Reply All - #170 A Song of Impotent Rage

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

Alex Goldman tackles his newest job: prophet of doom. Taylor Moore's podcasts, Rude Tales of Magic and Fun City Emily Atkin's newsletter, Heated John Colpitts' latest album, The Ochre World Want to learn to play drums? Learn from John Colpitts Listen to Song Exploder, a huge inspiration for this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For Gima, this reply. I'm PJ Vote. And I'm Alex Goldman. Hi, PJ. Hi, Alex. So, do you remember? This is not going to be hard to remember the last episode that we did. Confetti Cannon. Oh, yeah, confetti canon.

So that was our episode right after the election. And I have an update of sorts for it. So just as a reminder, that episode, it was like we started recording calls. the day before the election was called or two days before the election was called and we just got a lot of people We did it after the voting but before the resolution

like before, yeah and we only got calls of people who were Biden supporters or supporters of him winning the election anyway and there was a lot of like maybe I can start to feel hope again that some of Trump's most sort of destructive policies will be rolled back

yeah people felt relieved People felt relieved, exactly. I, however, did not feel that relief. I know. Believe me, I know. I just sort of felt like... You've been vocal about your feelings. Your feelings are...

Go ahead. ...toders on fire. Everything's terrible. We're all going to die. Anything that people feel that's good for a second is just a sign that they're ba-ba sheep. And only you can see what was really going on. No, it's not that I think people are

You constantly say people are a ba-bba sheep. But I do think that everything's really bad and like things are getting worse. And I feel an incredible amount of anger and hopelessness about things that feel inevitable, mostly climate change. But climate change incorporates a lot of other things that I worry about. What the hell is this update about? Oh, man. It's going places. I guess the thing that I feel is like incredible anger and total impotence.

Like I feel like I am so mad about what's happening. and like the lack of attention that's being paid to this thing. And I just have no power to change it in any way other than like, I don't know, I've got solar panels on my roof. That should do it. Yeah, right?

But the thing that I feel strongly is like I do this enough that when I start doing it, people sort of roll their eyes and they're like, okay, Alex is doing it's like climate panic thing again. Sarah definitely doesn't want to hear it. You don't really want to hear it.

And I was talking to Tim and he was like, you know, we actually should try to capture that feeling but in some way that doesn't drive everybody crazy. Okay. And he was like, you should write a song about it. Oh, no. You wrote a climate change ballad? Well, I mean, I like the idea because it sounded fun to me.

And like, if I could like sugar pill my climate worry, maybe other people will feel it. I feel like the enticement of, anyway, we don't have the same musical taste. So you get to listen to a song and you get to worry about climate change is a funny tofer. want to hear you made. Well, the first thing I wanted to do was, like, I'm not a great lyricist. I mostly just like making music. I don't like making lyrics. So I wanted to find someone who could help me do that.

And I saw this thing that this guy, Taylor Moore tweeted. Do you know who Taylor Moore is? Taylor Moore. The name is familiar. He's Chilcich. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've actually met him once. Yeah, he used to run a Twitter account that was like just a description.

Chill Situations. So like a perfect chill-sitch tweet is a big beautiful old tree. Oh my God, look, there's all those birds. It's just chill situations. It was a real feel-good Twitter account. It was a nice account. I always said when it stopped. But he tweeted something where I was like, oh, my God, I've been seen for the first time.

And the tweet was, cultural trend alert, the realization that we have no future is going to drive people insane, whether they deny or accept it and that insanity is going to be the defining effect of the affect of the zeitgeist until our total collapse. And I was like, God, you are a scene. So I called him up to see if he'd collaborate with me. I'm curious. A thing I don't know is, what do you do for a living? I'm a podcaster. I make fiction podcast, adventure serials. Wow. Okay, you need to get your dog under control because this is going to keep going. So, you know, I've been following you on Twitter forever. I was a big fan of Chill Sitch back in the sea.

Oh, wow. That is, that's a deep cut. Yeah, that's good to hear. When I stopped doing Chill Sitch, it was because the world was so terrible. And I couldn't bring myself to, because I think I stopped it during a week where there was like something, like there were like four school shootings and there were two like coups. You know, like there were revolutions going on. like horrible bloody wars. I was like,

God, you know, I can't write this sort of stuff if this is going on. And it's been all downhill from there. It hasn't gotten better. Wow, that's heavy, man. And the first half of the conversation, it just felt like coming home,

just talking to someone who believed that everything was so bad. I think most people think about climate change and they think, okay, at some point something very bad is going to happen to the environment and then things might get bad as a result of that.

