The Watch - A Grab Bag of Pop Culture Recommendations and Rob Harvilla on the Music of the '90s

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

Chris and Andy recommend a few shows that they’re liking that are not normal “Watch fare,” including ‘Borgen’ and ‘Call My Agent!’ (7:33). Then, they are joined by Rob Harvilla to talk about his experience with music in the 1990s and how he picked the songs for his new podcast, ‘60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s’ (32:46). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Rob Harvilla Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ranger.com and joining me on the leather line as always. It's Andy Greenwald. We're a little shaking up today. Are we?

We're a little shaken up. Yeah, because look, I know we're going to go. We got to do the pre-roll. We got to do some business now in the structure of our podcast. But for people who don't know, we have Rob Hartville coming on to talk about his new podcast, right? 60 songs to explain the 90s. And right before we hit record on this section of the podcast, Kaya announced that she physically and on planet Earth is the same age as our friendship.

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Trimphia, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. Andy, we're back. It's Thursday in America. You said we have Rob Hervilla on today to talk about his new podcast, 60 songs that explain the 90s. And I got to say, I'm not really sure what else you want to talk about today. I was thinking what we could do because we want to hit third day, maybe next Thursday after you've had a chance, everybody's had a chance to finish it. I think

that's probably for the best. I've up to date on. I'm up to date on. that show, but it is coming to its conclusion on Monday night so we can hit that next week, if you'd like. Other than that, I thought maybe we could just do kind of like a grab bag of stuff that we've been kind of checking out recently. We've been kind of hitting the same shows over and over again, but we're in a weird in-between spot. So it's just, first of all, how are you doing? Great. I'm fired up for some town halls. I don't know about you. That's, that's my- competing. They're at the same time. As Robb, we talked about blur and oasis with Rob, but these are really, it's the blur oasis of town halls tonight.

I'm going to disagree with that. I feel like it's like blur an oasis on one channel and like ocean color scene B-sides, maybe. Yeah, right. Well, are you going to do, are you going to basically have like one audio on each ear and see if you can like make your head explode like a David Kronenberg movie? I'm devoted to the concept of both sides above everything else, you know? Many people say that about you. A hundred percent.

100%. How are you doing, buddy? How's Fall doing? I'll say that I'm having a little bit of a hard time because I feel like the lack of any kind of like real personal experiences outside of like my living room is starting to catch up with me a little bit. Mostly what I do is like if I don't go and have like a socially distance hang with the same group of people, you included, I play golf. And there is a little bit of an erosion happening where I just feel like I haven't like, you know how you'd be like, oh man, on the subway today, this guy did this thing. And you'd get like 10 minutes off that. You know, and maybe even like a half an hour of just thinking about it. It's like, I couldn't believe

in. And this dude did this and this lady said this back to him. Anyway, let's move on to the next thing. And that's really gone now for me. I mean, I am, I've been watching more stuff now than at any point during quarantine in any point during the year and you could argue in my life like i'm watching so much fucking stuff right now yeah and i do think that there is an interesting thing going on where i'm not juxtaposing my interpretation of the art with my experience in life my experience in life is so static and so it's really had like an interesting impact on like watching things i hear you are we doing the same show over and over again do people mind that no well i actually have a slive some might say we've been doing that for eight years, so I think that's okay. But I think

the pivot I'd like to make is, well, I'll start here. One of the joys of living in New York that I missed, even when I just lived here, and one could still leave the home, you know, safely, was the lack of, I mean, you were saying, like, you see someone on the subway, but basically there's an ability in any big city, really, especially one that is not car dependent, to be surprised. You can leave your house in one mood, thinking you're going to one place, and then maybe you get off the subway to stop you haven't stopped up before. Maybe you run into a friend in the park. Maybe a bookstore is open that you've never been to. Maybe there's an exhibition at a gallery and you step in. And you can change the trajectory of your day. And I think that as human

beings, that kind of outside of yourself experience makes us better. It makes us, it makes our lives richer. It makes us think more creatively. It makes us think more clearly with some perspective on things. I just want to say, as a footnote, that That was a lovely description of what life was like in New York, and it was all of that for me, except take out all of the stuff you said and just be like, and then I went to a bar. Yeah, I was trying to keep it. Like, I just think I ever met a friend in a park in 11 years in New York. No, one time when you came back from California to visit me and I had a child, you met me in the child in the park. Yes.

It was my child, for the record. It was a learner. But I take your point. But what I'm saying is that that is part of what makes us live fuller life. as humans. And obviously we're all lacking that right now, but I'll take it one step further, which is to say that the expectation, the imposition of personal curation and choice, and the expectation that we will be doing that constantly for every entertainment moment of our lives, I'm feeling a collapse between those two things, which is, this is something we've talked about before,

which is the paralysis that many people feel at eight o'clock or whatever when they sit down on the couch and they have nine streaming services and a DVR full of stuff and movies that they hadn't gotten to yet, right? We've waxed rhapsodic about how we kind of liked losing ourselves in the Peacock channel algorithm just because there was TV again. And I think that there's a moment that I'm experiencing and it seems like you are too and I wonder if listeners are as well, which is we are currently not able to be surprised in a good way ever anymore because days have collapsed into sameness and there's not

much to look forward to because things aren't getting that much better. And on top of that, when you sit down on the couch at the end of your similar and repetitive day, once again, it is up to you to try and it's like you can't tickle yourself. You know what I mean? And so I'm sitting here last night, for example, I would have loved to have been uplifted. I would have loved to have had an experience in the short time that my wife and I had to watch something, something that would have othered me and taken me outside of my head and maybe surprise me.

But I didn't want to do the third day because I wanted to frustrate you as you prepared for this podcast. But I also just wasn't in that headspace. But we ended up watching another episode of this French show, called my agent, which I enjoy. And honestly, that was kind of a gift

because at the moment it's either that or we're almost done making your way through the phenomenal what we do in the shadows. And I am, actually just grateful that we had something on our queue, but they're not scratching that I would like to be outside of myself. A lot of that comes down to the fact that your wife is so many episodes ahead of you on Gangs of London, though.

Well, she's willing to watch them again, but mostly for fighting technique. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I think that that's a valid point. and I am particularly feeling that. So why don't we do this?

