Saturday Night Live as a different guy. I didn't know this movie context. You have to have been reading the trades or the LA Times or something. But now, this year, this is context that we have is that he

was going to be in a movie called the lamb uh baby face was going to produce this movie and presumably the music they're in i forget who else was oh the writer the writer was jeb stewart who co-wrote die hard and the fugitive major is stacked. I don't think a director was ever said. Another hit maker, just like Garth Brooks. Uh-huh, yes. The Garth Brooks of movies, Jim Stewart. And he, all we know about this, I mean, it felt to me, tonally,

I think this was gonna be kind of a dark film. I'm like, I bet he was trying to do a bodyguard. I think he was following that model like the kind of surprising degree to which she crossed over when he used it and again had big hits within that so maybe this is a vehicle to like put it all together i'm acting and we get big hits out of that too um the only information we have about the lamb, okay. He would have been a, Chris Gaines would have been a sort of a rock and roll citizen cane.

Which way in that we're going backwards. We're like, okay, well, this is maybe in the first, I believe in the first scene already dead. And then it's all flashbacks, mysterious cloaked in shadow.

And the movie's not actually about Chris Gaines. It's about a diehard fan convinced that Chris Gaines had been murdered, possibly for the sins of his fans. So this is maybe, this is like a seven or something. This is a creepy, taut thriller. So Chris, it's more about the fan on a search for the truth? Yeah. It's a guy. Wait.

I don't know who this would have been. Who was around? Maybe this would have been like a Russell Crowe vehicle. Garth was not playing the fan? No. No. Garth is Chris Gaines. Right.

Garth is Chris. Also, died for the sins of his fans sounds an awful lot like uh jesus christ yeah yeah so well and didn't she jesus uh had to right he so maybe the jesus i well i guess jesus was murdered but he like willed it he allowed it to happen for a greater good so is that what so chris gaines died he like a lot guy broke into his house and he's like fine this is what it must be so that all of all of the gains all the christians the chris can all ascend to a higher plane oh it's heavy we gotta find like to the opening of sunset boulevard where you see the guy face down in the pool and he tells you how he ended up there you know do we know does is it is it more of a pool scenario or

is it more of a citizen kane where you see him just sort of in bed and he drops something it's well all i have is already dead in the opening scene so maybe closer to closer to sunset boulevard yeah yeah so he's been murdered murdered yeah it's a whodunit um i maybe this you know who would have been great on this case is uh morgan freeman and ashley judd oh wow they should have put it in that universe yeah whatever those movies were called uh along came a spider kiss the girls yeah yeah huh they should just then now we're talking superstars you align garth with them i think that's great great. I mean, I think there's plenty. Yeah.

I think that's the best detective duo you could put in there. It might be where it had. It might have been a mashup movie. Alex Cross. James Patterson's beloved character, Alex Cross, solves the mystery of who killed Chris Gaines. Could this get made till today? Maybe.

Does the script exist? This might be possibly i think well you know what you know what's very odd and sad is that then in 2002 there's an art way after this thing is seemingly crashed and burned and chris gaines is already kind of a weird footnote joke then there suddenly is an announcement in one of the trades like hey remember that remember the lamb no okay well the lamb's still going jeb stewart who had to deal with his wife who was terminally ill but now she passed away so he's got time to work on the lamb again huh why did you release this this is horrible he shouldn't have to do anything he doesn't want to do that sounds like a terrible that i

no one is sitting around asking where are those pages on chris gaines get over your wife does that get worked into because chris gaines's story involves some terminal illnesses well i don't know i don't know the degree of the backstory that was worked out by hit screenwriter jeb stewart or if the or if this was all given I don't know if the bio essentially was given to Jeb as the material to base the lamb off of. I see. This much I don't know. Because there is a Chris Gaines narrative via the Behind the Music special. Right, yes. So this is all I know about the lamb.

He also gave quotes about it. And he said, we want people to go into the theater and know Chris Gaines and care about Chris Gaines. The thing I'd like to get across is how serious we are about this. There's the ruddles and there's spinal tap. And this is exactly the opposite. It's the opposite of things that people like and that are very fleshed out and accurate, even in their silliness. Right. We want to be the opposite of that.

This is fake and it's dead serious yeah it's a jokeless spinal tap jokeless none of that nonsense with the stone end and the getting trapped in the pod and the 11 chris gate let me be clear chris gains his amps go to 10 10 because that it makes sense it's not silly it's not silly it's silly that's also weird because like oliver stone's doors movie had been out for years. They could have just pointed at that and been like, oh, it's like the Doors. That's a real band. Oh, you're saying, okay, those other ones.

Yeah, we're fictional. Yeah, sure. So if this is the goal, if this is the idea that we need people to care about Chris, my biggest question about all this and what I would ask anyone involved anyone in the gains camp i would say what happened to make it where all right we're gonna make a movie we should probably have the biggest artist on the planet start being this guy appear as him on several shows produce several full-length special. And then the movie will come because by then it'll be gains mania. Right. So we'll have no problem getting that move.

The lamb funding. Right. That's doesn't seem like a good plan to me. Like what if that, what if that doesn't work and everyone's just confused and they feel like they had their fill of course, everyone's going to be confused. There had to be plenty of people around him going like, oh, shit.

Yeah. This isn't going to. We can't. Yeah. They must have known. Because Garth seems like, from what little I know about him, a little bit of a head case. I think so. A little bit of an overthinker.

A little bit of worried and self-conscious. And I don't think that's maybe the mindset to go into completely changing your persona publicly. You maybe want to have your own head on straight before you start being another person all the time. Yeah. Maybe you've got to look in the mirror and deal with that person in the mirror. Yeah. And maybe you should, if you're going to do it and put on a little costume, you should have a sense of humor about it. No, these are serious bangs.

Yeah. His lack of sense of humor about it no these are serious bangs yeah his lack of sense that's the whole yes is a big runner yes there are moments that are like calm down garth this the whole thing also i feel like this this entire thing took me as an observer who didn't listen to his music from all right garth brooks seems like a good old boy country guy who knows what he's doing in his field to boy chris gay or i'm sorry garth brooks is crazy as something that manifests to this day i don't think he ever shook the craziness and at this point some of you might know either you guys or listeners might know that I must play the video where he welcomed you to his Facebook. Are you guys, is everyone familiar with this video? Oh, I don't know if I am. Oh, my God.

Okay. So, I don't know when this happened. This is later 2000s or earlier 2010s. But when I saw this was going around And people were like whoa what's happening here And I'm like this seems like classic Mr. Chris Gaines to me I love this clip I'm looking forward to this

Well I guess it's official We're now on Facebook I really wasn't sure about this at the start He's in bed by the way A friend of mine said something that just made all kinds of sense She said think of it more as a conversation I like that But I'm already finding out on my own That it's wiping the walls out between you and me She said, think of it more as a conversation. I like that.

But I'm already finding out on my own. So it's wiping the walls out between you and me. And I really like that. It allows us into each other's worlds, or I guess in my case, hotel room. When I think about things I want to post, I want to post cool stuff, slick stuff, neat stuff. But most of the stuff I'm going to post is going to be raw stuff like this. This is just who I am. So if this is truly a conversation, then I say let the conversation begin.

That's a word for word, one of the Joker's monologues in The Dark Knight. When he's got the little camcorder if he has deep faked joker makeup on damn this would be the most terrifying video because he's holding the camera himself it's so close it is uncomfortably intimate i like that i'm gonna post raw stuff raw stuff oh i like that oh the bat's gonna like that that was a a a standby on the best show uh when tom would do sound collages and he still does sound collages and it would go like in and out like horrifying like it was a clip of sweet charity like hey big spender and then it would be that and then it would go into like um oh god what's the other well frankie teardrop the suicide song frankie teardrop oh

i don't know which is like a scary punk song okay here drop oh okay 20 year old frankie you know and it uh very affecting yeah in the context there's so just all of that looped with like other snippets of other songs and And then just in the middle of it, just a snippet of the Garth Brooks. It's just real, you know, it breaks down barriers. Raw stuff.

Raw stuff. Real stuff. I like that. This is just who I am. Why is he saying it like that? Let the conversation begin. I like, and all of,

I feel like there's maybe a lot of people. I know, I know this stuff is also a runner on Tom Segura's podcast. I believe like, like of i feel like there's maybe a lot of people i know i know this stuff is also a runner on tom segura's podcast i believe like they're all like what is happening the the insanity of garth brooks i feel like has only grown and truly on all all of the clues mr policeman i gave you all the clues the mr policeman had all the clues back in the he didn't have to he could have just retired in 97 on top and not shown us all that he's nuts yeah just done a song for a movie every now and then but i i somewhere on wikipedia

some website it was like 2021 it's like garth brooks is putting his music on digital and in 2023 i could not find it i could not find anything. That fast of a turnaround? Geez. Garth could have just done what Billy Joel did, where Billy Joel just plays live. No one is asking what's up with Billy Joel's new album. Right.