But I think that that is a misunderstanding of the threat. So imagine if you're in a car with a bunch of people and you're in the back seat, right? It's a van. It's a 13-passenger van, so most people are in the back seat. One person has their hand on the steering wheel driving. Now, you're heading towards a cliff. You're driving straight for a thousand-foot cliff. It is extremely dangerous.

Things are going to get bad in the van long before you go off the cliff. Oh my god. Hey, I'm sorry, Taylor, I just, I think I've fucked up. Hold on just a second. I think I might not have been recording this. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, that's such an amateur move. Can you talk? Test, test. This is Taylor. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. We have to start over. Oh, that's all right. Well, I've got my side. Oh, yeah. That's right. You've got your side. Oh, thank God. Yeah, man. Oh, I have like a panic attack.

My face was turning red. Sorry. Can I ask you some questions? And I'll admit to take your time. I just like, because I was very excited when you reached out to me the other day because I can't talk about this even with good friends anymore. You know, before quarantine, I would bring this up at bars and parties or whatever. People don't like it.

And now, you know, when every social interaction is so precious, I don't dare talk about this stuff. Yeah, I was just thinking like I feel like I'm among my people. My wife really does not like to talk about this. Mine either. No one does. Like, you're the first person I've seen that's like proactively seems to be engaging, talking about this stuff. Not in a, hey, let's rally the troops or let's raise money for sunrise movement, but a how in the world are we as people supposed to live in a world that's ending?

What we are going through is the same, how old are you? I'm 41. I'm 38, right? We are, granted, I don't have kids. So this isn't exactly, but we're at roughly the same stage of our lives. Do you think, and this is what really secretly haunts me, and you're the first person I've said this to, do you think that maybe our anxiety about climate change is really a projection of us being scared of our own death and physical decay? Are we just getting old?

No. Okay, good. No. And so I said to him, I was like, hey, so listen, I have all this. anxiety. I'm thinking about writing a song about it. And he was like, he was like, I don't think that's a good idea. How come? He was like, I think that this is like a crazy, serious topic and a song will just feel like a joke. It's hard, though, because you got to, you got to bring people in with your sugar pill. So like, what was his different idea? Well, I said, do you have a better idea?

And he was like, no, that's a good point I'm in. Okay. So I had, I had already started thinking about lyrics and I was like, in my head originally, I wanted to do like a Pete Seeger style song. Do you know Pete Seeger, the folk singer? Yeah. So I was thinking of Newspaper Men, the song Newspaper Men, so I'm just going to play a little bit of it, just to give you an idea of like what was going on in my head.

Alex Goldman does Pete Seeger. Oh, newspaper men meet such interesting people. They know the lowdown, now it can be told. I'll tell you quite reliably. And the point, the thing you're trying to do is reach other human beings. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. So I did write some lyrics.

Oh, yeah. And I want to read them to you, and you can tell me what you think. And maybe they will spark a genre in you. Maybe you will be like, these are garbage. Okay, here we go. I'm actually stalling because I find it very anxiety. I understand, but I'm with you, man. I'm totally on your side here.

No need to have anxiety on my account. I'm with you. All right. 2020 was a bad year. That's not in dispute. But looking ahead, not much will improve. The sea levels rise. the far right's on their eyes. Half of the country

believes only lies. I'm trying my best, but what the hell can I do? The outcome is rigged for me and for you. What the hell is the point? Why even try when in my lifetime everyone's going to die? Yeah, I mean, we got it. He seemed to like what I came up with, but then he was like, can I give you some notes? He was like, first of all,

it's more than half the country that's not paying attention to this. Everyone is a sucker. Your pop song's not dire enough. And he was like, also, I noticed that You said this year is bad. So one thing that I think everyone is doing, I sit down on line all the time, is talking about 2020 as if it is a boxed event in time, rather than the year that how bad things are going to be really became apparent.

So I feel like to mention 2020 as a specifically bad time is okay if we acknowledge that it is now going to be 2020 forever. Does that make sense? Yeah. He has this like PJ vote. kind of style of talking, where he just uses very evocative metaphors to describe things. This is the ribbon cutting for the decline, right?

