So... Alright - So... Alright, So Far...

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Geoff learns more about stuff, thanks to you, the audience. He also turns in a book report. Sponsored by Shady Rays http://shadyrays.com code ALRIGHT , Katos Koffee http://katoskoffee.com code SOALRIGHT10 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I want to do something a little different with this episode. I want to have a little bit of a check-in with y'all. I guess to put this in the timeline, episode three just came out. And so I've had the benefit of all of the feedback from episodes one and two. And then the feedback from three is trickling in. And I have, first off, I got to say, beyond grateful and humbled and blown away by the volume of messages I've received through social media, and then also to the email address, eric at jeffsboss.com. Some really just wonderfully supportive things y'all have said to me, and I

cannot appreciate that, and you enough. Clearly, if you guys don't listen to this podcast, then I don't get to make it. And so I am indebted to your ears. And to that accord, I would also add, if you think this podcast might appeal to somebody you know, I've never been great at promoting my stuff. I've always kind of relied on word of mouth. So if you think that there's somebody, I'm not, I'm not asking you to tell everybody, you know, to listen to the podcast. It's probably not for everybody, but if there's like a person, you know, that you think might enjoy it, maybe

let them, maybe let them know about it. Maybe recommend an episode to them or not. It's totally up to you. I get it either way. I appreciate y'all listening. And I consider myself lucky that we get to have this conversation together, which is why I was so blown away by all of the wonderful insights y'all sent me. In addition to the really positive feedback you've given me, you've also helped kind of elucidate some of the finer points of the things that we've talked about. And I realized there is a need for me to then take the information that I receive. I talk about stuff that I find interesting, David McWilliams, Flamingo Street, whatever. And then y'all fill in the gaps for me. And I don't want to just hold on to this new information. I feel like I need to share it back with you. So I think every once in a while, I'll do an episode like this, where I'll just

compile all the really interesting shit y'all have given me, and then, you know, parse through it and share it back with you. First things first, I feel like I now know everything there is to know about David McWilliams. Not only did I receive multiple emails explaining more about him, his history, his life, even some great stuff about The Bachelors. I also received photos. For instance, here's this dude, Ben, who I can't believe messaged me. I'm not going to read the whole email because it's pretty wordy, and I want to read a few more as well. But I'm going to read some really interesting stuff that he sent me. Ben is in Ireland.

He said, Jeff Hope Hall as well. Really enjoyed the first episode. Yada, yada, yada. And then he said, my colleagues and I well, really enjoyed the first episode, yada, yada, yada. And then he said, my colleagues and I have a special connection to David. We work in a building called the Oh Yeah Music Center in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which is a museum, recording studio, venue, and more. And one of the musicians that they honor the most highly, I'm paraphrasing here, is David McWilliams.

And then he included attached museum images which I will put up on the Instagram account and they tell the story of David McWilliams it's like museum displays and it's really fascinating and you can learn so much interesting shit about this guy who as Ben puts it is sort of a Woody Guthrie type character in Belfast and the surrounding areas and uh mentioned how surprised he was to hear me talking about him. I guess that must have been oddly localized for you. He mentioned, and I'll just read what he says here, you noted that the track was reminiscent of Townes Van Zandt,

and you're not totally wrong. Well, thanks, Ben. In fact, Woody, Townes, Dylan, etc. have all credited acts like the Clancy Brothers, the Dubliners, and Liam Weldon as huge inspirations in their original music, all of whom are legacy, iconic Irish folk and traditional music acts. These acts all would have played an instrumental part in shaping David's trajectory

as an artist, also due to oral traditions of sharing music and Ireland pre-mass production of vinyl records across the Atlantic. So what you're hearing that's similar to Van Zandt is likely a legacy of the influence of legendary Irish folk musicians. And I have some other emails similarly that kind of expound upon that. He talks a lot about the interesting traditions. This is really cool. And he says, side note, many of the instruments and melodies used in traditional U.S. country folk Americana, Appalachian folk, are from Ireland. The fiddle and the banjo, I guess, are traditional Irish instruments. I had no idea, and I guess they made their way to America during mass migration. And in fact, the people—this is the craziest part to me—in fact, the people who played these instruments and

moved out into the hills and mountains of the East Coast were former supporters of King William of Orange, the sovereign regent of Ireland, who completed the colonization of the Ireland after defeating King James. King William was known colloquially as King Billy, which is where Hill Billies originates from, because they were supporters of King William, known as Billy, and they lived in the hills. Hill Billy. I'm going to take that as gospel. I'm going to take that as 100% true, because I trust Ben, and that's pretty fucking wild. And then Ben tells me, I know I said that that was the craziest thing. Then Ben tells me the real craziest thing. He's the only one who gave me this bit of information, and, Ben, I am indebted to you. You've answered a question that I posed that I never thought I'd get the answer to.