And nobody wants to know. He's like, how come I can't see him on Instagram? Where's his real stuff and raw stuff where's willie's raw stuff no slick stuff either just concerts that's not what i want out of my rock artist oh conversation where the walls are down so what i can't decide whether i what i can't decide what to go into first is we got two specials here i don't know which way to approach it one is an nbc concert special called garth brooks in the life of chris gaines which is the name of the album the other is the more mythology one which is called behind the life of chris gaines

this was on vh1 this was a parody of behind the music done full tilt uh i mean i say parody but not it's not rulls and spinal tap none of that take that take it seriously but it's all the trappings it's the interviews with the candles and the zooming in and out of the photos the actual voice of behind the music jim forbes so but they don't call it by music right um is it more important to know about chris or to get into because the behind the music is much more about chris and the nbc is the most like deep dive into the brain of garth yeah only possible i didn't i didn't want what is tell me again what's the nbc thing because I didn't. It's, it's, okay. It's called, it's called, it's very simple, Jason.

It's called Garth Brooks in the life of Chris Gaines. And it's a content, it says Garth Brooks, like you've never heard him before. So it's Garth Brooks performing songs by Chris Gaines, a fictional person who he's going to play in a movie, but he's otherwise spoken of as real and garth brooks does not dress up as chris gaines hence you it's a garth brooks as you never heard him before so it's just garth brooks doing chris gaines songs also with meandering interviews and uh the onstage monologues about the difference between garth and chris i think we i think we need to learn about chris first i think so we can that's what i was gonna say okay okay as i say this

because this is this is also some of why it's haunted i forgot about chris gay i would just bring up chris gaines every once in a while i may have said this on the show once before the my favorite way that chris gaines came up in my life was uh early dating aaron that we were in a long car ride and we passed the time playing 20 questions and i like you know so guess a celebrity and uh i thought of chris gaines and i she got so angry and vexed as we went further and further down the rabbit hole because at some point she had to say, okay, hang on. It's a fictional character who's not from movies and TV. What is this?

And then eventually after a long time, she's getting so mad and she's like, is this the fucking Garth Brooks thing? Like barely remembering it. Like, yep. I squealed like an idiot and she was very mad so a tip for you if you want to infuriate someone in your life use chris it is impossible by the way everyone approaches anything in 20 questions it's like impenetrable so uh that's my little tip for you um but other than that the main way that chris gaines lived in my head was this like a couple years ago finally saw a clip from this nbc one that is just it might be i'm gonna play what might be the longest clip i've ever played on the show and i think it's

important to see the entire thing it's like it's a meltdown so with that i guess we talk about the vh1 special which you watched the canon one and a half times jason head canon of garth of garth for his character yes yeah yeah and this is uh i feel like the vh1 special is a good example of a theme park connection to this it's almost like if you if you go through the queue of a ride and you look up if there's a secret website for the ride or there's stuff in the gift shop or other parts in a land, if you pick a ride and you consume all the ancillary material,

there's a whole additional story that you get in addition to the two to three minute ride and some people like a little of that some people don't want any of that don't really care and so uh i i feel like with chris gaines you can listen to the album and know it's garth brooks or you can learn all of this ancillary stuff which is this behind the music fully available on daily motion a podcaster's best friend uh daily motion and the internet archive uh yeah the wild west it's it's really something yeah thank god because otherwise vh1 wants us to forget anything they aired from 1989 to uh today they want vage One wants you to not know

that they made anything. Right. So we need our Vimeos and our Daily Motions to pick them up for us. Well, yeah. I mean, so, you know, if you got the record,

you get, you know, you see some Chris backstory, you see some old photos, you see, there's like a Cliff Notes version of his story. Sure. But in the special,

the story is allowed to run free. Mike, you did not see this piece of material? I did not watch the VH1. I read the backstory, though. Oh, okay. So I imagine a lot of this is... So you know everything. You know that Chris Gaines was born in Australia.

Yeah. But moved at 10. So no accent that Garth has to do. It was five. Yeah. Okay five yeah okay okay oh he's trying he's testing my back yeah no no um making sure you're a real game this is sort of like the test that chris gave to his manager to get out of the con when he realized he was being screwed but that'll come that'll come in time five makes a lot more sense that is when you that again it absolves garth of the need to do an accent in this eventual movie um and you know i mean look my takeaway from his story and from the spine the

music the story of chris gaines is so dramatic and fraught i mean for this guy to have lived what he's lived you could see why garth brooks would want to sink his teeth into playing this character i mean can you imagine just you know i think we all felt pretty supported by our parents growing up to some extent can you imagine if your father gene gains wanted you to follow in his footsteps and be an olympic gold medalist like him but you didn't want to do that you wanted to play rock and roll and so the only support you have is from your mother carol and john's gains i mean if like you when you you want to be true you need to be true to yourself there's a person there's a spirit waiting to explode out of you, and that spirit is not a gold medalist. Don't you dare make me win gold medals, Dad.

I'm not you. Was there a detail, too, of, like, his mother was also a medal in swimming, and his father was her coach. And it's just like, oh, no. Oh, I missed that. Oh, I see. Yeah, that doesn't feel good.

Yeah, that's not a good recipe. That's always bad news. Well, you know if when you add that in now it becomes kind of an interesting story i don't think they get into that it seems like it was just a fine marriage uh yeah no they seem normal and they also seem relatively the same age you know it feels like at every step that the chris gaines story could get a little weirder and darker they just veer away into but then he found his way into just making more hits and keep and yet he was still sad because that's

how we decided garth will look in the pictures um did anything else strike anyone about the the tragic tale of chris gaines yeah hold on if i may know jason um i mean so i i deal the whole thing do you mean yes any please oh well you know it's important you should everybody should know that he did he left morningside high school to pursue his music professionally although he did complete his ged in 1987 oh so if you're wondering the degree of education that chris gaines had its gd um i think the all the additional material to like fill out who chris gaines was that he was yeah when he first started out he was in a three-man group called crush and one of the other guys was the real front man and that was the one who died in a plane crash.

Yeah. Tommy Levitz. Yeah. And so. The Chris Gaines story is a, it's a real smorgasbord of a great, like nothing names. There's so many.

And so then they go through great pains to go like, and Chris, he started working on the solo record and it was a huge hit. And we were all shocked that he could carry this himself. Cause he was not the front man of crush. It was the other guy. Tommy Levitz was the front man of crush, not Chris Gaines and certainly not Mark Obed. Okay.

Do you think like when they're putting this together they're like thinking of like okay the like dave grohl now is in this foo fighters band and no one knew oh dave could front after being the drummer from nirvana that's a good comparison yeah it feels yeah or a little the fact that it was kind of like a like uh brightly colored band it's me it's maybe in the uh um the the george michael wham right zone a little bit too right yeah um he says like in in there's one interview where he says it seems like it's always that when there's this solo guy it's like you always hear about this band that they used to be in you know like there was always a band that they were in i'm like yeah always sure hard to think of an example where that isn't the case like really close by like in the same skin close by

yeah wait well that's what's allowing him to stretch i guess to be a guy who didn't start solo he just he the thing that's different about chris gaines is he came out of the gate he started with a band that had a smash hit immediately right then moved to a solo career where he where he also had smash hits immediately yeah um the other big thing that jumped out at me in this vh1 special is they go to great pains uh to describe that chris gaines has sex and not just that he's a sex addict sex addict there's a bad problem which is a bad problem so much sex so he just couldn't turn it down to the point that it starts affecting his music like his second solo album fornicopia again that's pretty good that's pretty good all of it for the fornicopia photo where he is kind of like he looks like clockwork orange a little bit yeah

and his little like bob haircut and he's like he's staring at you staring daggers at you while resting his hands just below a pair of boobs. There's a version of this where they actually like he did his own like version of Darling Nikki or something. Which would have been more interesting than what we got. Is there any song that reflects the sex addict period? Really? No, just interviews with his ex-girlfriends or his current girlfriend um the one that really stuck out to me was the ex-girlfriend who was like oh yeah she she said

a lot of the stuff in this special people say things that could have used another pass in scripting because it's like chris was a well it was a bit of a womanizer and like she says it so like like with a smirk like laughing and it's like that's a little of an intense way to put like i you said it in like a jolly way of like well he was a bit of a ladies man that's wait there's literally a womanizer there's a part where i don't know if it's the same part but she's like yeah he's uh yeah he was not so great with women and i'm laughing but i really shouldn't be because it was a serious problem well then why did you yeah just get another take on that awkwardly you know the come on it's hard to say truth sometimes i'm a fearless laugher i understand and i feel like a a few times said like

chris was getting famous on stage but nearly as famous in these hotel rooms and it's like what the what what the fuck what are you saying it's the only in this story it's the besides the car crash which is like a real dark thing otherwise look as i said the story of him seems to be he had a he wanted to do music his dad didn't want him to so he said i'll show you and he started a band and had a big hit and then went solo and then had big hits and then all and every one of the albums was a huge hit so like what's the story here why is this guy this brooding i don't understand what's what is the meat of this story is making everyone make all of this material

the sex addict stuff is the only stuff that's like okay that's not in every rock star story it's a little interesting what might have helped is if they talked to anyone who is a sex addict because it all feels like it's like what's what i would guess it's like i like there's nothing specific here it's just at some point somebody says like boy he'd do all kinds of weird combos two women three women four women huh whoa that's weird that and also never never obviously never i know this is a country star in 1999 yeah there is never any thought given to that someone who is not a woman would be caught. It calls into this world of sex addiction.