This year was just, this year was a starter pistol that's erased to catastrophe. A PJ vote style of talking. That's very flattering. He used the phrase, the wolf is at the door. Oh, that's kind of catchy. The wolf's at the door. Yeah, and like another one is that he was talking about

the Republicans and the Democrats and basically saying that all of the differences between them will be completely meaningless, when we are hit by a civilization destroying catastrophe. Because neither side addresses that, any superficial differences between them are going to be erased. Just erased.

Like a morning fog. It's just burned off. I think you're wrong that it's a Pete Seeger song. I feel like it's like a pop punk song. Well, I asked him, I was like, what do you think this song should sound like? And he was like, well, do you know the band Diarrhea Planet? I've heard, diarrhea Planet shows up on my recommended, like,

recommended. Like, I'll hear it something like, I like, I like them. I'll listen more later. And I was like, honestly, I can't say that I do. But I went to look at them and the top song in their popular

is a song called Ghost with a Boner. Sounds right up your alley. It's a little too much for me. But let me play a little bit of it for you. Yeah. This is kind of like poppy, but punky rocky. Yeah.

So you get the point. Yeah, it's kind of like somebody mixed like Joyce Manor and Dead Milkman. Yeah. You don't know either. I know dead milkman. You know dead milkman. Yeah. One of them came out before 1997. So and just to just to make sure I'm understanding the premise, the idea is like people don't pay enough attention to climate change because it means feeling dread and powerlessness. And those are

feelings that people tend to avoid. And your song is going to help by making them feel dread and powerlessness. I'm not saying that my song is going to help like in any meaning. way. I'm just saying that I want to be able to express this feeling that I have of like completely helpless rage in a way that people might actually want to listen to. Okay. So, so he gave me some metaphors. I did another pass with sort of his metaphors incorporated into the thing. And I was interested in finding other people to help me collaborate. And I am an avid reader of a newsletter called Heeded, which is about climate change. It's written by this woman named Emily Atkin.

And I reached out to her. Hey. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. And she was like, yeah, I can totally talk to you about this. This is a weird request, but I'm happy to do it.

Just so you know, you're not the first podcaster who's gotten in touch with me about writing a song about climate change. Really? Apparently some other guy beat me to the punch. But the difference between him and me is I apparently produce a lot faster because I think this is going to come out before his. Or he realized it wasn't agree. And like, when I got around the phone, I was like trying to come. commiserate about my hopelessness about the world and how everything's inevitable. And she was like, I don't feel that hopelessness. Like you said you wanted the song to be about your impotent rage,

but- Did you use the phrase impotent rage with everybody? It was sort of a term we started bandying about in the off, or in the discussion of the song. We called it the song of impotent rage. Okay. But Emily was like, I don't really share your feelings on this one. I don't really have terribly dark moments when it comes to climate change. in that I don't get very depressed about it. It makes me mad. To me, it's a much more productive emotion than despair. Talking to her gave me a bunch of ideas for the song.

First of all, she went on this rant about Jeff Bezos and how, like, yeah, earlier this year, he did pledge $10 billion to climate initiatives, but that's just greenwashing. Considering he's Jeff Bezos, who is the richest person in the world and has, like, $180 billion. It's not a meaningful amount.

It's just like not enough money. He gets a huge PR boost from being such a generous philanthropist. And he gets to make his entire profit off of the climate crisis. I mean, think about how much Amazon contributes to the climate crisis. That boils my blood. Emily's whole thing is that like the biggest corporations that drive climate change benefit hugely from people like me feeling helpless. Like they distract us from holding them account.

by putting the responsibility of protecting the environment onto us with big advertising campaigns that are like about measuring your carbon footprint. And then she introduced me to this idea that I was like, oh, this is definitely going in the song. It just so happens that a large chunk of us are still very involved with petro-masculinity. You know, big men drive big trucks that roll coal, right? Petro-masculinity. That's a thing.

Oh my God. That's so much of what drives our continued in action. And I know this sounds crazy because, because first of all, you say that every time I talk to someone, they change my mind immediately and I'm immediately trusting of them. Yes. But like, since that conversation, I've been like, okay, this person spends all day looking at all this incredibly grim climate news and still doesn't feel this hopelessness. Like, how can I possibly feel that? Like, she still feels like there's hope. I completely agree.