Instead of saying, hey, this week on the watch, this episode next week on the watch, we'll definitely be talking about a specific show. But for our intensive purposes now, before we get to Rob today, I thought maybe you and I could just recommend a couple of the things that, you know, often what we do on this show is talk about shows

that seem to be in some level of the public conversation about TV or about films, but usually TV. Or shows that we are going to repeatedly talk about with the true hope that we can, like, kick up more interest for them. Like you said, this is essentially a cheerleader show. And when we come across something, whether it's third day or, I may destroy you

or normal people or flea bag, none of which needed our help. But, like, when we're passionate about them, we talk about them a lot. I'm glad you added that because I don't think the takeaway from this podcast should be, ladies, let two 40-year-old dudes explain what's good on television. That's not our lane.

No, no. What are you in the margins of your life that aren't, you aren't necessarily apparent to our listeners? That wouldn't be like logical, like, I'm in a dedicated entire segment of the watch this. Now, this is, for you, this is a... It was incredible because I misheard you and you said, you're not necessarily a parent.

And I was like, I could just leave? What can I think about all the things I could do? Can you tell me that? Tell people that you Grant text, the interview text that you sent me today. Oh, this is from his interview with Itzkoff, right? Yeah. So I highly recommend everybody checking out the great Hugh Grant.

I mean, is it too much to ask? I want Hugh Grant on Marin. I want more Hugh Grant in my life. But he's on this HBO Nicole Kidman show that I think we'll cover. The undoing, yeah. I'm going to check it out for sure. Should I pull the quote? Please.

Do you have nothing but time? And actually that's not sure. Kaya's got nothing but time. You and I are rounding third in our lives. Kaya's just beginning her journey. Okay, so the, he said, this is from Mark Harris, quoted this. I think it's from the Times,

but Mark Harris wrote this, not David Scott. But basically why he took this part. He said, one of the reasons I took this job in this HBO series was that I'm old and I have small children and I love them. But I thought, great, I get to get away from them for a bit and get some sleep. But ironically, the moment I landed at JFK each time, I was overwhelmed with homesickness. I don't know who I've turned into.

Scenes where I'm just asking for a cup of coffee would make me burst into tears and they'd have to say, maybe not in this scene, Hugh. It was just me missing my kids. I was doing the whole thing on jet lag and I now see sugar. I watched the series the other day.

I thought it was about a dark secret and a privileged family. It turns out it's just about a fat man married to Nicole Kidman. I've never seen such weight on an actor. You can barely get me in the wide screen. Legend. Well,

Anyway, my point was Maybe today we could chat a little bit About some of this stuff, TV or otherwise, that we've been giving us some measure of joy over these last couple of weeks And then we could get into our conversation

With Rob and talk about music from the 90s. Great. I got stuff. Go for it. You go first. Well, I will put in another word. We'll do three and we'll trade back and forth.

Okay. So far, I just let people know how this podcast works. I got two and then we'll see. You know what I mean? We'll just see. This is a 1 a.m. set at the comedy store, and we'll just see where the mood takes us.

We can do two and we just trade back and forth. No, no, challenge me. Challenge me. I want to feel alive. And you can't just name multiple members of Griselda and their music. Well, then I could have had like nine. I'll just reiterate something that I mentioned a moment ago, which is this French series called My Agent,

which is incredibly charming, incredibly enjoyable. But it's also been fun to watch because the first season was delightful. And part of the pleasure, it's about a small boutique agency that represents famous people in France. And it would be insufferable in English, but it's in Paris. And they eat kidneys for dinner. And it's charming Charmonde, if I may. But one of the highlights of it is that every episode features a real French celebrity, who we have absolutely no fucking clue about.

So, like, basically, like the L.L. Cool J. of France is a rapper name Joe East. who's like become a very successful actor and they're talking about him and part of the fun is being like, did they make this guy up or is he satirizing his outsized reputation than I've never heard of him before? It's very good.

But the other thing that's enjoyable about it is that because it's, you know, it's a TV show but it's in France you're like, oh, this somehow feels classier or a little bit like escapism. And then you get into the second season, still enjoying it, love the characters, love the performances,

love the, as my wife says every episode, who buys their clothes? And then in the second season, though, they start doing some plot things that are almost bracing, like a slap of aquavela on the face because they would never, ever do them in American television anymore. Well, there's certain things that are like, I don't think this is a major spoiler, but like the, oh, a character is going to get unexpectedly pregnant. Like that is classic season four or season five, but midway through season two and season two is six episodes. that is a pretty bold choice that I definitely wasn't expecting. But also, just like,

there's a plot line in the first season where a character starts to flirt with someone and they clearly have a lot of chemistry and then they even make out at a bar and then they find out their siblings. Any show made in any other country. That is classic France right there. Well, they don't sleep together.

Okay. But in any other show, in any other country, they'd be like, ha ha, bullet dodged. On this show, eight episodes later, they're just hanging out and they're like, boy, it's too bad about that taboo about brothers and sisters, huh? And they're like, yes, it's a real shame.

And they are teasing it. Like, it's still going to happen. And because the show is French, you just don't know. You just don't know. And that's the kind of taboo uncertainty that keeps me going. I didn't expect to advocate for the show solely on the potential for incest, but here I am.

Yeah, well, it is the watch. We made our bones on the Jamie Searcy relationship a long time ago. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Sticking in that vein, I thought I would just mention that my wife, Phoebe, and I have been loving our first go-round with the Danish show, Borgon, which was recently added to Netflix. now. Borgon is in some ways a real throwback to real capital letter prestige TV, Golden Era TV. It's from 2010 to 2013 it ran. I don't believe it was ever, maybe it's been on and off Netflix, but I believe it was either brought back to Netflix or it's at least being certainly

marketed as if it was newly arrived. And I had never gotten a chance to watch it. It was a critical darling back when it was running and then you know you could i think get dvds of it sometimes people would stream it illegally it was a real like who if you've seen borgon yet you got to try and find borgon it's fucking awesome like it is essentially for people who don't know um a breakneck drama set in the danish parliament where they are trying at least in the early early first season trying to form a new government and it stars um sidzi babette nudson uh who you know was on the first season of Westworld. It's funny to see how many of these people wound up on different HBO shows over the course of the decade. She's fucking dynamite in this show. You know, you really,

I get like a real, I don't know, like I wouldn't go as far as say maybe Merrill Street, but she is crushing it to show. She is the leader of the moderates, and she's basically trying to foremost a government coalition among these various factions and parties in Danish parliament. there's a lot of really quaint scandals. You know, like a guy uses his parliament credit card to pay for his wife's shopping spree in a bind because he doesn't have his wallet. And they're like, well, that guy's going to have to resign.