Certainly. Look, look. I was crazy. I wasn't that crazy. Okay. There was no Mick Jagger, David Bowie type rumor for Chris Gaines. I don't believe so. Like Chris Gaines sucked Jacob Dillon's dick or something.

Jacob Dillon, Rob Thomas, Stephen Jenkins and chris gaines were just fucking like crazy in a hotel room in 1997 square they did a big square they did a human at one point god i don't even i have the fuzziest memory but i believe i did a big square i think stephen jenkins was there um maybe look i don I'm sorry, I don't remember his name, but Mr. Fastball? Maybe he was just watching. Is Mr. Fastball's name Mark? I can't remember. I'm sorry.

Mr. Fastball. Mr. Fastball. Also, speaking of, Chris Gaines isn't doing any fastballs. He's not doing any drugs. No, no, no. Drugs are not. Drugs don't enter it. Maybe that's why.

Maybe he chose sex because he's like, well, look, hey look hey garth still got to be big with the kids right so i can't be saying even fake that i drank a lot did a lot of drugs sex is fine i'll tell my 12 year old fans i had lots of sex pretty as long as it's with women women make it only women i look i want to watch all the footage of all the other interviewees and if one of them said even in footage we don't use chris gaines had sex with one man just kill it fire them no way chase them out of town i will never have this said and in the vh1 behind the music communicate that with a montage of chris gaines and a parade of women kind of in corners pressing their foreheads into each other. Like, it's just a lot of that canoodling. Never.

He refused to... Look, I know this is all just for pretend, but I am married, so I'm not going to do any fake kissing. You can leave that to the kid on the fornicopia cover. I like the detail that his manager took advantage of him, but then he also had sex with her. Yes. You may find that in college. Excuse me. Yeah yes excuse me yeah yeah it was confusing what i just said stole all his money but then it was complicated by the fact that they had sex right during sex addicts because he was sex at right so that you mean sorry you mean his manager yeah roma steel yeah steel who is not apologetic

she exclaims like i made chris gaines i made him what he is she's just in it she's just in the interview yeah she's she's happy to talk about any of it on the record there's even the moment where he finds out that the house he's living in is actually in roma steel's name and they let chris improvise on this I mean, to find out that the house that you're in is not the house of your name. This, oh, I mean, it was tough. Like, none of the Chris, none of the interviews do any good towards convincing you

that Chris Brooks can carry a dramatic. I'm getting tired of this. This is me me by the way my capacity for absorbing crap is sky high but i'm halfway through this i checked the time at some point in this behind the music and like it's only halfway or get it who was gonna see this and go sign me up two hour film of chris gaines many people the the um checking the check marks like check the boxes of rock and roll story a manager takes advantage they also in explaining the sex addiction which is a lot of this a lot of the rest of it is about like it was an horrific car crash had to get his face repaired

and he just couldn't get used to that face but the sex addict stuff is justified by like eventually uh after professional help i discovered it's because i never quite had a good relationship with my father and it's like okay you're like phoning you're you're like i never got to tell him i was right he was wrong you know okay i guess i guess that's how addiction works sometimes you're dealing i know sex addiction is hard but is it as hard as your father gene insisting that you win gold medals but the whole time he's he's getting gold records it's well it's very similar it's probably the same amount of gold just melt it down like spread further it's still round i'm we should have said i'm winning i'm winning gold round this dad i'm stacked with

he didn't know about them rona was taking them all oh he never saw them he wasn't getting the money they probably weren't giving him the record probably roma steel was stealing the gold for herself yeah and turning it into fancy jewelry he makes a comment about like making half a million dollars or a million dollars and it the delivery of the line makes it unclear of like is that when he knew something was wrong or is that when he knew like i'm i'm at the top of the game like it could go either way and i wasn't really sure i i don't know to talk about the dad stuff again too it's at some point it's like uh and he got the news that no son wanted to hear his father had

cancer and like again k fine but like why is this how is this story so singular and interesting why he had he wanted to do something early and then decided to do something else and his dad got cancer and he was he had some money troubles what is there's nothing in the chris gaines story that's proprietary like you know what i mean like what is gonna make the lamb so great like well i need him to be addicted to a really specific drug or have like a really like really like only him mental illness or something i just don't know promise the problem is is that like you can't if you're taking it seriously then you can't first of all they did already put in the funniest thing by making his father want him to win gold medals

that's more of a funny premise than anything else so silly but everything else is like medals dad everything else is like they can't get garth is too worried about getting too real with the actual outcomes of what a sex addiction or cancer or whatever he doesn't actually want to go there then you're right in the way that an actor what a real actor would be excited to go there and to process their own trauma and experiences and run them through this lens of this character and i went somewhere and it was really hard but it paid off in the point he wants to put on a wig and have a different name yeah he doesn't want this you're right he doesn't he can't he can't go there he wants to play dress up he wants

to play dress up he wants this ain't my hair he's feeling worried these pants with his garth yeah but he wants to use a real like chris gaines is a human's name but the backstory is so cartoonishly like hack yes he may as well just be called johnny rockstar like i would like it a lot more it can't yeah he can't i mean first of all sex addiction for a fictional character it's hard not to even make that comedic i think in some way that's probably not true but well maybe with the right chris gaines it's are impossible especially because there's at one point they cut to like some guy who was in his uh little posse or whatever at the time and he's like shaking his head like oh man everywhere he went he had babes if it was sex addiction don't call it babes

yeah it's like he the line got fuzzy between it's like he couldn't see the humanity of a babe he saw he looked in a babe's eyes and he saw nothing he didn't know that that babe was a daughter or maybe who had a mother and a father he just he just saw uh babes were like mannequins to him here's another here's a theory all of this stuff is stuff garth wants the public to think about in relation to him if i'm playing psychologist yeah garth wants people to know he fucked yeah yeah wants that and they've set calling sex addiction that makes it seem less gross that he would be sort of braggy about it because you can at least make it seem like an issue versus just a perk of being a very famous rich guy sure

oh no what's this oh you found more photos of me with babes? No, I don't want those out there. Oh, shoot. This interview's over. He stands up, has a manila folder. Oh, no. It's filled over. Why did I have these?

210 photos of me with different babes. Sometimes two or three or even four at a time. Please don't look at these no and that one over there is not me and eagle eye cherry together imagine the photos imagine the photo of me and babes i was wearing a black henley not a really starched shirt and really starched jeans and a starched 10 gallon hat so yeah, yeah. Oh no, me and all the Venga boys, no. Yeah, that's Tal Bachman jerking off in the window.

People aren't ready to see me on the tour bus with Chumbo Wumbo. I thought it was a babe. I didn't know it was Duncan Sheik. I mean, I would like just the rest of this to be this game. Eating out Delamitri's asshole. At the band or the guy, I don't know. Look around my ass, pretty baby.

Anyone younger than us is gonna be lost uh yeah yeah oh they're important you must you must go through the pieces and listen to every one of these important artists uh uh what what else are we covered oh well you know what if you were worried it worked out he dropped roma steel and he got with Dan Lanier. So he has a better manager, Dan Lanier. Yeah. And they're never going to have sex because Dan Lanier is a boy, not a baby. Chris Gaines is too straight. He would never, never Dan Lanier. You're never sexual.

Chris Gaines also, like, he's got some famous friends or at least famous people he's worked with. Of course. who have a lot to say about him a lot to say about him like multiple appearances in this behind the music well i mean who's who are you the most excited about uh well the one i was most surprised to see and hear a lot was billy joel yeah he's billy joel acting it seems like they got a good uh seven minutes with him they kind of they kind of told him what was going on all right so now the guy's in a car wreck okay yeah boy we were worried i remember when we got the call oh boy we were so worried all right now billy he really

likes babes so can you incorporate oh yeah but when he was in the when he was in the wreck i thought he'd never bang a babe again is that good are we done yeah we just got a second one nope nope so long uh billy joel says uh i guess for plausible deniability um he says we were on tour in beijing and we heard about the accident and we didn't know whether he was dead or alive it was just like what he's better intel yeah i know you're in beijing but somebody could give you the somebody can give you more trustworthy info billy guys you can put this on boards you put this on poster board and he could just read off like you can write the script on a big board i feel like now this has been around this genre of musician doing a fake interview

that plays that most musicians now have done these sure in various like the muppet that new muppets thing there's a bunch of similar things country bears country bears it's a real easy way to plug in and you because they don't have to stretch at all they're playing themselves yeah so you're describing somebody who's the biggest star in the world and they go oh man ah they're playing themselves yeah so you're describing somebody who's the biggest star in the world and they go oh man ah they're the biggest star in the world when i first heard their music i was like oh bang loved it all right great that's all you need good dave grohl probably knocks 10 of these out in one afternoon he goes back and forth between parody and real thing doesn't miss a beat you're like this is about a country bear got it great okay he's a rockinest guy all right this one's about ringo okay he's a rockinest guy all right this

one's about ringo okay he's a rockinest drummer like it just doesn't matter back and forth wildly between genres dave girl you know prince had the recording studio in his house so he could you know record any he could record in the bathroom this is like dave roll with cameos yeah he could use some of the equipment to record music and he does from time to time but dave rolls bread and butter is cameos so he needs to be able to he's like cooking an egg for his kid oh shit cam i forgot it turned to the left nine cameos today all he has to do is like clap it's like the clapper it's just hand activated there's a camera in every cupboard oh there's a new rockadoodle that we need dave growl to do a little bit and where he talks about rock-a-doodle. Oh, shot to Claire?