And I think this gets to the heart of what my problem has always been with, like, Alex Coleman Climate Warrior is like, you are more angry about it or have been more angry and despond about it than people who spend more time thinking and trying to fix it. And so it's like, it's like you live in a country where some bad stuff's going on, but the guy who feels worse about it doesn't live in the country. Right? You're right. So I, but I'm glad that getting some proximity is like helping and making you feel like you

could do stuff, like right. diarrhea song about boner ghost or whatever sometimes you hear a brand new sentence like a sentence has never been uttered and it really just tickles a part of your brain but but I felt like my first verse could be about hopelessness and my second verse could be about my anger

based on my conversation with Emily because that conversation was very helpful to me so the song now has some emotional range right so the second verse now is like The wolf is at the door, but my rage is justified. Corporations bought my hopelessness, and I bought into the decline. Wolf is at the door, and now it's our time to shine. Fuck them and fuck the decline.

How are you going to find the other teenagers to join your punk band? Well. So I record my music in my attic. I have like a bunch of keyboards and a bunch of guitar pedals and just like a bunch of goofy noise-making toys up here. So I started just with a guitar riff. Like I tried to do something pretty simple. Because like I wanted something that I could build on top of rather than something super complex at the beginning.

I recorded through a Proko rap, the best distortion pedal, into I just have this tiny Vox amp. It's like a 5 watt amp and I recorded that. And then I wanted guitar that was super blown out on top of it just to be like a little more punchy. So I recorded through a Death by Audio Fuzz War pedal directly into my computer

to get just this crazy, crazy sound. Just really, and I turned it up so that it was way too hot so that like it just clipped and sounded like the microphone was inside an amplifier or something, just super, super loud. And then on top of that, I have a Moog matriarch and I turn the resonance all the way up

on both the filters. and I just like, like, had this sort of like rising sound. And then to have this falling sound with like this really beautiful sort of crispy decay, I used an OB6. It has this really fuzzy sound to it, which is very different than like the warm sound of a mobe. And then I recorded this kind of wild keyboard solo with my matriarch where I was like constantly hitting the pitch wheel and the modulation wheel to make it just sort of sound like it was like screaming a little bit.

I also ran that a little hot because I just like distorting everything. Sure this year is bad. I recorded the lyrics while Sarah was in the basement. But what else is new? So she couldn't hear me singing them. And at this point, there's not a ton we can do. This was an incredibly intimidating experience. Definitely not the way I prefer to write a song.

usually I'll have like a melody or a riff or like an idea that sort of blossoms into a song and if I want to add lyrics which is almost never it's like sort of an afterthought and it's more like I more think of lyrics as another instrument and like tend to keep them pretty abstract or minimal 10 out of 10 difficulty don't know if I'd try it again up until this point I was doing all of this just to a click track knowing what I wanted the drums to sound like, but not being a drummer. And so I called my friend John Colpitz, who is a drummer. What's up, dude?

Oh, look at that setup, dude. He's in the band Oneida. He has a solo project that's also really wonderful, Cold Man Forever. And I was like, hey, can you give the surf rock drums? And he was like, yeah, totally, I'll do it. So John got the drums back to me. And then I recruited Bobby Lord, engineer a gimlet. I was like, Bobby, can you mix this song?

And he was like, yeah. Yeah, on one condition. Actually, I literally just bought a used saxophone. Can I play saxophone on it? And I was like, yes, absolutely. Oh, hell yeah. Bobby mixed the song basically all day until just now. I'm pretty excited about how it turned out. Would you like to hear it? Of course I want to hear it. Great. And now here's The Wolf is at the Door by Alex Goldman in its entirety. Sounds pretty good. About systemic climate change.

I don't know with the swooshness. Your time to shine? Yeah. Stick around. We have more show for you after the break. Also, if you're interested in climate change, there's actually a whole Gimlet podcast exclusively about it. It's called How to Save a Planet.

It's hosted by our boss and frequent yes, because no guest, Alex Bloomberg, with his co-host, Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson. You can find it on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome back to the, the show. So Alex, here's a question. Like, we are different in that I like left college, got into radio, have been doing radio this whole time. You had like 30 lives before you got to do the thing you wanted to do. Like you were like, you worked at a subway, you worked at like a mental

hospital, you worked at a record store, you worked at a zine, you worked in IT, you, I could go on, but go, no, go on. You know what? I made a list of all the... Not too long ago, I made a list of all the jobs I had. I think it's on my phone. In your notes app?