And I'm like, oh, sweet Danish people. Sweet Denmark. It's like the things that people have to resign over and get brought down by, I'm like, oh, you guys, Can I tell you a little bit about Deutsche Bank? So that's great. And I think it's got the frenetic kind of breakneck pace that I really miss from Sorkin shows. The kind of internal politics, a lot of domestic just scenes of people chatting in rooms that it's not high concept.

There's no mystery. There's no mystery box to be opened. It's just really, really well done, really well acted. and I'm loving every minute of it. I have one question and then a follow-up. How much of the new Nordic cuisine is present in this show? Because do they ever have a working lunch at Noma? So so far, like it's just right now,

like there's just been a lot of pastries talk and cookies talk. Kaya, are you there? Yes, what's up? What is the Danish design aesthetic thing? Hig. Hig. It's like Hig or Higgy or something. Okay. One of those three. Are you into that? You know what the vibe is for that? Yeah. It's like cozy, like cold outside, warm inside. Lots of like fuzzy blankets. Stacks. Stacks of books. Just like everything is like, you know, piles of magazines.

Like just, it sounds a little bit like hoarding, but it's not. And I'm trying to like spot that in Borgon. See if that's like popping up at all. I'm still hung up on, you said there was mostly about pastries. What do they, because we call them Danish's. So what do they call them on Borgen? At least that's the translation. Yeah. Right. I'm very curious. This seems like, this seems worth pursuing. But my main interest would be like

if they're going down to the waterfront to eat like, you know, tree ash and welks and stuff. Like that's my main interest. Tree ash? You know. Oh, because of Noma. My other favorite thing in Borgon is when Danish people use English as like just a cliche

or a saying at the end of you know, they'll just have like a whole paragraph of saying something in Danish. And at the end, they'll be like, but it's just business. Yes, this is exactly what happens and call my agent, too. Isabella Johnny, the great Isabella Johnny meets a director, fictional character in the show. She's playing a version of herself, who talks about Game of Thrones a lot, by the way, if I'm trying to hook you in. And she's like, just be happy.

Yeah, what's up with that? Yeah, I think it's great. What a great influence we've had on the world. Let's leave it at that. So I want to keep things focused firmly where our listeners' hearts and minds are, which is northern Europe, and say that legitimately, I mean, I think that long-time listeners of this podcast or recipients of my texts know that there are three people in particular who have kept me sane during this long pandemic summer and now into the fall, Larry McMurtry, Benny the butcher, and the Finnish film director Aki Khoris Maki, who, I don't make the list? You know, you're an evergreen. You know, the ash on your tree bark is delicious any time of the year.

Okay. I was sort of hoarding talking about this dude because I'm still trying to get you on board with him. But like, I have never heard of him. Anyone who, like, Sean Fantasy has. So that's where we are on the diagram. You know what I mean? Like if you are a student of world cinema, people know about him. I definitely am not and I did not.

This is a guy who's been making movies a lot of them since the 80s. It is no small thing or big thing to say he is the biggest filmmaker in his native Finland. And he makes movies all over Europe because basically like wherever the money is. So he's made movies in France, in French. He's made a movie in England. I love his movies so much. It's like I feel like I've been looking for them for my whole life. His tone is exactly what I want in that it is hilarious.

It is completely deadpan. but with a real sentiment, not sentimental, but actually warm heart underneath it. And his movies generally are shot in a very, it's almost like a stoic framing. It's like very, he's been compared to like Jim Jarmish and Hal Hartley, right? Yes, and people have said he's like a missing link

between Buster Keaton and Jim Jarmish, but also with a little bit of like Ken Loach in terms of its like working class focus. And characters often like, it's often like if you're doing a conversation, it's like head-on, head-on kind of dialogue stuff. And no matter where he's filming, whether it's contemporary France or contemporary Helsinki,

it always looks like it's Estonia in 1981. But the movies are so delightful and transporting and surprising. And if you have the Criterion Channel, which is a great, great, great, great investment, I think. You can watch a bunch of them. I think otherwise you could rent them from your various providers. I started with his most recent movie. which is called The Other Side of Hope, which is set in Helsinki, and it's about a Syrian refugee

in Helsinki. I then watch this movie from 2012 called La Jave, like the French city, which is in France, and it's about a refugee child from Gabon who ingratiates himself into some people's lives. They are about immigration increasingly in a really non-didactic, but very human way. But they're also about the surprising ways in which communities can form and come together to take care of their own. and there's a ton of them. There's also always in all of these movies. In all of these movies, there is always a moment where a real, although certainly not something I'm familiar with,

like blues rock band from the area, whether it's from like the coast of France or from like deep Helsinki just plays for a while, it's pretty great. Is it great? Is it a real band or is it? Yes. There's like in Laiav, like there's this character,

it's like little somebody. I forget his name. He's just some dude who was like a pub rock star in the 70s in France from the town of Laiv. And he plays himself in this. And reforming his band as a charity concert is part of the story. People just smoke and they drink and they stare at each other and say deadpan funny things. And somehow the world keeps going. And I found them to be really inspiring.

So I would start, I only know my own path. But if you have access to the other side of hope, if you like it, keep going. So what do you think it is about? do you feel like the part of the attraction to these films right now aside from the fact that it obviously scratches

a very personal interest itch for you in terms of like this is the aesthetic that I want this is like the sense of humor that I want this is even the you mentioned the framing

which you usually don't talk about stuff like that like what is it about it emotionally or personally that you are kind of attracted to outside of is it partially because it's so removed from everything

that it feels like another world or what I mean, I can escape into them because they are not set in. It's not just that I don't live in. Like, he made a great film in the 90s called La Vieboe-M, which is a black and white movie in Paris, although it could be any decade, even though I think it was contemporary in 1992. And it's just about like a painter, a writer, and a pianist who meet each other and they drink too much wine and they get money and they lose money and they get money and they lose money and someone gets deported and they do their best. I think that I generally love stuff that has such specific point of view and tone

you're in the hands of a master and you are in his world and in his world things play by his rules I just adore the humor I and I at the heart of them though they are about decent people I mean every

