So... Alright - The Music That Makes Us

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Geoff takes a dive into his earliest memories to create a playlist of his past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can email ericatjeffsboss.com with any questions or comments or concerns, but I am specifically looking for any feedback if you have any issues with, which is how it's recorded now. So I wanna make sure I'm getting it right. Hopefully it sounds better. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of So Alright.

Had an idea of a fun thing I kind of wanted to do today. The other day I was riding my bike as I do, I feel like I start most episodes of So Alright by saying, the other day I was riding my bike, looking for ideas. Well the other day I was riding my bike and I wasn't looking for ideas. I was just listening to music, zoning out,

and I was listening to Pegboy, who is a Chicago punk band from the 90s and early 2000s that is, I never really thought about it, but is probably one of my favorite bands. And just in the fact that, well, here I was in 2024 at the age of 49 years old, listening to Pegboy while I was on my bike and enjoying it so much, instead of just bouncing around, I just listened to a whole album, strong reaction album. And I just got to thinking about how I first started listening to that band. Like there was a time in my life when I was like maybe 22 when Pegboy was probably the thing I

listened to most of my life. Not for very long. I've had a lot of like swings with bands, right? Like there was a period in my life when all I listened to was Bad Religion for like three straight years. But then I had like a Beastie Boys phase. But there was a period when Pegboy was definitely like, it took up a lot of my ear time. And I thought it was funny that here I am at 49, so many years later, like 27 years later, I assume the math's right on that. And I'm listening to the same songs

and enjoying them to the exact same degree, if not more. And just how I got to thinking about, is it nostalgia and familiarity that I'm connecting with there? Or does the music resonate with me in the same way now? And I don't know that I have the kind of intelligence and critical thinking ability to be able to dispassionately take a step back and figure out the answer to that.

And ultimately, I don't know that it matters because at the end of the day, I just like listening to them. But I do think it's interesting that here I am at essentially 50 years old, probably halfway through my life, halfway through the average person's life. I'm gonna, I'm shooting for 150. So I guess 30 33% of the way, a third of the way through my life. And I still get just as much enjoyment out of the exact same stuff as I did when I was 22. And I mean, that goes further back, right? Like I was riding a bicycle while I was doing this, which is my favorite thing on Earth to do at 24. And it was my favorite thing on Earth to do at 14.

When I said 24, I meant in the year 2024. At 49, it's my favorite thing on Earth to do. And it was my favorite thing to do when I was 14. So what is that? Like 35 years ago. And just about how little we change in general. But I got to just thinking about like how far back I could go and find things that I liked, that I'm still like genuinely into. And at some point you go far enough back where you're just like, you know,

you're a toddler or whatever. But I think for me that like going back, it was easiest to do through music, which you know, most things in my life are easiest to achieve through music, which most things in my life are easiest to achieve through music. So I went back and that got me thinking, I kinda got derailed from the idea of things that I like now, how far back can I go with things that I like?

Probably mashed potatoes, I remember liking those, I like six, I still like them now. At some point it gets silly. But I kinda got off on another tangent where I just got to thinking about the very first songs I can remember liking. Do you remember your first, maybe not even your first favorite song,

because I don't know what my first favorite song was, but do you remember the first song that stood out to you or that stuck with you? I sat down after that bike ride at a coffee shop and I just poured over my memories, which was fun to try to reconnect with my youth and just tried to revisit my earliest memories to try to like glean what I was listening to.

And I was surprised, I was able to put together a pretty comprehensive little list and I made a playlist out of it. I should put it up on Spotify, or publicly, I just have been listening to it personally. And I was able to identify, oh, a few, let me see. How many did I identify? One, two, three, four, like five songs?

And I had so much fun, and there's probably some others out there that I just have, I just forgotten about or that'll pop up to me later. But I think these are the first five songs I liked and that mattered to me and that meant anything to me. And the first song is on this little playlist. It's the oldest song and it's, Do You Believe in Magic by The Love and Spoonful.

I have a very specific memory of walking in the park in Beaverton, Oregon where I lived. I was in probably first or second grade, somewhere around there, first grade. I was with some friends and there were some girls in the park and they were our age too and there were some girls in the park and they were our age too and we were kind of playing around each other

and I remember we were trying to impress them because they were, you know, I don't know, just little boys. And my friend had this rubber monster mask that he'd had left over from Halloween and it had like a hairy head and then like a gross like bluish greenish, you know, monstery warty face, right?