Yeah. All right, you ready? Yeah. This is in order. Okay. Paperboy, dishwasher, Kid Kingdom. Kid Kingdom?

Was this like a Chuckie cheese? It was like Chuckie cheese. What was your job? Make pizza to give kids prizes. For what? Oh, like they come with like They'd come up with tickets and I'd give them prizes.

But I usually just gave stuff. Like I was like very bad at, they call it redemption. I was very bad at redemption. This is a thing that kids do. They go up and they're like, they're like, I really want that thing, but I have three tickets. And I'd just be like, just take it. It's fine.

You don't need to have all the tickets. You can just have it. Because it was like literally garbage that I was giving them. But that's the whole business. I think the business is actually the pizza. Okay Sandwich artist at subway Cash register at the earth

and jarry in buffet Landscaping And then in winter Landscaping became Christmas decor where I'd go to Rich People's houses And put Christmas lights On their house

Really? Yes A lot of these jobs are the jobs people have In porn Didn't work out for me like that Video store Catering

Dishwasher again At a restaurant called the brown jug The brown jug record store clerk phone banking for a non-profits what okay flower delivery

um vitamin store vitamins plus yeah um the denton state school for the developmentally disabled another record store

a zine there's also a bunch of internships in here I interned for Tandoon who's a composer he composed the music for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon I don't know why that's so funny

What did you do? Like, what would happen all day? Would you, like, get him more sheet music? It was my first job in New York, and I would help him write his website and just, like, whatever he wanted, I would do, basically. Wow. That's so funny. I interned at, like, a record promotion company, and, like, the moment I got there, I realized I hated all of them, and they all hated me. Like it was like a group of people who were just like

Who are like you as a person Not like your ability as a worker But like you as a person Alex Golden like the things that come out of your mouth I despise every one of them Like what were the people like why they hate you so much Have you ever met a person And it feels like they sort of have like a shimmering aura

Where when you meet them you're like I hate you Yes That's how they felt about me Were they like cool like? They were very cool Yeah And I'm me They wore all black

They had like studded belts They wore a lot of leather And it was like It was like every movement I made They all like rolled their eyes and groaned out I'd be like Can I take this chair And they'd be like

Oh god Yes Oh and the job was basically To put stickers on CD cases for eight hours It was horrible Horrible. Yeah, we don't have a machine that does that. Did you get fired or quit?

It was like, it was like, that was definitely a conscious uncoupling. It's weird to me to think that there's like an alternate, there are many alternate dimension that are just like working at those jobs. Oh, totally. Like, I can imagine like a world where like I'd gone from like landscaping into construction or something. And I would have just been a construction guy. I cannot.

That's like one of the few things I cannot imagine you'd. doing. And this is what I will say about that job. Landscaping. It was like tough, very physical work. But it was like really fun. Like my mind could wander. It was the worst show I ever had it was

landscaping. I would just like dig holes and I would park my car near the hole so I could listen to music. It was great. I got yelled at all the time. Why did you get yelled at? That's our show and that's it for us this year. 2020 for us, like everybody else, was extremely painful, extremely confusing, and the bright spot was just getting to make this show for you.

We hope it was half as fun to listen to as it was to make it. We're going to be back in January. We are working on news stories that we are so excited to share with you. We've got some really cool stuff. We'll see you then. Reply all is hosted by me, PJ Vote, Alex Goldman, and Emmanuel Jochi. Our show is produced by Shruthi Pimminani, Fia Bennon, Damiana Marquetti, Anna Folli, Jessica Young, and Lisa Wang. Our executive producer's Tim Howard.

We were mixed by Rick Kwan, backchecking by Michelle Harris. Our intern is Mahini McGalker. Unfortunately, it is her last week. She has been such a joy to work with. We were so sad to see her go. This is where we would tell you to hire her, but she's going to work at heavyweight. Damn you, Jonathan Goldstein. Our theme song and other music used in this episode is by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder,

additional music production by Mari Romano. Special thanks to Risha Keshe Herway. You can check out his podcast, Song Exploder. Also, Taylor Moore, Alex's Apocalypse friend, has two podcasts you can check out, Rude Tales of Magic and Fun City. Matt Lieber is the first snow of the season before it turns all gray and terrible.

You can listen to our show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you soon.