I would say every character in his movies is a little bit like Royal Tenenbaum is like Gina Hackman and the Royal Tenenbaum you know what I mean like everybody's got an angle everybody's scheming but they're not bad people. They're just extravagant characters. And it's a vision of the world that I really like,

especially as he's made more movies and these recent movies, have directly been about the refugee crisis in Europe, but not in a political way, not in a didactic way, but in a people are struggling everywhere and look out for each other. And so I find that very affirming,

even while I find the artistry really thrilling. The other thing that I wanted to mention as a recommendation today would be, The Hunting of Bly Manor, which is sort of not quite sequel to The Hunting of Hill House, which was Mike Flanagan's Netflix horror show that was on, I guess, like a year and a half ago about, maybe it was last year. You know, timed relatively well to Halloween this year. I'm a big horror movie fan, but I wouldn't describe Blymanner necessarily as horror,

although it has some scares about midway through, a little bit more than midway through it. And my, you know, my wife and I really love watching horror stuff. so it's been a real pleasure to watch it. But this is like only tangentially horror. It's way more Gothic than that. It's set in the 1980s, although it has a little bit of a rushing nesting doll sort of framework where someone is telling the story that we are seeing on the screen

in a different time. And yeah, it's just about a nanny who gets a job seeing these two troubled kids overseeing these two troubled kids in a manner in rural England in the next. 1980s and she's there with a chef and a housekeeper and a gardener and it's really they're very isolated out in the country in England and they start seeing a guy who is a ghost or at least they think that he might be and he keeps appearing and the kids are acting very strange and we're starting to learn more and more about the family that the kids belong to so it's very cool it's very atmospheric

but I would almost describe it as like capital R romantic and a lot of lot of ways. I mean, it's not, it's not as, um, arch or, you know, quippy as a lot of TV is. It's definitely not ironic at all. It's very, very sincere. And the emotions are pretty widescreening. The brushstrokes are pretty broad. So it's been, it's been a different kind of vibe to a lot of the shows that we've been watching and talking about. And a lot of, a lot of the stuff that we've talked about this year, I feel, I think feels very modern. And this doesn't. This feels very classical in some ways. Can I ask the one question that all the listeners named me need to know, which is if we're going to make a one to ten chart of things that your co-host can handle in the horror realm? And if

one is what we do in the shadows, which I love, and 10 is the Wikipedia entry for Hereditary, where does this fall? Six, five. Like there's some jump scares. There's some really creepy people moving around in the back of frames and I'm sure shit's about to get really real. But it's, it's definitely much more about trauma, which is what Hillhouse is about too. I think that it's about, you know, unpacking what has damaged these people in the first place. One more shout out. I just want to say, we don't have Shay and Jason here today, but I'm, I'm continuing to watch Gangs of London. And I really hope to get some folks who worked on that show on the show on the watch soon. The fifth episode.

of Gangs of London. So the first two are two parts of episode one. So I can't remember the episode name corresponding to the number, but it's the fifth episode of Gangs of London is one of the most astonishing things I have seen this year. It is,

it's hard to describe the adrenaline that it gives off. And it is essentially like a 40-minute combat scene. And I can't believe what I saw. And if you have not been keeping up with that show or I would highly recommend checking it out because this episode, which I think is up now on Amazon,

if it goes through AMC Plus or it's on AMC Plus, it is fucking crazy. It's so good. Wow. Do you have a third one? Were you able to think a third one? No, it's listening to you. People think I check out

when I'm not talking. I was just listening to you, man. Why don't you talk a little bit about some of your playlists? No. No, no, no. People don't want to hear about my playlist. Your rap is giving you life, man.

It's true, but, like, you know, people from the studio might be listening, and they want to know where this latest pilot outline is. And, in fact, all of my creative energies have been instead poured into making a series of increasingly baroque hour-long playlists featuring two decades of boom bap. It's just that, you know, people know, I'll just say this. And I'll link some of them, maybe, maybe. But people know that one recurring thing about listening to us on this podcast, and this is a great setup in a way for our conversation with Rob,

which is three dudes in their 40s talking about music that existed when they were in their 20s, is I really, really like watching artists age because it's both fascinating, but it's also moving and inspiring. The people who meant something to you at one stage in your life can continue to mean things to you later in your life. And as the rap caviar style shouts to Spotify, aesthetic has taken over, whatever you want to call it, like trap or coding rap or whatever, I kind of lost touch with some of our great heroes,

whether they were production heroes like DJ Premier or Pete Rock, alchemist, people like that, DJ Mugs even, as well as rappers that Chris and I think very, very highly of in love, whether it's like Norrie or. or the locks, people like that from our youth, that hopefully their songs will appear in Rob's playlist, a podcast in the future. Anyway, this is not news.

People know this, but I didn't realize that all these dudes, they just kept working. And that there's an aesthetic now, both for that generation and the younger generation that's deeply inspired by them, they're prolific in a way that makes guided by voices seem abstemious. So whether I'm talking about, like,

oh, the locks were on this Static Selecta album from five years ago, or dudes like 38 Spech and Flea Lord who have made more albums in 2020 than like the Buckingham Nick's version of Fleetwood Mac ever made?

Yeah. It is incredible. And, you know, a lot of our conversation you're about to hear with Rob is talking about how you used to be, you know, in for many pennies, you'd be in for a pound. Like, you had to spend 20 bucks in a CD and you just had to know it.

this is one moment when the freedom of sampling stuff on streaming has really been helpful. Yeah, for sure. So making these playlists where I could put like something that I just heard featuring our, I feel like there are friends, Chris, Cameron and Jim Jones, but with like a guy named Smoke Dizzy, with a royal flush track from when we were in college, and it sounds immaculate. Yeah.

It's been very inspiring for me and my journey. I didn't know this was a safe space for that, but this is where I'm at. This is what I do. Could there be a safer space? I mean, but but what's very sweet, and I feel like long-time fans of, if not this podcast, but this, this relationship that is at the heart of it, I offer these. I share these over text to Chris, and the other day it was so sweet. Like Chris, it's not just meeting me halfway, but I did get a text back.