And it's just one of those stretchy rubber masks. And I remember throwing it up in the air and catching it and singing that song, the Love and Spoonful song, Do You Believe in Magic, as clear as day, and just laughing and my friend and I thinking, that was funny and impressive in some way, and the girls were giggling, and I just remember, I just remember thinking about how much I liked that song

in that moment and just singing it at the top of my lungs. And so there you go, Love and Spoonful, about how much I liked that song in that moment and just singing it at the top of my lungs. And so there you go, Love and Spoonful, which is actually from 1965. I thought in my brain, it came out right around then, like it was a newish song. So, I mean, of course it makes sense to Love and Spoonful is an old band, but you know, you don't ever like when you're pouring through your memories, you don't take a step back and go and figure out timelines. Right? I just assumed that when I heard that song, it was fresh on the radio, but it wasn't. It had been out for 15 years at that point, probably. Oh, wait a minute. Hold on. The single peaked at number nine

on the Billboard top 100 charts. It later served as the title track of the band's debut album. It issued that November. In 1978, Sean Cassidy reached the top 40 with his cover version. So I wonder if I'm remembering the Sean Cassidy cover version, because that would have been two or three years old at that point. Like, I was born in 75, so my memory's probably from 80, 81. So I bet, I mean the Sean Cassidy version was only two or three years old at that point.

I wonder if, I'm gonna have to go back after this and listen to that and see if I can tell the difference. In my head it's just the Love and Spoonful version, but who knows? Wow, that's weird. I didn't even know it was covered. I might have been listening to the wrong version of my earliest song memory. Wow. Well, moving along, the next song is, I just discovered,

I just discovered that there was a cover of Do You Believe in Magic that I may be misremembering as the one I heard, but I also, I just looked it up. Juice Newton is one of my other earliest memories of music. I absolutely loved the song, well, two of her songs I'm gonna talk about, but I absolutely loved the song Queen of Hearts. So I just looked it up, you know, playing with the queen of hearts,

going in a really smart, it's like country pop kind of song. And I remember the video being kind of mesmerized by the video, cause like somebody fell down up up off a road into a ditch or something and I remember being sad. I remember feeling sad for her like she was in distress like she was chasing somebody or being chased and I just remember like hoping she was okay but loving the song and finding it to be kind of sad in a way that like tickled me you know I don't don't know. Like you started to discover emotions and you're like bittersweet, you know?

And it's a cover. It's a cover of Hank DeVito, the pedal steel guitarist from Emmylou Harris' backing group, The Hot Band. And it was recorded by Dave Edmonds on his 1979 album, Repeat When Necessary. So the two first songs I can remember are one definitely and the other one probably is a cover.

Well, let's see. The next song was Angel in the Morning by, also by Juice Newton. And if you've never heard it, it's just like a really slow emotional, it's just a beautiful song, I don't know. And it's one of the other like very first songs I remember. Huh. And it was written by Chip Taylor,

originally recorded by Evie Sands. So, Juice Newton covered it. God damn it. It was also covered by Olivia Newton-John. So Juice Newton, both of the Juice Newton songs from my childhood are covered. I haven't I don't have an original song yet. Well, that's going to that's fucking funny, because the next one, I already know, is a cover first album I ever bought.

I've talked about this before. I think I talked about with Eric on an animal, one of the music ones. The first album I ever bought when I was, I want to say seven. My mom took me to the mall in Portland, Oregon, because there was a song I played over and over on the jukebox at the pizza inn by our house when I would play video games. And I would listen to this song over and over again. That song was Mama, We're All Crazy Now by Quiet Riot. So my mom took me with my Christmas money. She took me to probably Camelot in the mall. And that was the first album I ever bought, Metal Health by Quiet Riot, which I still have,

proudly still have the vinyl, saved up my entire life. Found out a few years ago that that is a cover. There was a band called Slade in the 70s, and most of the songs that I remember from Quiet Riot were Slade songs, oddly enough. Yeah, Quiet Riot, what is it like, Metal, like, Metal Health, was that the, what was the other song, I'll just look it up.

Come On, Feel the Noise. Yeah, I think that's a fucking Slade cover as well, isn't it? Yeah, anyway, it doesn't matter. That specific song is a cover, which is weird. It's weird that the first four songs I can remember in my life are covers. I don't know if that just means they were more common

back then or maybe I just have a very weird particular taste of people imitating other people. However, in the process of this, I went back and I watched the video to Mama We're All Crazy Now by Quiet Riot, not the original by Slade. It's a fucking great, it's a great, it's a great video. You gotta watch it. There's a giant Quiet Riot mask.