Oh, man. We all wanted to be shot to Claire. Got it. Done. Cut, print. Dave goes back to making the food. You'd be in the movie. Barbecue, by the way.

He barbecues. Straight to video movie, Rock Puppy. We just need you for, just need three seconds. Just to establish the Rock Puppy is the biggest rock puppy there is. Tight. Does it. Love it. it fun this is so fun um keep call please call me again i love being in your stuff um you also oh wait and then you also get you well you get a lot of don was my man continues to haunt the show producer don was he was on stage just with this willie nelson tribute at the hollywood bowl a couple weeks ago. Okay.

I think he's like a less famous girl. He's a girl you don't realize is around. Yeah. But if you keep your eyes out for Don Waz, you're going to see him everywhere. Man with very strange facial hair. A name I know is a reference point and then came up on the Walk Like a Dinosaur. Everybody do the dinosaur. Yes, that's right. Song.

That was him. Because his band was not was right yeah okay and he actually did produce a lot of this stuff so mike are you uh disappointed that uh your producer hero don was because of maroon so much boring music uh well yeah no i. Well, no, it's not his fault. It's not Don's fault. Some of the songs, I don't think you, have you heard a little bit more of them? I'm roughly familiar. And a lot of the songs are peppered throughout behind the life of Chris Gaines.

A couple songs that I think have things in them that you would like, but they're not good songs. I don't mind the song that he played on SNL, Way of the Girl. I think the song Way of the Girl is okay i think way of the girl is bad okay that's fine but i think i would not and that's the end of this fight because i'm not going to the mat for way of the girl i'm just saying if i'm looking for something i don't find abhorrent uh there's but there's a couple other there's a there's a maybe i'm crazy but there's a very like Steely Dan-ish one there at the end of the album. Okay.

I don't know. There's little things in there. You have to tell me that. I'm going to be viewing it under the harshest microscope possible. No, I know. I even know that's been said. I winced at saying it coming out of my mouth because I could be wrong. But just so we're clear, Don was produced a lot of the actual chris gaines stuff

that you can get a hold of it takes a little work but in storyline he produced some of the fictional chris gaines that's a good point yes he yeah in this world he produced the full albums fornicopia straight jacket jacket apostle triangle those don't exist but there is an album called chris gaines greatest hits which is also referred to i believe as garth brooks in the life of chris that that album that is real yeah has multiple names oh in the special they refer to it as chris gaines greatest hits they don't acknowledge the cover this is this is an image there's an image collage of all the fake chris games album and the one real chris games album because there is like an eight or

nine episode podcast about all this i think from a country music like here is the lens we're looking at carth brooks actual career and where chris gaines so not from a theme park podcast perspective which is i think what we can bring to the table that's very crucial this is a pop pop culture ghost that haunts us sort of thing what year did fornicopia come out 94 i believe 94 i'm trying to think of how i'm sorry 91 91 91 actually that's such a fool. The closer it is to the 80s, I think I like it in concept more. You know what?

It feels a little equivalent maybe to In Excess. And actually, his look on the album cover of Straight Jacket, his hair seems like Michael Hutchence. Yeah. But the vibe of the cover otherwise which is very bright and has several sexy nurses trying to fuck him even though he's in a straight jacket what a conundrum you're trying to have sex with somebody but you can't get there you don't know how to get their straight jacket off but the cover this cover is extremely enema of the state despite yeah it's true in in universe

it's from 89 and he looks like michael edgerton yeah that's true sexy leather nurses are definitely that's covered by blink i made four fake mcgruff songs but is the most uh niche bit possible to actually just write the full fornicopia album wow yeah that's extremely thought yeah i mean that's for your talking i'm into it but even i probably don't finish listening to it i know i know why would you want to listen to all of it wow somebody did fornicopia i mean are you gonna do it are you gonna try to put on your own inner don was hat i like the in concept i like the idea are you i love the cover of fornicopia i would like i would like to see i would say don't like abide by the rules that you think would heat with a boring music well

that's on yeah that would be trying to really imagine what the neon pink and the clockwork orange vibe what what cornico what fornicopia is in your heart based on this cover i mean i would certainly go off 1991 i would try to like it would have to be really dirty it would have to be a disgusting album sorry to say yes naughty by nature or something yeah also to put this into perspective uh being a sex addict in the middle of the aids epidemic that's uh kind of a rough time to be uh sex did they say what years it was that he was a sex addict well it's like we're talking like 90s we're talking early 90s that's still going on uh yeah so i'm just it's it's an odd time that's too that's much too interesting for the life of chris

gaines right now that's something if there's if there's aids in the story now we have something to work with in the lamb that's a genuinely dramatic instead just like too much reality oh boy one time i have a boy one time i was like uh-oh i feel an itch down there do i have a disease but it was i was i i just been bitten near my crotch by a spider turned out i was fine peed into a cup all good so then i went back and to ease my jangled nerves i had sex with more babes oh i couldn't stop it is very much good as like stuff like stuff in rockstar's books like sammy hagar's like you know was the encore and i went down there and there were 10 women and this and they had set them up.

There's explanation. There's nothing even remotely close to that level. The level of Sammy Hagar bragging about getting together with ladies during a concert. No, because they didn't do anything that could have made this interesting. I hope that the screen, I hope that Je stewart was ready to try to make chris more interesting than that this feels this is the most pg i bet there was the calculation too of like i have my fans are kids like he must have laid off if he's thinking my fans are kids sex addict is not in there yeah yeah that's what that's the but it's not okay maybe we're maybe

we're more like pg-13 then because the sex addiction is never you don't hear one specific word but you don't hear the words penis or vagina yeah it is the most generic the quote the most specific story you ever get is from a woman who's like then chris said maybe he and i should have sex and with also my sister. And it was then I knew that he had a problem. Like, this is as creative as we can get here. Yeah. And then it doesn't happen also. It is very much like a high school sophomore trying to write a letter to, like, Penthouse 4. Like, dear Penthouse 4, I've had sex with uh any number of women you don't whole school

bus fall maybe and maybe this is maybe i was wrong earlier maybe garth has only had sex with like his wife i think maybe that is maybe he didn't have sex with anyone on tour this does not come from a place his first wife he needs us to know that he's straight however yeah i don't know that i don't think he's like the 40 year old virgin when he's talking about touching a bag of sand he's pretty like what he thinks that is on tour yeah yeah what he thinks having sex in debaucherous ways is doing something perverse like taking your hanes undershirt off and leaving the lights on it's you say that and now and on my screen please allow me to show you a sexy photo of chris gaines lying chest down on his bed wearing a haynes undershirt oh man

with the most eyeliner i've seen in any of the photos and he's kind of looking to the side all coy here we're committing a little harder here and then the photos. And he's kind of looking to the side all coy. We're committing a little harder here. And then here's one where he's in a striped shirt. He's making a diamond. Oh, he wears a ring, by the way, in memory of Tommy Levitz. He's dressed like a mime in that photo. Like he's got the striped black and white shirt. What kind of music is Chris Gaines?

Well, he's kind of like nouveau mimecore. Mimecore. But then this one, I showed this one to Erin, and she was as upset as when this came up in 20 questions. Look at this picture. I'm just going to have to post it. You'll know it's this picture if you see it. But he's just like, he's bailing on the whole thing

that Chris Gaines is like a wispy, gothy guy. Now he's just like, show his big arm musclesris gaines is like a wispy gothy guy now he's just like shoulders big arm muscles i'm chris and i'm jacked look at my armpit hair if i was squinting i would say that's chris angel i would i was thinking he looks a little tommy lee well oh yes tommy lee as well that hair specifically yeah that rocker hairer hair that Chris has. The photos are tremendous. My other favorite one is this one where, again, we're back to Mime Corps. Here's one where he's wearing black and white pants. Oh, my God.

Like Jod Hopper. That's interesting. Like a jester or a harlequin. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. He looks like, I feel like there's something I'm picturing where somebody is trying to be camouflaged in a black and white environment and then like you know you can't see

it as a person there and then they like peel themselves out of the space and right that's how he looks like uh like he's he looks like he's in like maybe a an earlier version of tim burton's alice in wonderland yeah i was just like human chat uh halloween horror nights had a human chess board that year and uh the scare actors would come out from the walls because they were in all black and white i all of this has to go through him he is choosing to do all this so i almost and a lot of this i just feel bad there's some there's something hidden inside him that wants to come out and i'm not saying anything specific even more than just like he wants to wear jester pants on tour and why can't garth brooks come out and greet his fans wearing jester pants and a mime shirt he should yeah it was all mental roadblocks he could have done this he would have

found a new it now there is a road map now people do cross over but there wasn't this then and i don't think he felt like brave enough or comfortable enough to wear the pants that he wanted to wear and i yes i feel he's very he's he's very locked up he's in a mental prison and i feel like unless there's more details from the vh1 special what you've just said is a perfect reason to now switch to the nbc special because you have you haven't seen any of this i have not seen any of this you have no idea how true what you just said is yeah yeah this special this is for okay this might be one of the most revealing pieces of material with a major performer with a major rock star yeah you

know i mean sure it seems like something like truth or dare is more like oh we're seeing our world and it's getting like nasty and but like for the real shit you gotta go to garth brooks in the life of chris gaines and i say that now that i've said that let me say that i skipped half of the special because it was just chris gaines songs that are boring yeah um that's not what matters what matters is everything in between so So, all right. This special, the VH1 special we just talked about, there's one good thing you can say about it, which is that it does the kayfabe.