He had a busy day. He was recording like 19 podcasts. It was a Tuesday. But when I checked in with him, he was like, investigating. flea lord and I was so touched because I you know I walked that path you did it man you brought me to him Andy it's great talking to you today we're going to get into our conversation with Rob Harvilla talking about his new podcast 60 songs that explain the 90s you can subscribe to that on Spotify you can listen to me and Andy on Spotify when do I get my bringer podcast 60 Benny the butcher songs

that explain the 2010s 60 Benny songs to explain Andy Where do I get that? You're on it right now. This is it. We'll be back Monday, probably have some Fargo talk. And then, yeah, a bunch of shows coming up in the future. We've got undoing and Crown and Mandalorians coming soon. We're really excited.

Thank you for listening. Let's get into our chat with Rob just after this break. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last-minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night. you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back. Getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment

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So you're saying with Hilton honors, I can use points for a free night's day anywhere? Anywhere. What about fancy places like the canopy and Paris? Yeah, Hilton honors baby. Or relaxing sanctuaries, like the Conrad in Tulum? Hilton honors baby. What about the five-star Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives? Are you going to do this for all 9,000 properties?

When you want points that can take you anywhere, any time, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Book your spring break now. All right, Greenwald and I are so happy to be joined by our brother in the cloth of 90s music. It's Rob Harvilla. Rob has an amazing new pod on the Ringer podcast network called 60 Songs to Explain the 90s. When I mentioned to Andy that I'd love to have Rob on to talk about this podcast, he breathes a sigh of relief. Because if there's one thing that Andy does not need to do any prep about, it is the music of the 90s.

So, Rob, thank you so much for joining the watch. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here, guys. Can I ask just as a kind of get a little biographical information going up top? what were your 90s like? Like, where were you? What was your sort of trajectory there? Right, yeah.

Surviving the 90s is one of my greatest accomplishments, I think. That's both high school and college for me, both of which were in Ohio. I graduated in 2000, you know, been a rock critic for 20 years since then. But yeah, the 90s is when I grew up, you know, and it's sort of the dividing line between when I cared too much about music and when I started caring too much about music, like, professionally. Right. Yeah.

So it's, yeah, it mirrors, essentially mirrors me and Andy's same trajectory. High school and college in the 90s. Chris, this is basically like Spider-Man 3 mean, where one of us is Toby McGuire, one of us is Tom Holland. I'll take that one. And one of us is the other guy, Andrew. Is Garfield? Is Garfield?

And we're all just pointing at each other. Like I love that Chris invites Rob onto this podcast. And it's like, so tell it. You went to high school and college in the 90s. Which one of us is Venom? Is that the right Spider-Man? movie, it might not be. Never mind. There's too many Spider-Man's. I think crucially, Rob, like, the reason I even asked that is because this podcast is not necessarily an homage to that grifter's

10-inch you found in the back of the Indy Rock record store in 97 or something or a review you read in Punk Planet in 98 that changed your life. This is actually a much more thoughtful and complete and multifaceted survey of that decade. So can you tell people who don't know yet a little bit about the podcast. Yeah, it's just an episode per song, 60 songs, you know, with a guest per episode. You know, sometimes it's ringer people, sometimes it's outsiders, other writers, critics, stuff like that. And just taking it one song at a time. And I feel like the 90s is far enough away to firmly be the past, but it's still close enough that it feels alive, you know, and it's mutating. It's changing. Certainly is on this podcast. Right. And like the rules for what was important and what was

influential are still changing. You know, to the degree that young people, we even talk to me at all, like I'm very interested in talking to young people, like teenagers, 20-somethings now, about what they know of 90s music and, like, what they like and what they think is important versus what was actually important

at the time. Like, that shift in people's personal opinions and also sort of the critical opinion, like the canon. You know, like, I say golden age hip-hop to you, and like, you can reel off for me, like, the 20 names that are etched into, like, the stone tablets of what was important about rap music back then.

But I'm curious which one of those have fallen off, which have raised in esteem and which ones were sort of starting to forget. I guess I find this fascinating. And speaking for, I no longer need to just speak for myself because we were all in this together. But my experience of the 90s was a series of,

and it feels like an almost impossible number of these, considering it was just 10 short years, but of boom and bust sites. where we would discover something at the bottom, ride it to the top, because things could traverse from the underground to very much the overground and then often either explode in spectacular ways or disastrous heartbreaking ways, whether, you know, and of course, you know, if we're talking about nirvana breaking in the early 90s and Kirk Cobain dying or Biggie emerging and being killed, that's my experience of it and probably a shared experience. When you talk to younger people's

perception of the decade, is it just those that survived? What cast the largest shadow and does that kind of, from the underground to the overground, which dominated conversation of culture in the 90s in general? Does any of that still exist? Right. Selling out was a big deal in the 90s. It just nobody gives a shit now. Yeah. Yeah, some of the biggest artists of the 90s are almost abstractions. Like Kirk Cobain in 2020 is less like a musician that like a myth, you know, a marty Like, you can buy his diary now. Like, it's hard to think of him as just a person who wrote and sang songs now. It's just, it's hard to separate the myths from the people out of the time.

And that's what I'm trying to do. Do you feel like when you talk with people who maybe didn't have similar experiences to us, whether it's like, you know, actually living through these formative years in the 90s or even necessarily having the kind of musical experiences that say you, me or Andy did? Yeah. Do you feel like that what do you think is one of the sort of biggest myths of the, the 90s that people often will point out to you or what do you think is one of the things that you know maybe you me and and Andy are like we hold these truths to be self-evident that like

like pavement was good or you know like like any these kinds of like things that you would sort of expect people to agree with you on that have started to kind of be chipped away at yeah like I was thinking about the early 90s in the idea on MTV at least that like hair metal was killed by grunge you know like there was just like a meteor strong struck the earth, you know, and poison Motley Crew guns and roses, like they all just collapsed. They all died instantly, and it was just Nirvana and everything that

Nirvana wrought from then on. But like, these things all coexisted. You know, they were fighting each other, you know, fighting each other for relevance and sometimes just fighting each other period. But like these things were all coexisting at the same time. They weren't as strictly delineated as we remember them now. Like it was all, it was all

glommed together. You know, and Motley Crew, you know, guns and roses to some extent, like these bands lived dawn, you know, in our memories, you know, and then in all the reunion tours and stuff like that. It's just, it wasn't as strict a delineation as you remember. Also, I wish we could put up press photos of when all these bands put out their post-1991 albums and suddenly they didn't have makeup on anymore. Alice and Chains, you have the feeling that Alice and Chains, like, we're like, oh, we can do this, you know, we can look like lumberjacks. Well, they're the ones who transform,

but I mean, I remember like, like, Def Leopard putting out a record and suddenly they weren't smiling anymore, even though they clearly had the best lives ever. And they're like, we're just going to try this now. Honestly, the drummer did not have the best. The drummer didn't. With one exception. Yeah. Okay.