And that answer is Flamingo Street actually refers to a now renamed avenue in Ballymena, the home of McWilliams, a small rural town on the outskirts of Belfast, capital of Northern Ireland. Ballymena saw particularly vicious fighting and pogroms. What is a pogrom? A pogrom is an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group. In particular, oh gosh. Okay, he said, Ballymena saw some particularly vicious fighting and pogroms during the Northern Irish Civil War, known internationally as the Troubles, between 1968 and 1996, which led to a rather destitute feeling in the town that resulted in an uncommonly high percentage of substance abuse and self-harm that has persisted to this day. Now, called Ballymoney Street, was the home of the Flamingo Ballroom, a legendary venue that hosted everyone from the Rolling Stones to Thin Lizzy, and would have been where McWilliams cut his teeth as a young player in the show bands and also as a solo singer. It was also famous for serving hot dogs and milkshakes instead of alcohol.

I do love a hot dog. You know, that's interesting, because two of the best hot dogs I've ever had in my entire life. One was in Iceland. Millie and I went on vacation to Iceland, and had like their local Reykjavik hot dog. They do this thing with the onions where they cut up the onions and fry them. And it's I've never had I've tried to make it at home. I've never come close. I've never had it anywhere else in the world like they have it there. And then I think we've talked about this throughout the history of Rooster Teeth, but Bernie and Gavin and I, Bernie and Joel and I, Bernie and somebody and I, we went to Edinburgh one time for a work trip and we had, we found a hot dog trailer there that had easily the best hot dog I've ever had in my entire life Scotland, then maybe Ireland completes the triangle, the trifecta of phenomenal hot dogs. And so someday I hope to have an Irish hot dog.

And now I know that if I go to Ballymoney Street, I can actually step foot on Flamingo Street because it's a real place. It doesn't exist anymore, but the street still exists. The place still exists. I can't, Ben, Ben, you have no idea the service you've done for me by telling me that information. I thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So this is an ad that helps support this podcast. Tis the season of giving.

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which I thought was really fantastic. He said that McWilliams was known to tour the band called the Dubliners, which was another Irish folk group that wrote a fair number of decent hits for the time. They also covered and subsequently popularized a bunch of Irish folk song. I'm having trouble saying that Irish folk songs from decades prior, more contemporary Irish bands like the Kilkenny's and the McGuire brothers have recently covered a lot of their stuff with a bit more of a rock tilt and Irish American bands like Dropkick Murphys were strongly influenced by them and other similar bands of the time. That's really interesting to know. Then he goes on and he says, the fact that McWilliams sounds sort of like an American country folk singer isn't coincidental. Country as a genre, and Appalachian folk in particular, this is going back to what Ben was

saying, owes its existence largely to two earlier genres of music. A huge influence is early African-American blues and folk. They brought the banjo into play as well as many other styles and sounds we associate with the genre today. The other influence is Irish and Scottish folk brought over by early immigrants from those areas into Appalachia. They brought over the fiddle and the ball know the genesis of things. And I feel like we don't spend enough time recognizing and appreciating how things come to be. And he goes on to say, the whole history is really fascinating. And I definitely recommend you dive into it when you have some spare time. Another semi-related genre that you might find interesting is Caribbean folk. I don't know anything about Caribbean folk, but Jake, I promise you I'm going to look into it. The next email I want to cover is from one of my favorite people in the Rooster Teeth community, the great Peter Hayes. And he answered another question that was burning a hole in my brain. David McWilliams wrote the song.

And Peter says he was signed with Major Minor Records, who had a distribution deal with another record label, which then used a different record label for distribution in the US and Canada and Latin America, and then selectively in the UK for some releases. So The Bachelors were signed to London Records, and that's how they got the song, since music in the 60s was shared widely around labels to try and find the best fit for the song and the singer. Prime example being Son of a Preacher Man, a song written with Aretha Franklin in mind, taken by Jerry Wexler,

then given to Dusty Springfield, who then gave it back to Aretha. So songs were shopped around, but David definitely wrote the song, which makes a lot of sense because, like I said, it is so far out of left field for everything else The Bachelors have ever recorded. He also says the song's country vibe isn't a trick, so he's further reinforcing what Jake and Ben said. The guitar uses a classic country driving rhythm which imparts a bounce that the listener can feel akin to that of a cowboy

riding a horse. And if that is not the perfect way to describe what I was very poorly trying to describe, Peter absolutely nails it. That is exactly what it feels like. It's that bounce that you can feel it, and it just feels like cowboy shit.

He says, but what it more accurately represents, and what I believe is the musical influence, is a pan-European cinematic sound Spanish guitar with British orchestral tension wrapped up in Italian dramatics. I'll be honest, that's way over my head, but it sounds right, and it sounds very cool. He says those three abstracts of music consumption, whether wholly used or not, dominated all of Europe's music in that period and what would be classed as popular music.

Then he actually recommends that you go and listen to Eurovision songs from 1960 to 1975 because it'll give a broad overview of that sound and how it came to be and how it dominated the European landscape, which I think is a great idea. And I absolutely want to do that someday. Oh, also, Peter, let me know flamingos are not native to Ireland. They do have some in the Dublin Zoo, among many other great animals. I I didn't think that they were were actually native to Ireland. I was just kind of fucking around there. But it's good to know 100% that they're not. So there you have it.