It's committed to it. The name Garth Brooks doesn't appear until the end when he has an executive producer credit. Nobody in the special ever says he resembles Garth Brooks or you don't see Garth Brooks saying like, he was a big influence on me they fully so if you were watching i could see there's maybe a little bit of a tony clifton thing here where if you're just bored watching vh1 and you're like what's up with this and isn't that garth brooks and like the vh1 special is like successful in that regard committed right then but that's that's cable right you could be weirder on cable yeah for the

nbc platform you know where we're probably more of his audiences he cares he cares who's watching this is the most hedging of bets special humanly possible this gets so convoluted as he tries to like beg and plead with us to keep watching not leave say how it's not really that different it's especially that starts and says garth brooks like you've never heard him before almost immediately he's like you've kind of heard me like this before it's really not different i mean you've it's like you've heard me before but a little bit a new way of hearing me but you'll come to find that it's kind of like you've always heard me but a new way of hearing me it's let i will just let it speak for itself from here on out uh but so all right here so he performs a song and uh then we get into an

interview portion and uh you know feel free to stop it whenever you have something to comment on i mean this is the year that i get my chance to play a character in a movie actually a fictitious rock legend that uh has existed over the last 15 years by the name of chris gaines this is his music and in the same breath it's my music what you're about to see is going to uh is going to be a little different uh me. It's very different for me to even see it. I can understand the people that are diehard country fans and have always seen Garth doing country music

not being able to come along for this ride. So if they choose to sit this one out, I can't complain. And that's cool. We've had a wonderful decade, thanks to them and God. And hopefully there's something in the future that we can dance again to. And for those people

who see this, that's totally what it is. Just a ride, a fictitious character that just lets you swing. I feel so bad for this guy. You're going to have a great time. If you don't view it that way,

he's still going. He's so afraid of his audience. But I think what you're going to find by the end of this, you're going to see a lot of Garth and Chris Gale. You know what it's like? It's a little i i we're

currently dealing right now with like you know mr country mr big dick country florida man uh you know like a rough and tumble real american with the santas who could not be more terrified of every single thing that happens and everything he says. And he knows these people are fucking Trump maniacs and they will like tear him apart. If he gets any of these riddles wrong to the most, like the, you just look in his eyes.

He's so, so scared. Oh yeah. And that is how, that's how Garth comes across. Yes. They're like, he's,

he is just like venturing into uncharted territory and like god i might lose it all please don't i just want to wear different pants don't make me lose it all yeah you might hate their pants you might not have seen before and that's okay if you don't want to look at me wearing these pants don't worry about it well i'll wear different pants that you're from comfortable with later and you'll be okay with my old pants the old pants are i mean they're not with me now but they're in my house yeah i can call them i can get somebody to bring them here in an hour's notice do you want me to i'll have somebody get the pants yeah i don't want to alarm

anyone but it turns out there are more pants manufacturers than just wrangler and lee uh but you don't if you like wrangler and lee that's fine do whatever you want with your pants maybe imagine the pants i'm wearing now imagine that there's a patch that says lee like Wrangler and Lee, that's fine. Do whatever you want with your pants. Maybe the pants I'm wearing now, imagine that there's a patch that says Lee and Wrangler. As far as you, if you picture it there, then if you want them, if you will them to be Wrangler, they'll be Wrangler. I'm going to show you a photo of the pants for two seconds

and I want to warn you, two seconds and I'll count loudly. One, two. Okay, are you comfortable with that? Just so you got a little bit of it in your head now to know that I'm going to, I'm from the waist down. We're we're not shooting it there but waist down i'm wearing those pants you still here your money's still here okay great it's it does that interview feels very secure there was a moment or two where it's like is he about to start crying like and i think look at his this frame i keep landing on frames that look more broken than the left. It's literally like he's out.

He's like addressing millions of people outside that are directly there. And if he says the wrong thing, he will be killed. We have a list of the wrong things to say. And if you say one of them, there's a guillotine above your head. Chop it goes. One of the most successful music acts of the 1990. Like he has so much power. Like, yeah, he could do this so easily,

but instead he is doing this character that seems like a country guy saw a bunch of Rolling Stone photo spreads and that's how he got his idea of what a rock and roller is. Yeah. I, I,

the more as we develop, as we, as we develop this episode live, uh, the more I think maybe he's right. And Chris Gaines is just like a little, it was a growth out of a necessity more than almost anything that maybe part of him was just,

it was going to come out somehow, right? It had to be this and he couldn't do it any other way maybe i'm thinking that now i've changed my mind a couple times in this last whatever three hours we've been talking about this so did he uh the the lamb gets announced and they're like so maybe we you know if we and hey we'll get people interested in the movie maybe if we announce it you know maybe you could do like a special yeah we could do a special or a tour i'd go on saturday night live i can't

like let's let's find some opportunities for me to wear the pants i'd really like to wear the pants uh he's just like he jumped right to i think it happens because he'd need he was he was like he almost joined the padres he i think that was like he needed to get out he just wanted to play dress up is what he wanted to do. Yeah, he wanted to be a baseball player. And that could be a baseball uniform. It could be fucking Elton John in 1970s at Dodger Stadium. Wear the baseball outfit.

He could have wore the baseball outfit on stage. That's all he had to do. He could have done so much less. He didn't have to go to this extent and do this apology tour within the special itself. Where, by the way way there's not even there's not so much of as a picture of chris gaines until deep into the special right and where and it's like introduced at some point you want to see him but he's like afraid okay so we're but imagine watching this you're a fan of so this is all the music of chris gaines who is a fictional rock star who I am playing. But Chris's music, you know, he's lived a hard life.

And he's had a rough and tumble story. But he's fake. But he's real. And it's essentially me. But he's him. And I feel bad about his dad. Gene. Gene.

And you make sure you know about Gene. All right. And here's the next song. All I'm saying is maybe the audience, I don't know. Maybe the audience would have been irate. I don't know. It is 1999, and it is the country music. I mean, Dylan went electric.

And I hear about this as a thing that was real. And now you're like, huh? What is the problem? It's hard to- Who gives a shit? Like, what are you talking- Was it- Because this is

on every stupid music special you ever watch oh dylan went electric and everyone was upset that he was not playing folk music anymore even though it wasn't that it wasn't that crazy of a change was it a hundred people who was actually mad i don't know yeah but is this like legend grown in rock are there other actual precedents for this where the audience rejected it generally i feel like the audience stops caring more than ever rejects things yeah yeah that's usually the bigger problem and then you can make money on a return to form album or tour sure you know yeah so anyway sorry you let's i want to dig more into this yeah yeah okay now what i'm gonna play is that i was like i have to cut this shorter and

then i couldn't find a place to do it because everything we're talking about comes to a head here in this moment this is as vulnerable as an artist has ever gotten on stage i feel um maybe i'll pause it midway through but i i do have to play the full minute and a half. Now, maybe some of you are wondering what this cat, Chris, kind of looks like. All right? You got to know, he was in a bad, bad car wreck in 92. Okay? Because we got this young kid to play him from 1986 to 1992. Happens to be the same young kid that played young Brad Pitt in Seven Years of Tibet.

I heard him talk about this on a different thing. Yeah, I've seen this clip. I casted him myself, of course, you know. Because, you know, the kid's just gorgeous, right? And I'm looking at him, I'm going, yeah, that's me. Yeah? So, so, this guy's in a car wreck in 1992, right? And so I'm supposed to take the character over from 92 on.

So my loving brother, the first time he ever sees young Chris, he looks at his face and he looks at me and he goes, that must have been a hell of a car wreck. That's it. It's all fake laughter and stuff. He just gave the finger, which was on on television pixelated finger sweetened audio from the audience i didn't say that chris said that all right it's better so it's better so all right so we got a number of things here mainly here's where he has opened up about

the narrative which is also dealt with a lot in the behind the music where chris gaines is a little is a like you know very slight rock star um i think the amount of pounds is said at some point and it's clear that he he views the young version of chris as being very like uh thin and attractive and he does not view himself as thin and attractive and the story with the brother has blown the whole thing up this is exactly what he needed not to hear he we've we've gone so far out of it like that it's a car wreck that is so bad that it turned this this beautiful creature into hideous big garth me this and you're like i garth you look fine to me garth do you don't need to do this yeah why are you this yeah this is really this makes me sadder or even it feels like he's trying to build up like

so much has happened to chris gaines you're sympathetic to him right you'll give his music a chance right he was in a wreck he was he got wrecked up that's another part of the the behind the music i forgot is that they like i think they didn't have the actors check with each other about what happened in the car wreck because one of them them's like, yeah, boy, it smashed his neck apart. And the other one's like, yeah, it broke both his arms, ripped his pelvis off, his jaw was dangling down. This seems like too many things. I think this person is dead from what you've described.