So I guess what I'm saying is Joe, what's his name? The singer? He seemed to be having a right laugh about everything. There were like three Joe's in that band, actually. Too many. I'm sorry. But it's true. It's true.

Remember when Metallica cut their hair? You know, it was a huge. It was a huge deal of the Lode album, the controversy. I mean, I'm a little. little jealous of millennials because they had when Felicity cut her hair, which I feel like is a lot more interesting. Right. We have one Kirk Hammett cuts her. That's right. It's a tough break for us. Yeah. I'm really interested in this project, Rob, because I think in the last couple of years, as I look, I mean, especially when you look at pop culture and you see some of the things maybe set this time period.

And it's funny, Andy and I just did with Bill, we just did kicking and screaming as a rewatchables, which, uh, real, um, I hadn't watched it in a few years. And it was, really interesting to go back not only to that era, but to go back to the way those people looked in that movie and the way they sort of behaved, even if they were putting on kind of a very

arch presentation of what it was like to be out of college at that time. I was still like, holy shit, people acted like this. This is so weird to kind of see this behavior. But I can't help but feel like there's a little bit of a 60sization of the 90s going on where I think we're like a lot of people.

are trying to wrap their arms around what happened and what it meant and what were the significant cultural moments and cultural touchstones and the artists that came out of that decade. And it really doesn't jive with my experience. I wonder whether this is how our parents felt about the 60s. You know, whether for most of their lives, they were being told what the 60s meant and what were the big moments of the 60s, but they're like, I guess, but I was also like working at a dentist's office during Woodstock. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, yeah, I would go year by year, right? So I look at 1995. Okay, what were the biggest albums of 1995? According to 2020, you know, both the critical canon and just on the internet. And you say like tricky and mob deep and

Goody Mob and PJ Harvey or whatever. And I'm scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, like number 200 on the list is Ever clears, Sparkle and Fade, which is the one with Santa Monica on it. And I was like, oh my God, I listened to Sparkle and Fade a thousand times in 1995. And so suddenly I'm fantasizing. And so suddenly I'm fantasizing about myself, 17 years old, 1995 in my bedroom. I had a life-size Michael Jordan poster despite living in Cleveland and being a Cavs fan. Like, that was really perverse in a way that it didn't occur to me until like last night, how perverse that was. But like I'm, imagine I'm listening to Sparkle and Fade for the thousandth time and a giant hand crashes through my window. And instead of grabbing me, it just hands me a Fugazi CD, you know, or liquid swords or whatever.

He could do anything back then. But it's just, I listen, you know, like listen to red medicine instead. And I do, and I instantly become a cooler person and an entirely different person. And the whole trajectory of my life changes, you know, but now is this better version of me hosting this podcast now? And like, that's where the fantasy runs aground. But like, yeah, even the difference between what I thought I was into in 1995 versus what I'm into about 1995 now is different.

Like the urge to sort of kill. curate your adolescence in retrospect, like make yourself better and cooler and predict the future better. Like that part also interests me. Here's something that I'm curious about in terms of how people look at the 90s now versus how people even consume music now,

which was the factionalism. And, you know, I remember very clearly that like in 1992, you couldn't like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. You could like one or the other. Now, obviously, the millions of people who bought their records, probably bought both the records. But in terms of self-identifying, like, that's how niche it got, right? There was one thing or the other thing. And Chris and I were just

joking over IM, like about how we were basically, just like the heresy of the fact that we both- Talk about slipping into 90s. You just called it I-M. Wow. Oh, my God, yeah. Yeah, we were, we were AOL instant messaging. We have very, very old, old laptops. I have a power book. Over-dial up. Yeah. It takes a while, but it's worth it. You know, the reward is better if you have to work harder for it. But that we both bonded, that we liked the Goo Goo Dolls song, slide. That, like, we thought this was a good song, even though everyone else who had copies of red medicine did not. You know what I mean? And, like, this was some sort of a brave take in the 90s, or at least it was for our IM chats that we must have been having. My sense of music now

is that, well, people are still passionate about it. It isn't necessarily warfare the way it felt like it was. And is there a good reason for that? Or is it the fact that people now, there actually is warfare in the 90s we could get worked up about whether you should sell your song to a soda commercial or not? Well, I think one big answer is an album you loved in 1993, you bought for $18. You know, so you have bought in, like, quite literally into this now. Like, this has become part of your identity. And you're going to listen to that album 25 times to, like, extract the value of it. You know, it's like, I sunk the cost into this. Like, I knew. need to get it, even if I don't like it after I listen to it twice.

You know, so that's the first part of it. But yeah, I remember that. Two of my favorite bands in high school were pavement and smashing pumpkins, you know, who are eternally like to this day at war with each other, or at least Billy Corgan is still complaining, you know, about being called out by pavement. Like I saw those factions, but I, a lot of times I feel like I skirt it over them. Like I read about Pearl Jam and Nirvana, you know, and how Eddie Vedder and Kirk Cobain were always at odds or like Kurt was just always talking trash about him. But my experience of it at the time and my memory is not that you had to pick one or the other necessarily. So I'm curious whether that was actually true. But I do think a big part of it is, you know, however you're listening to music in 2020, you have access to everything. You know, however you're getting it, and you can jump around and you can become a master of multiple genres and multiple artists. But at the time, you really were limited to what you could afford and you were sort of captive to what.

what MTV was showing you, what the radio was playing. Your options were limited and what you got into you really, really got into as a result. And that created sort of this factionalism, like where you feel more compelled to defend them. It's really hard to explain the sensation to anybody who didn't live through it. I don't know why I'm talking about it. It was like serving a numb. But it was like the feeling of standing in a record store and holding two or three CDs in front of you and having 20 bucks. It's a terrible dilemma.

And staring a hole through the core of the earth through these CDs because you were like, if I look at these long enough, I will somehow have a moment of clarity over which one I'm supposed to buy. And you're going through all these different things about like, well, if I buy this, I guess I could sell it back and I'd probably get four bucks for it. And I could put it on store credit and maybe buy the other one later. But I really think I should have this one, but this one looks cool. or I heard this one song on a college radio station, I think, but they didn't say who it was, and I think it was this band. All these, like, gymnastics you were going through.