That answers just about every question I had about David McWilliams, every question I posed to y'all. Questions I didn't think I would ever get the answer to. But thanks to Peter and Jake and Ben, I now know quite a bit about David McWilliams. And I am indebted to you for that. Thank you very much. While we're doing a little bit of house cleaning, I should also mention I promised that I was going to read The House on Mango Street. And then I received a ton, a ton of email from you out there telling me that you read it in high school or in middle school

and that you loved it or hated it or didn't connect with it or went back and read it years later and got it. It sounds like it is a pretty polarizing book. So I decided to sit down and read it. It's by Sandra Cisneros and it was called The House on Mango Street and it's required reading for a lot of high schools. And it's also it's also showing up on book ban lists, which is terrifying, because I read that book. And it is a short book. It is a quick read. I read it in two sittings. I read it on a Kindle, so I'm not sure how many pages it is in book form, but it was, I don't know, about 110 pages. And like I said, very quick read. It's a story

of a young Hispanic girl growing up in a place called Mango Street in Chicago. And it is told through very simple vignettes and memories of her life and experiences. And there's some time skipping here and there, but it is mostly just a record of fragments of her life. And I absolutely loved it. It's written in a style that, you know, the content and the prose is very, very different from this, but the style that she writes in is reminiscent of, honestly, of charles bakowski to me in the way that they both have a very spare blunt honest way that they write where it's i don't know how to it's it's like the beauty is in how sparsely worded things are how how in your face and kind of just there it is. It's not florid.

It's like, I don't think that Sandra Cisneros or Charles Bukowski, who I don't know if they get compared a lot, but I don't think either of them ever throws in an extra word. Like the way both of those people write, it's so precise and it's write, it's so precise. It's like they're doing a maximum amount of storytelling and setting with a minimum amount of words.

It makes it incredibly easy to read. It makes it incredibly fast to read. easy to read. It makes it incredibly fast to read. And it does something, at least to me, where it just makes it explode in your head as you are able to imagine what they're talking about. And I found that both of them, I think the nice thing about the way it's written is just how clearly you can see and picture and understand things in your mind. And also, by the way, a lot of people wrote me and thank you so much for writing me and telling me to read the book

or telling me you love the book, telling me you didn't like the book. For anybody that didn't enjoy the book when you read it in high school, a lot of people said they had trouble understanding or connecting with the character. I, Esperanza, I guess I recommend you read it now because it's, I think, I mean, I don't know how to relate. I'm a 48-year-old white guy, and it's the. But what a window into the mind of a different experience, of a different life lived. What a

window into the way the world works. I mean, I'm a dad, right? I have almost 18. She might be 18 by the time this episode comes out. I'll never know what it's like to be my daughter. I'll never know what it's like to be a woman. I'll never know what it's like to grow up and go through puberty as a girl. My experience is completely and totally different. I'll never know what it's like to be a woman. I'll never know what it's like to grow up and go through puberty as a girl. My experience is completely and totally different. I'll never know what it's like to be Hispanic in an inner city. And I think that that's what is so wonderful about this book, is you get to understand a little bit of the reality of what that life lived was like, the pain and the fear and the joy and the hope and the perseverance and the strength

that are present in that book are prized and really appreciated. It's a raw and honest telling, and some of it is jarring and some of it is beautiful and some of it is painful, but it's all powerful and poignant. And I really recommend everybody, especially if you read it when you were younger and you didn't understand it, maybe give it a shot again now, now that you're a little older

and maybe can see it from a different light. Because I thought it was a really powerful book and I'm really, really, really glad I read it. And I encourage everybody else to as well. One other thing, I did the whole Who Shot JR episode. I mentioned in it that throughout the course of it, I ended up watching a couple episodes. And I thought, well, maybe watch one or two more. Well, Emily got into it.

And when Emily got into it, I, by proxy, got into it. And we are now on season six of Dallas. And let me tell you, I had no idea how good that show was my entire life. I can't believe I slept on Dallas for 48 fucking years. I clearly I was too young to appreciate it when it came out. But I it's so good. It is so good. And let me tell you, it gets better and better. The season five finale and then the start of season six have been tremendous. It has taken over our family. It has taken Emily and I watch it every night before we go to bed. And I'm only sad that I only have another 3000 episodes to go through because there are 30

episode seasons and there's like 12 seasons. It's insane. And then there's, you know, there's the reunions and shit after we could get into uh depending on on how we feel after another you know four billion hours of it but i seriously i was joking around about it but everybody should watch dallas it is good and if you ever want to hear us talk about it every monday i do a live show over on the fuck face youtube channel where i open up cards it's called the the break show sports cards non I open up cards. It's called The Break Show. Sports cards, non-sports cards, silly, weird stuff, Beavis and Butthead cards,

Umbrella Academy, baseball, whatever. And we have gotten into some Dallas cards lately, and so every episode we open up one or two packs, and then Emily and I just talk about Dallas and make jokes about Dallas. So if you're a Dallas stan, meet us on Mondays at 4 p.m. and we'll entertain you.

I guess that'll do it. I'll probably make another one of these when you guys send me enough interesting information that I feel compelled to share. I'll see you next time. All right.