But mainly, the main effect of the car wreck is that it turned a young, beautiful musician into the monster, as he views it, that is Chris. And then he uses the specific word gorgeous for the actor he cast, and he wanted to cast because it was young brad pitt although i couldn't find any proof that there is a young brad pitt in seven years in tibet maybe it got cut from the movie i don't know but then like that word just stuck with me and then i found another interview where he says well originally i was just going to produce the movie and i wasn't going to play chris because i figured chris had to be played you know by somebody thin and gorgeous he garth doesn't feel gorgeous i know and i feel bad for him that

he doesn't and i think somebody needed to he didn't have someone in his life to tell him that he's gorgeous it would have made a lot go away and certainly his brother this brother i am mad at at this point look what he caused do you think that's a real story it occurred to me i was wondering what if and i don't know this fact i haven't looked it up what if he looked it up garth brooks doesn't have a brother that would be pretty funny when i you know so then i go to my brother right i go to that my brother in that uh in that box that my brother always lives in with the with the gold frame in it and everything in the background looks exactly like what's in my house and he looks exactly like me right you know that's where your brother is and i got into a big fight with that my brother in the box then i ended up smashing up the glass

between my brother and i my knuckles were bleeding for weeks. Anyway, here's my next song. It's called Main Street. He still seems so nervous in that NBC special in front of a crowd. He's got brothers. He does have brothers. Okay. Well, I don't like them.

Garth Brooks, brother Kelly, plus their four half siblings. Mike Brooks, Kelly Brooks, Jim Smittle, and Jerry Smittle. I think it's Jim Smittle. I think Jim Smittle did it. I had a bad feeling as a shiver came over me as soon as I heard Jim Smittle, and Jerry Smittle. I think it's Jim Smittle. I had a bad feeling as a shiver came over me as soon as I heard Jim Smittle.

Jim Smittle, you need to tell Garth that he's gorgeous. He needs it. His heart is hurting. This young Brad Pitt isn't any better looking than Garth Brooks. Why is this in his head? What is the role? What's this poor guy?

Playing stadiums to scores of loving fans is not enough for Garth Brooks. If you don't have love inside, then you're never going to get it that way. That's not even the end, by the way. Anyway, this guy comes out with this long hair, and he hides out for three or four years because he's really not happy with his face, which upset me. And he kind of looked like prince you know except i know this guy gained a lot of weight after the cards stop it guards oh wait that was it okay okay and then he shows a picture and then he

starts saying like that's a pretty good looking man if i do say so myself so then he's trying to say that he's handsome but or maybe he only feels like he looks good as chris but he's i i don't i'm not looking at this guy and thinking you're fat i don't what is in his mind what's happened to this poor guy he's just the to the lot he's trying to logic everything in his head and also his own insecurities and whatever either fears or fantasies are coming out we don't know for sure i've been guessing wildly this whole time so it's a mix of insecurity about the bits it's a mix of him feeling like no one understands this so he has to over explain everything and then fantasies and insecurities are coming out and mixing in to this big ball of confusion yeah it feel it very much feels like a 20 year old who has learned that if they make some self-deprecating jokes about themselves

everyone will laugh uh but he has made like five or six self-deprecating jokes and now everyone is feeling really weird it's like that's enough you weird. It's like, that's enough. You've made your point. That's enough. We're ready to move on. Also, I'm here to hear music. We're worried about you at this point, okay? Also, I thought I got a ticket for this,

and it said Chris Gaines, and now it's you, and you're just telling me about Chris Gaines, and in the same breath, you've told me he's fake, and he's real, and that you're playing him, but then you're telling me he's fake and he's real and you're playing him but then you're telling me about his dad and his best friend who died what's happening what is it just decide one of the things that it is and don't on top it's a bunch of confusing shit next to your body image issues this is the strangest hour of television it's really some prime time npc what is ever this weird now i know i can't think

of a single thing other than the warren baity dick tracy it is like that that's why we like it yeah yeah that's completely wow it's just a confusing thing where you can unpack it from a psychological standpoint forever yeah what's going on behind this were you where you're and you're torn between like is this so interesting because of a lack of thought or overthought yeah which one is it it's a or it's a weird stew of both i was in various times both because because there's yeah there's just like very thin soup stuff and then there's also stuff where you're like we could get the top psychologists in the nation here and they would have a tough time figuring out exactly why this is the way it is i feel i i saw like one or two mentions of like more recent

interviews or long-form interviews where if you ask garth brooks enough questions about his career eventually you hit on chris gaines and he's like well i could see doing more music like that but i'm not gonna lose 50 pounds again that's for sure and then it's just like garth we just wanted to were you gonna make a poppy song or something like you still haven't gotten your songs on spotify and even the itunes store because i was gonna buy the album and that was not available to me this reminds me of how some i'm and i'm gonna have a breakthrough because i've sometimes if i'm having a bad day or something bad just happened to me, and then I go to a party and I'm talking to people, I feel like I have to talk about the thing. And I don't need to talk about the thing or like be in a bum.

Like nobody's asking this of you. And you don't want to like, not to say withhold things because you don't want to bum people out. But like something that you think is like, well, I better address it because it's the elephant in the room. And then it's like, no, no one's thinking about this at all. Yeah. You don't have to do that. This is how I this is Garth and the weight to me. You are just you're going so far out of your way to address something that is on no one's mind.

Yeah. Yeah. That's why it makes me sad. Yeah. It's a bummer. I. Yeah. Can I mention some uh we are clearly not

the only ones who this is chris gaines is in their mind somewhere yes some like 2020 stuff i came across um okay there's a i i can't tell if it's a web show or like a show that just put a bunch of clips online but there's a series called like a version where artists do other songs so like ben fultz does a kesha song the vines do a gorilla song um there is a cover of the chris gaines song lost in you by childish gambino yes i have watched this it's not bad yeah it's fun it's pretty's pretty good. It feels like that song might be the most successful song in terms of like, well, here, finally, it's just a whole absolutely other style of music.

It feels like Garth Brooks trying to do Babyface, which is, again, like, I actually like a lot of Babyface music. I don't love the song Change the World, the Clapton. It feels like he's trying to do that. It's the writers of that song yeah yeah yeah because garth didn't write any of the chris gaines songs you know what's the crazy thing gert didn't write any of the garth songs a couple of them a few but mostly and yeah with co-writers i was surprised by that because i was looking through that and i went oh maybe that's that's just the chris gaines album he didn't want to

write yeah but no it seems like yeah like a lot of his stuff which is weird so now we're just like it's right it's just other music not britain try you mostly he's still married trisha yearwood right yes yeah and she wrote a couple chris gaines i believe oh is that at least one wow wow um the weirdest thing i found which i'm excited for now you guys know the 33 and a third books yeah those books the small books each one about an individual album in 2024 in the next run of books there is a chris gaines book what about the album there's a 33 and if the next run includes uh books about modest mouse the moon in antarctica uh the moon end antarctica excuse me um the one of the no doubt albums and then in the middle of this list it says chris gaines that's insane

so i mean that's interesting and i'll probably look at that given what we but the music is this is it it's a weird revisionist thing to go, but actually the Chris Gaines, right? I was looking, look, I was looking to roll in here with one track or something that I would say, this is actually, I love this, but I did not find it on this. So yeah, I don't know. It wasn't like, what's the song from Starlight? He whistled at me. Yeah.

I came in here like so excited about, I was like, guys, he whistled at me. He's my here like so excited about i was like guys he whistled to me he's my favorite it was but that's pretty catchy there i feel like yeah that's a pretty yeah that was a rolling stock guy yeah sure no you liked rolling stocks that bad i liked rolling stock yeah um here's a weird thing just to tie to tie to the we there's still one more text to mention which is and let me here's a here's a so that i thought was strange about the childish gambino doing a cover uh uh childish gambino musical guest on snl with host donald glover same person different names the only other time this has happened is garth brooks and chris gaines so and this is probably why i knew it because i watched snl pretty religiously then i remember i think 1998 not long before this garth brooks hosted

snl and was musical guest uh in what i what i think was a pretty successful episode yeah i think a very like game fun host with sketches that really worked i i feel like it might have helped cause all of this where like oh garth is pretty good on snl maybe garth could act i bet i bet like game fun host with sketches that really worked i i feel like it might have helped cause all of this we're like oh garth is pretty good on snl maybe garth could act i bet i bet this all kind of spun yeah maybe but then a weird bizarre year and a half later where we land is we're skipping ahead of the movie we're gonna we're doing chris gaines and it led to what might be the only live chris gaines performance oh yeah because the rest was just kind of like pre-taped used right you know in fits and starts and different

specials but the the nbc thing was he was just garth this might be the only time that like here is just chris gaines performing i of course i've for ever since I have loved so much the way that they had to handle this wear. All right. Typical SNL style. Bumper fades to host. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Gaines. And then it cuts wide and there is a cowboy. Cowboy.