Right. And now that you're just like, you don't have that. And I think I do wonder whether or not, not having to make those choices makes people less factional because there's less sweat equity put into it. I don't know. I mean, another interesting binary was like, frankly, hysterical in retrospect,

Blur Oasis binary, which wasn't even our fight. you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't, it wasn't even, like, we couldn't even, like, really, like, adjudicate that one. I saw recently that, um, Wonderwall was, had hit some sort of, what was the actual number? Like a billion streams. It's literally a billion streams on Spotify.

On Spotify. And that to me just means that that music and the music of that era and that kind of music has really emerged as the new classic rock in a lot of ways. Absolutely. Well, I'm glad you brought up Oasis because not only because this seems like the right time to celebrate an important day in my life, the 20th anniversary of October 2nd, 1995,

which was the day I walked down to In Your Ear Records on Wicked and Street in Providence and But What's the Story Morning Glory? Super Chunks, here's where the strings come in and the Red Hot and Bothered compilation. Hell yeah. Wow. Which featured like, because even then you had a social conscience, man.

Yeah, it was giving back. That's what you're worth it. Yeah. But that felt like a very, very, like, important day for the next five years for me personally. So thank you all for sharing it with me in this time. But specifically, I did want to talk about OASIS because people perpetually are always being like, oh, well, you know, big tech or big, the big record labels, like somebody's got their thumb on the scale as to what gets popular and what doesn't.

But one of the main differences, I think, between the 90s and now, people definitely did have their thumbs on the scale because OASIS had this head full of. from their first record coming from the UK. A great record that got, I mean, I remember seeing Live Forever on MTV and getting interested in them. But when the second record came, that hype train rolled across the ocean

and then Wonderwall got put on radio playlists and it got put on MTV and there was force behind it. And it became, and they became, improbably a huge band in America for a short period of time. And that idea that something could just happen like that feels particularly far away, right, Rob?

I mean, if you look at the charts, there are a lot of great songs and great bands that have absolutely nothing to do with one another, commingling on the top of the top of the top ten. Right. It definitely didn't feel organic that push, but that doesn't mean it wasn't real. Yeah. You had the feeling at all times in the 90s, this is being forced on me. This is what people want me to like. And there was a natural inclination to rebel. And in some cases, you did. But by and large, you know, you listen to what you were given to listen to, you know, and you fought back and you bought with $20, you know, what you really cared about and you constructed your

identity that way. But you were sort of at the mercy of what was given that big a push, you know? And it's, I maybe at the time people resisted Oasis and sort of saw that it was, there was this machine driving it. But yeah, I don't think that's, even those people looking back on it now 30, 25 years later, I think they can look back on it with a much simpler nostalgia. Like, yep, that was a big song. As much as I tried to resist it, as much as I was against it. it now, it's still synonymous with that time for me because I heard it 10,000 times whether I wanted to or not. So, Rob, how did you go about picking the songs that you were going to do for the podcast? You know, it's a fluid thing. As I said, every episode has a guest, and I want the guests

to drive me to some extent. You know, there's, if you sit down and you look at, you know, every year in the decade and you look at the major artists, like a rough sketch emerges pretty quickly, you know, we're not going to be able to get away from Nirvana, you know, and Tupac and Biggie and Lauren Hill. You know, there are usual suspects that we want to tackle in somewhat of an unusual way, but I do want the people who I'm reaching out to to talk to about these songs to drive me.

Like, I can say, you know, the first episode is out now and it's Alonis Morris said, you want to know. And I wanted to, there were a number of reasons I wanted to start with that song, but one of them was,

it's a Wonderwall type thing. Jack and Little Pills sold 30 million copies, which is just incomprehensible. Like that's just that's such a 90s number. Yeah. It's just huge beyond all understanding here in 2020. And I wanted to somehow convey like what that felt like in real time to have a hit that big, you know, served to an audience that captive. But I, the episode coming out next week is on Hey Jealousy is on the Gin Blossoms.

Hey Jealousy, which might have been on. So good. I was all right. Okay. Rob, can I just tell you. Please. Hit me. I may have said, I may have said,

this already in the podcast, but your humble narrator here went to the Trocadero in Philadelphia to see are you ready for this? Are you everybody sitting down? To see Toad the Wet Sprocket on the come up. On their fear tour, I believe, and they were still playing the truck

and they had this unknown band opening and I left this. I was in high school Rob, I left it and I was like, that song about a girl named Chelsea, that's a hit song, that's a hit song. So I feel ownership over that song. Were you saying that to your friends as you were leaving the truck? We're like, guys, it's a big hit.

You get Brian Sullivan on the line right now. And while we waited for his mother to pick us up in her Jeep, suburban or whatever the hell it was, yeah. Yeah. And then they handed us, I think they handed us, cingles of it. So I adjusted. I was saying Chelsea on the way out of the truck. And when I was out on Arch Street, apparently it's jealousy. You're like, hey, guys, just FYI, it's actually jealousy.

No, I circle back. in. I was like, tell your local radio reps. All right, please go on. It's not even the same number of syllables. You thought it was Hey, Chelsea? You know, PAs and like the sound system in those days were different. You know, like there was a lot of, um, you were, you were saying something, Rob. Go on. So that, I was thinking about Hey, Jealousy, but it wasn't a definite by any stretch of the imagination. But I wanted to talk to this guy, Hanif Abdua Keeb. He's a poet and a critic. And an SAS, he's a podcaster now, too. And I, I just asked him, like,

what would you really want to talk about? And that's the song he really wanted to talk about. And so for the second, I wouldn't have imagined going into this that that would be my second episode, but I'm so glad that it was, both because of the conversation that Heneef and I have about the song in the episode,

but like what I'm able, you know, reading up on it, what I'm able to talk about. Like the guy who wrote that song, Doug Hopkins was out of the bands. Yeah. By the time that song got famous,

and he had died within a year of that song being famous. Like it's a hit song. You know, it's a 90s time capsule. it's a karaoke classic, whatever. But it's also a tragedy, you know? And I, again, I don't want to run from the biggest names, you know, or even the biggest hits necessarily, but like the surprises and the deep cuts and like the personal preferences,

like mine and other people's. Like, I like that spread of guests that I'm getting already. And I really want them to guide me. And I really want them to convince me of what's important. Man, it's like when you, just those first two songs. And Andy, I don't mean to interrupt you because it's really just, I'm just having like a flashback right now. those first two songs in particular,

which I have very differing relationships to. And this kind of goes back to what I was saying about the 60sization of it is that, you know, I think that was, Hey, jealousy I really liked. I remember thinking I was cooler than you ought to know.