It's like a metal mask. If you haven't seen it, it kind of looks like, well, it actually kind of looks like the MF Doom mask, but it's like a giant mask that they puppeteer to talk at the beginning. It's very funny. I highly recommend it. And then the other song, if this turns out to be a cover, I'm gonna fuck,

oh no, it's not, it's okay. Private Eyes by Hall & Oates. Probably what I would consider to be my lifelong favorite band of all time. First concert I ever went to was Hall & Oates Big Bam Boom Tour on my birthday when I was, I wanna say 11, maybe 12. No, I was 11, I think.

And just the fucking best. And it's sad to see what has happened to them. And if you don't know, they had a very bad breakup recently. They've had a tumultuous relationship for many, many years. From the outside, it looks like it's probably mostly on Darrell Hall's end.

Unfortunately, tremendously talented duo that I guess is never going to play together again. I love all of their music, but Private Eyes, I think, was the very first song I ever heard by them. And I have the I still have my original Hall of Notes album. I also have a Hall of Notes tattoo. And I think it's called Truth and Soul. Truth and Soul, part one is the album. And there you go.

So those are the original, I guess, the first five songs I ever remembered being a fan of. I encourage you, if you're into music, if it matters to you, to do that. Go back, sit down, and try to think of the first songs you ever remember liking, and then just put them in a, like, a O.G. me playlist and listen to it and see if it transports you back to your childhood, see if you still like the music,

see if you still connect with it or see if it just like feels lame or embarrassing. I gotta be honest, I fucking love Private Eyes. I love Mama, We're All Crazy Now. I still listen to Juice Newton a lot. I listened to Queen of Hearts just the other day and I love the Love and Spoonful. I guess I gotta go back and listen

to that Sean Cassidy version and see if that's the one that I was thinking of. I don't even know if I'd be able to tell, but anyway. I guess that was the gist of what I wanted to do. That is talk to you guys about those earliest musical memories, the ones that stood out and that mattered and that created the foundation of, or the building blocks of the things that you end up becoming a fan of or that endear themselves

to you. I did something today. I did two things today at the same time that I never thought I would do. I did two things today at the same time that I never thought I would do. I played PlayStation 5 on purpose with enthusiasm, and I streamed to Twitch on my own. In the course of getting the regulation podcast and the regulation company up and running, it's become clear to me that streaming is gonna be a part of that,

and it's definitely gonna be an arm of the business that I want to be able to participate in and take advantage of outside of just being a voice on the weekly regular live streams that we do on Fridays. And so I need to get my Twitch account set up and monetize and all that. I need to go through a process where I stream for a bunch of days and just kind of add,

accumulate time and followers. And so I began that process today. By the way, if you're interested in following me, my Twitch handle is fake Jeff, just F A K E G E O F F. And I made I made that back in, I guess when we were doing the fake age crew, I just never used it. And I'm going to be streaming, I guess every day for an hour or so at some point in the day or at night, just so I can fulfill all these obligations so I can become affiliated or an affiliate. But I really enjoyed it. And the reason I'm streaming PlayStation, I should add, it's the PlayStation that Gavin gave me.

If you follow the regulation podcast, what used to be Fuckface, a couple of years ago, I had we had double like a couples dinner date with Gavin and Meg, my wife, Emily and I, and they didn't show and they just got their date wrong. And Gavin felt so bad. He gave me a PlayStation five that then I used as a I didn't really intend to use it as a footrest, but it just kind of became one. And then it kind of became a long running joke. But, you know, I cracked it open the other day and set it up.

And I like it. I'll be honest. And I got excited about it. I got to thinking about how I have ignored PlayStation for. The majority of my professional career, I did play PlayStation on occasion during my stint at Achievement Hunter and Let's Play for multiplayer games or the occasional like challenge or like I remember there was some sort of an Uncharted series we did where maybe I watched people play and I feel like maybe once I played the first level of one of the Uncharted games or something.

But you know, that's about it. That's about the sum total of my PlayStation experience is a few multiplayer Let's Plays I did or very specific niche Let's Plays I did for Achievement Hunter. And, you know, we start to think about the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5 and all the exclusive games they had, which are, you know, I was gonna say arguably better than the Xbox exclusives,

but I don't think it's arguable. I think PlayStation definitely wins the exclusive battle, or at least did during that period. I've missed all those games and I kind of wanted to play them. So I downloaded a bunch to my PlayStation and I thought, what a fun angle that would be since I have to start streaming anyway and there's nothing like pressing I want to play.