There's a cowboy there. There's a guy dressed like Earthbrooks with a big hat. Can't quite see the face uh so they have clearly married a pre-tape to the live wide shot and then they pan over to the musical guest stage where he is currently being chris gaines this piece of footage i love so much he is so proud of himself he gives you this look like you're gonna wait till you see what i'm doing i am proud this even you ain't never seen this shit before even it's almost like a double take he like looks around like are you ready for this one so love that um but the do you remember the other way that that chris gaines manifests in the episode no uh why uh there

is a there is a a runner in the episode essentially that uh carries through the monologue and then a later sketch that comes right after the chris gaines performance and this is a running is a story in an SNL episode, something that does not happen very often. And the story is that, well, the star of our story is beloved, I'm sure still works great for everybody today, character Mango. Of course. Mango is the through line Chris Kattan's stripper character who people would get very uh enamored with this is mango in general we're in a lot of trouble the day that we decide we're gonna reckon with mango that we're gonna unpack everything that the mango means i feel like everyone is just keeping mango in a drawer in the back of their minds rightfully so mango in a long

time and i don't believe he's ever come up on this show i don't think so um we all saw it we all saw it we were all part of it we were too young to do anything about it no we were innocent none of this is on us other than that we're in we're in society yeah we have to own some of society's sins don't we we look back and we just finally remember mr peepers like mr peepers is just wholesome mango is unloaded unpleasant in a few ways i may we look i may have done a mr peeper sketch junior year in high school i definitely got up in front of p there was some classroom setting in which i did will ferrell's janet reno voice sure and acted like that was my own thing that i thought of this is what you do you do this

until you realize you should do your own things yeah well you know what i know now i say that my it was my friend sketch and he was mr peepers you were the scientist i was just scientist yes okay but i think we did an original sketch of mine in that same show as well which one did better it's tough because he was really good at my friend luke was really good at physics like roll his arms going crazy so that probably did well but i played a hall monitor and i made topical jokes about the school oh that's really okay played really well hyper topical material that your school or college kills i would have to see the vhs to know i think they both did very well though you're gonna run

that through an audience meter yeah yeah i'll run that through there that's like you being the weekend update of the of the show yes yeah yeah jokes that are close to home i think a lot of people were like lip-syncing stuff too in that show so i don't think we didn't have too much competition as far as comedy was concerned yeah yeah um anyway this is let me see if i can let me step through this briefly there had been a mango sketch the first time garth brooks hosted they could have left it there but they decide in this case to make mango a runner and to keep the story going so mango shows up in the monologue which confuses things because in universe now what is mango is mango a person who lives at saturday night live or is he in the world of the strip clubs good question uh i don't know so i have

problems from that end yeah then it's they just keep it gets it's it's so weird if you can first of all he comes out and says musical guest tonight chris gaines and to like 20 applause i don't think they know what it is yeah i don't think nobody's he's at the center of no one's world right nobody's paying that close of attention and he says oh oh hey i knew him uh before his uh before he got his big break to no response they don't know what it is they don't know what it is. They don't know what it is. Anyway, Mango comes out. They do a flashback of the last time Mango was there. His desire to do

Mango material, I don't know. I don't want to ask further questions about this. You think Garth was like that Mango stuff was a hell of a good time. I may have heard something from the inside that he was insistent on. I'm coming back.

More mango, please. Now, that's interesting. This, we end up with two mango sketches. Now, I'm going to revise my whole thought process for this whole episode. That's another curveball. Insistent. I've changed my whole position four or five times now. You haven't mentioned, though, I think probably the thing that may have actually endeared the

chris gaines material which is tracy morgan oh yes with garth brooks and tracy morgan and tracy morgan just does not understand the chris gaines thing right that's funny yeah yeah that has some things that has some lines or if you watch it today like oh wait whoops uh in terms of not being sensitive to certain things. But yes, that was like putting the whole thing on, on blast. And that's the,

you get me a soda bitch to Lorne, which is very funny. Yes. Star making moments for him at the time. I think like, um, and not the materials so much as like having a good sense of humor that Garth is also Chris Gaines.

If he had done it a little more, know yeah yeah well to his credit that's kind of what they're trying to do here basically what happens is there's this odd run of stuff that's about like yeah well you know i'm feeling better since back then you know i've uh i've been going to therapy and i don't make my wife wear the mango mask anymore and all of that kind of bot none of it is working very well and what it's leading to is the story that uh mango has no interest in garth brooks but then mango says do you know where uh chris gaines dressing room is and it turns out that mango is into chris gaines doesn't like Garth, but likes Chris Gaines. Again, now we're back into the duality where Garth doesn't feel wanted as Garth,

but feels wanted as Chris. It's like Batman Forever. This is with Chase Meridian in Batman Forever. She wants Batman at the start, and then at the end, she wants Bruce Wayne, but not Batman. It all comes back to Chase Meridian. The teachings of Dr. Chase Meridian

provide the roadmap for lots of psychological evaluations. She's a psychologist, so. Well, she could do to spend some time with Garth Brooks. The teachings of Dr. Chase Meridian provide the roadmap for lots of psychological evaluations. She's a psychologist, so. Well, she could do to spend some time with Garth Brooks. I don't know that he actually did go to therapy. I think, no, that was a joke. You know what would be funny is if I said I went to therapy. Yeah.

That'll get him laughing. So Chris Gaines is the idealized version of Garth in his own mind in a lot of ways. I think so. I think he's Garth inside. So in that, okay. So if, in case you don't, I don't even know if maybe I'm restating. Mango was a sketch that Chris Kattan used to perform. It was a male stripper. And then the sketch was, they would play that song like,

Like a desert, miss the rain. Is that the lyric? Yeah. And then it would just be, they would fantasize about him over and over again. And they'd fall in love. And then they would like profess their love to mango and this was the same sketch every time basically yeah except that it grew and grew again if you i don't know if people remember the the mango sketches started to become like 11 minutes long with

multiple sets and stories and songs and parodies and musical guests would be in it and cameos and matt damon showing up and like they i remember just as a viewer of the show i started to feel so worn down like am i the only person noticing these mango sketches are like in defiance of god these are crazy they basically aren't on the reruns they They're hard to find because of the song, because they don't clear the song. But I think that's helped us not have to reckon with Mango. Mango, in comic book terminology, it's like his superpowers evolve to reality warping,

where it's just like, okay, you are too powerful now. Like, you can do any, you're like Dr. Manhattan on the moon, going like, these people, the moon going like these people well yeah it's very like a new cast member it's like we'll give you a chair you get out you're not a chair to do this bit so well chris at the end of the run yes we will we will build you we you can use every corner of the studio for your mango you could do the whole episode give me mango if you want um so anyway uh uh so so we're flipping it right usually it's the other person who's not who is enamored and mango says no you can't have the mango but here we flipped it garth wants but uh so chris gaines

mango is suddenly into so mango exits with a spank on the butt as you'd expect of course big applause big applause that's where you go out that's where you say all right we got a great show instead applause dies down garth says oh uh mango's got the hots for chris and does a little like okay like a little like oh yeah some little dance with his arms no laugh and then he has to like recover from that like this is weird you are milking that what is this so then performance introduces himself with the pre-tape right after the performance a whole other sketch where now we're in chris gaines dressing room where we'd usually be in mango's dressing room and it's flipped and mango has has flowers for Chris Gaines,

and Chris Gaines is turning Mango away, and here's where I do have a clip. So this is, again, one of the only narrative... We didn't get the film, but we did get this. What you don't understand, I must have you. Have Chris Gaines? Can a rainbow have... Can a rainbow be brought over for dinner can you make out with an ocean can you take a broken heart and dress it up in a wig and a goatee and call it Chris Gaines no I'm saying that you can't have a Chris Gaines You can have Garth

What the who? What is this? What is this here? What happened to the Chris Gaines? He took off his For the listener He took off his wig there And then he reveals that all of Chris Gaines Was just a ploy to get back to the studio to be with mango but why wouldn't i mean i guess

i guess he doesn't want to trick mango i guess that's his only way is to develop an alter ego who looks better who looks better than he thinks he looks if he's gonna have consensual sex with mango though he has to reveal that he's been fooling him i suppose that's what i mean he would have to reveal that i'm not actually this guy i'm actually garth because it would be a nice guy and he's doing it there's a version where as we know sex addict chris gain if he's deep in that character he would just just let it happen. Lie about the persona. Yeah. But it's nice of him that he wants to be, because I think he wants true love with mango. This isn't just a fling.

He wants true to love with mango. Is that what you said? Yeah. Did I say it weird like that? I thought there was an A. You got a little mango in there. He wants the true love of the mango. I thought there was an A, an errant A at the end of one of the words. That's an interesting clip yeah it's all look it's all interesting we'll leave it at that it's interesting there

should be because there's so many different lists of saturday night live it's fun to rank characters fun to rank eras and blah blah blah there should be a like i know this is gonna you're gonna get like behind this you have to get behind the scenes stuff but like the steven seagal clip that that um i think you post the did you post i did a cut down a cut down of it yeah just the craziest where he beats up people at the in the last sketch of the night uh executives yes yeah oil company he it was a yeah a sketch where they bailed on it being cast members, and they just brought in a bunch of stuntmen so that Steven Seagal could do live stunts

and beat up oil executives. There's a great clip of Bob Odenkirk explaining it on Howard Stern a couple years ago. Yeah, that lit it up for me. I didn't quite know about it until... Yeah, and then it's a nine-minute sketch. Phil Harmon's in it, but then he disappears to be replaced by a stuntman.