Like I think I remember thinking like, I was very anti-Lathe. I was above that. Very anti-Aid. But what I remember the most, and Andy and I tried to get at this a lot with some of this stuff, but it's like, you cannot possibly explain

the prevalence of these things. And the fact that you would go from a practice, and there would, like, a sports practice, and there would be a radio on, and you'd hear the song. And then you'd get in your mom's car, and the song would be on the radio. And then you'd go home and turn on the TV,

and the song would be on MTV. And then you would turn the radio on later, and it would be back on again. And just, and everybody you knew, most of them had Jagged Little Pill and the Jim Blossoms record. And it was just like being surrounded by these moments, and the Oasis thing is the same.

same thing, where it was just that feeling of being surrounded by a band and it being inescapable for a really extended period of time, not just like 12 hours of this trending. No, and then it's next Friday. It was like fucking months, man. Like, you really felt that. Yeah, just the freedom of no choice was a big deal in the 90s. And you fought against it, but it is comforting now. I mean, I won't deny sitting here right now in 2020. The fact that the vast majority of the 90s is pre-internet, at least for me personally. Like, that's very comforting to me, honestly. Like, I don't mind returning to a time when, you know, culture was dictated to me a little more, you know, but I could turn it off at least. I guess, well, so to quote a great 90s song,

Rob, um, don't always seem to go. You don't know what you've got till it's gone. And of course, I'm quoting the Janet Jackson song, Got Till it's Gone from her album, The Velvet Rope, which samples an earlier song by Joni Mitchell. Fantastic. But, you know, one of my memories of the 90s was being like, oh, these bands that I am falling in love with now, particularly in the back half of the 90s when Chris and I knew each other. And we were very, very into indie rock bands that I think you were as well, Rob. But that they felt like, it felt like we were kind of breaking the wheel.

Like these bands were actively doing something different than the bands our parents liked or the bands that had become popular in the 80s. And now from a vantage point of 20 years, they were just playing guitars. They were basically doing the exact same thing. And not only were they doing the exact same thing, they were part of this cycle of underground to overground that now just seems completely broken. Like that was the last of it, right? In terms of bands with guitars breaking through to the mainstream.

Because you are actively music critic as well, how do you feel about that being part? I mean, when you look at the 90s, does that feel like a completely different era, the way the 60s was in the 90s? Like, what, I guess in some ways I'm dancing around the question I always want to ask people,

which is what is a rock band even anymore? So feel free to take those in. You could do a Georgia runoff style ranked choice for my question. Wow. Okay. All right. A lot of options here,

which is good. Yeah. Yeah, just don't vote for Lieberman. My favorite way to freak myself out is to think about Pearl Jam. We are as far away from early Pearl Jam as Pearl Jam was from the who.

you know, when Pearl Jam was new. It's like Chris said, like it's classic rock. And you talk about, you know, I should mention briefly that like the episodes from there like pivot toward rap and R&B and country. Like another thing I'm trying to do is get at some extent to the genre span, you know, which is impossible in 600 songs, let alone 60, but like we're going to do what we can. But yeah, you think about like the 10 biggest guitar bands of the early 90s, you know, like Pearl Jam, Weezer, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Pavement, if you want.

And just how different they seemed then. And they're all sort of huddling together for warmth now. And they've all taken different trajectories. And like, smashing pumpkins are still around, but like really struggling with like different lineups and reunions. And like just doing this brand management thing that feels very strained. You know,

radio heads sort of emerges the prestige option, you know, and like still looking to the future, even 25 years later for a lot of people. You know, Weezer sort of bizarrely emerged as like the strangest, you know, and twistiest sort of era bands,

you know, you wouldn't have think, you wouldn't think that they'd be such a rich text in 2020, like just off the sweater song or whatever. Like, yeah, just buying stock in these bands, both in terms of their longevity

and in terms of like how interesting they would be to think about or write about or talk about 25 years later, it's all very different. But yeah, it's like Chris said, things go in cycles. Like Rock kept being reborn and dying constantly,

you know, basically from the moment rock came up, but like throughout the 90s. And then like in the years, early 2000s, you know, you've got the strokes and the white stripes and the return of rock, you know, just taking an individual band like U-2, like all the twists in terms of U-2 over a decade, you know, like from a Octung Baby to Zhu Ropa and then to pop, and then like returning to rock with all that you can't leave behind in the early 2000s. Like it's the many history

of rock and like guitars going in and out of favor. Like it was different for every band and different for every era, but like in the 90s, it was all so compressed together. Yeah. it's like, it's almost like watching like a jet stream go across the sky. You know, it's like you're initially, it's like that, this thick cloud and you're just like, we're in it. I can see it. I can see where it's going. And then it just kind of, you know, and it's hard to say whether or not this is just being in my early 40s and not going, obviously not being allowed to go out, but not going out to see bands or, and finding out about bands from band camp and Spotify algorithms and stuff as much as anything else.

Yeah. That it just feels like the chain of those bands, the, the, the things that link them to the past, it's just kind of evaporated at a time. And the Weezer thing is so funny. Because when I remember when Reiser came out, I've really liked that first record. And I really liked Pinkerton. You would have to have paid me a thousand dollars to tell me that they would have been the most influential band from that generation. And I think they arguably are, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Rob, thank you so much for joining us, man. So obviously... Should I tell Rob about the time you came over to my parents' house and played me Pinkerton, Chris? Or should we save that for Different pod.

No time like the present. Rob, thanks so much for joining us. We'll save that for part two. And people can subscribe to 60 songs that explain the 90s on Spotify. It's a really cool execution of this podcast. You get to hear the music that Rob

and his guests are talking about in the pot itself. And it's really an incredible trip down memory lane, but it's also like a really cool reexamination of the music from that decade. So Rob B, pat yourself on the back. Thanks so much, man. And join us again on the watch sometime soon.

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