Like I'm not going to make you guys watch me play fucking UFC five or riders republic all day long. So I thought maybe I'll just go through and that'll be the point of my streaming when it's not associated directly with regulation is I'll just stream every PlayStation game I never played and I'm just gonna learn PlayStation. So I'm starting with Uncharted one.

I just found out there's fucking, I think four Uncharted games. I had no idea there were that many I'm like I streamed it for an hour today So I got I'm about an hour into the game. It's pretty fun so far. I just got kidnapped no spoilers Well spoilers, I just got kidnapped by some guys who I don't know one dude has gray hair and like dirty tan slacks and a White-ish button-up shirt, maybe maybe you know him slacks and a whitish button up shirt. Maybe, maybe you know him. Anyway, he's got me a gun point.

And I really enjoyed the act of streaming. I really enjoyed the pace of it. And I really enjoyed Uncharted and playing PlayStation. So I guess it's, you know, something that's gonna stick and I'm gonna follow through with for a while. So if you have any interest in checking me out on Twitch, I guess Fake Jeff is my username. I feel weird promoting myself,

but I guess that's what I gotta do. But I kinda don't know what other games to play. I think the last PlayStation game I was really into was Infamous. I remember playing that. But I'm gonna pull up a list of, I guess I should do PS4 and then PS5, right? What games, all right, here's the best PlayStation exclusives. I guess I should do PS4 and then PS5, right?

What games, all right, here's the best PlayStation exclusives. Don't give a shit about Yakuza or racing games. Don't care about Street Fighter, Infamous of the... The Last of Us, so I have to play The Last of Us. Uncharted, I'm doing that, so there's four of those. Shadow of the Colossus, I remember thinking that looked cool. Ghost of Tsushima. Everybody talks about that.

Oh, Detroit become human. Oh, I should do that just so I could explore Detroit in the future since I'm such a Michigan guy now. Don't care about persona. Last Guardian, I remember that being cool. More uncharted. Bloodborne. I don't think I want to play Bloodborne. All right. There was a whole Spider-Man thing.

They had Spider-Man games that were really good. Horizon Zero Dawn. I'm supposed to play that. Everybody tells me I will fucking love that game as a dad, whatever that means. God of War. I've never touched God of War. There's a bunch of those, too, I think. More last of us. And then let me pull up the best PS5 games. All right, let's see what we got here.

Best PlayStation 5 games. If you have any recommendations that I'm not saying out loud, email me at ericadjessboss.com. I'm just looking for PlayStation exclusive games, games that I would have missed having an Xbox, not anything cross-platform. I've never heard of Rise of the Ronin. Pretty highly rated, though.

I don't give a shit about Ratchet and Clank. Maybe I should. Maybe I should. Maybe I should care about Ratchet and Clank. Death Stranding. Can't remember if people really liked that or just pretended to. More Spider-Man games. Don't care about Final Fantasy at this point in my life. Definitely don't care about Gran Turismo.

Demon's Souls. No. More Horizon, Stellar Blade. I don't know what that is. Hell divers. Oh, I have to check that out, too, then. Yeah, I think I think that must be the big ones, right? Last of Us, God of War, Uncharted, Spider-Man, I guess Ghost of Tsushima. Yeah, well, I'm excited to dive into all that. That's probably a couple hundred

hours of gameplay ahead of me. I'm only an hour into the first Uncharted game and I got three after that. By the time I get done with the Uncharted series, there'll probably be two more for me to play. That's what I've been up to. If you if you're at all interested in my early music playlist, let me know. I think you should make one for yourself and let me hear it. If it's a fun exercise, if you end up with a playlist that you think is pretty rad, share it with me. I'd love to I'd love to hear what your first musical memories are.

And speaking of music, I should probably give you a song of the day. I thought I had one set aside earlier. Oh, I do, I do. It's a ghost story as a song, which I think is a really clever trope. Maybe not trope at all, but a clever device. It's kind of a haunting, rhythmic, droning, kind of spooky but not scary and a little sad song

about a ghost. It's called Look A Ghost by the band Unwound. I think it's probably their best song. A lot of people will disagree with me, but listen to Look A Ghost by Unwound. It's awesome. And thanks for surviving another week of the So Alright podcast.

I'll be back next week with more, who knows? We'll figure it out together. All right.