Yeah, they duck him out. And it's a live bad sloppy stunt show and then tables are just breaking like what is a comedy audience supposed to make of this and steven seagal like points at the camera and he goes this is what happened when you pollute the earth this is what happens when you pollute the planet the planet it's a silence and nobody's ever so confused but like a host host like pet pet things that got onto shows yeah is an interesting category for saturday night live somebody had to deal with this and i think they're trying to do their best like that they're i think it's funny to say garth brooks is doing this weird thing this must be in the service uh like what if we make it in our universe in service of trying to get with mango and that's the only reason the the whole character was invented they're

we're close to having a little fun here but it's also weird again we're bailing on he like if he just never acknowledged that he's chris gaines instead of that why did they do that pre-tape where he introduces chris gaines and he's a separate guy? He's going to take the wig off in the very next sketch. Right. They hadn't. They must have hit on the, like, they must have had people who were the host and the musical guest. Then a guest star or a cast member just introduces them.

That's typically. I mean, don't get me wrong. I love it. That's my favorite part of the whole thing. There was a time, was at conan one time and there was an snl rerun it was this episode and i was like i'm gonna have to i'm gonna have to push something back so i can watch that ladies and gentlemen chris gaines i know it's coming i gotta see it i would see it in years yeah also in comedy comedy like technical terms like, it makes sense to eventually do a mango sketch where you flip it around and someone does the mango back,

back to mango. Yeah. But because you already have the weirdness of Chris Gaines, you add so many hats on hats. And what is Chris Gaines? Then he talks and he's just a regular guy. Yeah. I,

you can't, what I'm, you can't have the Chris Gaines. That's my favorite all of the i think that's the peak of all of it to me is him on saturday night live saying to mango you can't have the chris gaines yeah he's not doing it enough and he doesn't have like a shirt or a hat so he doesn't really read because he's like he's not committing fully to doing the mango bit. And he doesn't know. He doesn't know what Chris Gaines is either. He never figured it out.

All he knows is that Chris Gaines is what he looks like in his heart. Have you ever thought of just like having maybe a Craig Healy meets mango sketch? I just hope Chris Kattan's gettable. Okay, well, I don't know. I wouldn't know anything about that. I'm just saying. Anyway, I just like, it's an insane way for a character to live in these forms.

Three specials with drastically different rules, each of which has a different approach to how we're going to handle the Garth and Chris duality. And it's all just to me it just all feels like a flash hallucination that happened for a month or so and that's why we need to be here for each other and share our memories and be sure that it happened yeah i'm still not sure that it happened but it at least makes it a little more concrete now that we've talked about it for two hours i also i i think that he did like kind of get lost in this in a way yes he only did he's only done two new studio albums since otherwise it's been a lot of greatest hits and uh vegas residencies and stuff

yeah he's gonna be a vegas residency starting this july for like a few weeks. Yeah. And I think he, I believe he had a falling out with Saturday Night Live not long after that second episode. Really? I believe Tina, I heard Tina Fey talk about something like, I forget. He was like,

it thought they insulted Trisha Yearwood or something. Oh. Or something. There's something happened where he kind of like that. That's why he never came back. Whoa. I don't remember if it was on that episode or if it was some joke they did later or on update or something,

but he did come back as Chris. He of course hosted as Chris Gaines, four more techers. Gaines is in the five. Only. Anyway, I don't know what else to, to say about this.

I, it's, it's fascinating, right? You think it's fascinating right you think it's about you think it's going to be about the character but it's really but this he maybe revealed more about the real man than he ever intended absolutely is there any high profile version of this with a music star that sort of worked or was kept up in the sense that it was a complete rebranding on the album and it was rolled out in such a bad, but like high profile way.

I don't think like it's hard to think of any. So I mean everybody, yeah. What we said, like Mr. McPhisto or every alter ego I feel like is very low key. Princess Camille is, is a couple songs. songs yeah but it's not

we're fully shifting over to this you gotta give him credit right this is a this is a crazy thing to do i just think he should have just just go all the way the best as i said the best piece of all of this is him saying ladies and gentlemen chris Gaines. Besides saying, you get to Mango, you can't have the Chris Gaines. Yeah. But where we get muddy is, you know, so I'm being a fictional rock star named Chris Gaines, and he is a lot like me. There's even a clip I didn't show from the concert

where he says, like, all it is, all it is, is a little stretching out of the arms. It's just, this is Garth, this is Chris, this is Garth, this is Chris. It's not a big deal stop making it a big deal he could have just joined a band he couldn't put a band together and then like just like had somebody write the songs for them yeah yeah that wouldn't have been hard either like he just he didn't go far he simultaneously went too far and didn't go far

enough yeah yeah because if there was a band, like you're saying, or the movie came out, people had been like, Oh, okay. Yeah. He's kind of doing the character from the movie.

Right. I get that. I don't like it, but I get it. It sucks, but I get it. The movie, the movie was a catastrophic failure,

but I understand it's like spinal tap. And I funny got it. Yeah. Yeah. I understand this. Those jokes got in the way right so but i want oh come on what's he do he's nothing to lose now more chris he i watched an interview with him where he somebody asked him chris gaines question and he was like man i'd

love to he goes but i got my ass kicked for that so i think he's still hurt by the reception of it even though i do think the rollout was a big part of why well the lamb died for his fans sins yeah was crucified much like garth was crucified for playing the character from the lamb and much like jesus christ was crucified for just trying to to bring some new thought into this world some truth and look what we did we didn't appreciate him we do we didn't appreciate his message of love and we chased him away chris game like blue 32 if i put together a fornicopia demo and get it to get it to garth and say like look we can do a full album i feel like it's not i feel like garth maybe was not going to trust uh and then garth goes garth goes into the 11th bedroom of his seventh house yeah and he he gets the email and then thinks about it for a minute and then digs through a bunch of piles and then goes into a locked box and a little smaller locked box in that locked box and then pulls out a perfectly kept up soul patch.

Presses it against his face in the mirror. Sees a hallucination of his brother, Jim Spittel. Oh, my gosh. And gives him the finger. Yeah. Says, Chris is back, motherfucker. Chris is back. Oh, my God. Chris goes on a run. jim spittle oh my gosh and and gives him the finger yeah this is chris's back motherfucker oh my god chris goes on a run he does his whale or bird man or like he's in his oscar oh yes well are we not ready to embrace this yeah it's his whale it feels like as jason said there's stuff

there's more material coming we're cresting maybe oh hill here on chris gaines and if garth is tapped into the zeitgeist it's time yeah you may as well at the very least for a super bowl commercial oh yeah yeah you know well you know what i want him to do it in the in the poetic artsy way i agree but i would believe that yeah yeah there's got it well so it's why it's some like kit kat kind of situation or somewhere you know or something where flavors are opposites and like it works for anybody in your family of garth or a chris oh could he you know chris christopherson is that a very he was musician very successful acting career and he was whistler in blade yeah it's there they're working on another plate i didn't think it was one-to-one but it could be all right all right let's hear this out no no you're right finish it finish it

is whistler in the maher shawley blade okay i'm fine with that we found the cleanest i'm just trying to figure out where is there a superhero mentor character we went from the the most realistic version where he has to show up for 10 minutes and put a soul patch on to he's now joined the mcu as an as the character as a character playing a different character and then he turns to the camera in the movie and says now you're probably a little bit confused maybe you're not willing to go on this ride but i think you're gonna find that garth is pretty is it just a couple of arms length from chris and whistler is just a little bit further than that from chris so you're gonna see there's

a lot of whistler in garth and a lot of whistler and chris and a lot of chris in garth so there's a lot of everybody and everybody and we're just you know and hopefully we can all just get together have a big old dance and if you don't want to do that then that's fine we've got 10 great years together and with christ in my heart i damn and this vampire movie is not an affront against christ don't worry about that no we don't It does not indicate my belief in the occult. He is a daywalker, okay? He's a daywalker. You're going to find there's a lot of Wesley Snipes in Mahershala Ali. And if you're not willing to go on that ride and you want to stick with the Snipes version,

well, it's available. You can rent that. And I'm not going to stop you from doing it. Wesley Snipes had a great run, thanks to God. Snipes could be Whistler, too. Do they have a Whistler, do they? Jason, I don't know if Whistler do they have a whistler do they either i don't jason i don't know if whistler has been cast i think there's some production problems on that movie a rewrite of the script as far as i know it's delayed dude the writer is certainly delayed but i think the

first draft of the script was uh was not good enough and they went back to the well damn it all right i'm quitting i'm scabbing i'm gonna go to where's making this disney i'm marching there right now hey you got your guy i'm bailing on the guild on one condition ladies and gentlemen chris all right you survived podcast the ride thanks for subscribing this nonsense if you want to dig even deeper join us on our new patreon tier club three where you get one more bonus episode every month and our regular episodes ad free and i think you're gonna find there's a lot of club three in the second gate and there's a lot of second gate in club three and you know but it's like arms light just stretch the arms just stretch the arms and if you don't like one of the topics that's okay

that's all right if you don't like a time we're gonna find a place that we can dance together all right and just but some top we topic we're talking about. We're going to find a place that we can dance together. All right. But some topics, we're going to talk about some things that are just gorgeous, okay? Some of these topics are gorgeous. Please don't be mad at us, please. Forever. Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production.

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