The Watch - Ep. 20: 'The Watch'
Episode Date: February 16, 2016Andy and Chris talk about the first episode of 'Vinyl,' Louis C.K.'s 'Horace and Pete,' the return of 'Better Call Saul,' and the sort-of release of Kanye's 'The Life of Pablo.' Learn more abou...t your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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I need sports to have to clear the run.
Stand up and walk.
Now, hello, and welcome to The Watch on the Channel 33 podcast feed.
My name is Chris Ryan, and on the other line.
He's got golden ears, a silver tongue, and brass balls.
It's Andy Greenwald!
They called at the Olympic podium of cliche days.
That's the triple frontier of record industry, man.
What's up, Andy?
Chris, listen, I got to start this way.
You know, we had a lot of fun out in the last week.
We recorded two shows.
most of them were about Kanye West,
and this one is going to be a little bit about Kanye West, too.
We're going to put it at the end,
because thanks to everyone who had been indulging us.
We have a lot of TV talk.
But I just want to say to you,
it was freezing here over the weekend,
and we got a little bit of snow,
but not as much snow as there was to be found
on Martin Scorsese's vinyl.
You know, I was a little surprised to find cocaine
in a Martin Scorsese show, but there it was.
It was weird.
It was weird.
You know, and again, I thought the addition of
Italian-American gangster
and sort of overriding
dynamic about how men have trouble
negotiating home life with business interests.
This was kind of left field turn
for my man, Marty. It was surprised.
Real quick, we are going to talk, obviously, about Vinyl,
which is HBO's new drama on Sunday nights.
We're going to talk a little bit about
the return of Better Call Saul to AMC.
And we're going to talk a little bit about
Louis C.K.'s direct-to-the-people show
Horace and Pete, and we'll wrap it up a little bit of
Life of Pablo recapping.
finally reading an obituary for Doug from Title
who sadly
leapt off a cliff in Rhode Island somewhere
but Andy let's start with vinyl
two hours
of pure adrenaline
that's a lot of TV man
I got to say like
it seems like we're coming up in a negative foot
and I don't think that's a way
don't mind
the snappy pilot
I don't mind like you know a crisp 42
minutes, but get in, get out.
This was long, and it was
asked, I felt like it was asking a lot
of us in a lot of ways. It was not a
I actually watched it chopped up
into two segments, which may have affected my
viewers, but.
To two rails, maybe?
You chopped it up into two rails.
Two medium-sized lines for myself to get through.
Yeah, so
I feel like the best way to come into this is to say,
it seems like either of us were particularly surprised
by the show, because in many ways, we knew what the show
was from the minute it was announced, and there wasn't that much in this that was,
it came as a surprise, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
But were you, I mean, were you sitting on your couch like Nicholas Cage and bringing
you out the dead?
Still, I'm sure, your favorite Martin's Cassidy picture.
Was that like, were you just, we chasing the dragon on the show?
Where were you?
Okay, so the subject matter of the show is made for me.
I'm fascinated by 70s, New York, and the cultural,
explosion that came out of that city at that time. I'm interested, I'm deeply interested in the
music industry and the history of the music industry and the mechanations of the music industry.
And that's, I love Martin Scorsese movies. So all the stuff is right there for us to love it.
I liked it. I did not love it. And I know that Pete there, it has gotten some heat because I think
that vinyl is a show that is put into a war like six years ago if vinyl comes out. I think
people are much more excited about it
than they are now
just the feeling of
when he's doing the voiceover
in the beginning of the show
and he's sort of really laying out
like I am an unreliable narrator
and a difficult genius
I think that that kind of
has just become so wrote
for a lot of people
and people are so familiar
with that voice of a narrator
as a protagonist
that it has an uphill
battle to fight.
Despite the fact that they have such great photography
and great sets and great sense of time and place,
I feel like the fact that it's a show about another difficult man
makes it a little bit, you know, samey to a lot of what we've had on television
for the last couple years.
He definitely feels in its reach and its point of view
very, very familiar for TV, but it's kind of maybe worth
to taking a moment here to say that in a way,
Scorsese invented television anti-hero, right?
I mean, because all the things that we're talking about is being very rote for television are kind of, and we joke about this on the intro, but this is what Scorsese has always done.
And you can draw a pretty clear line from the protese movies that are there.
Not just the shows that he directly influenced, right?
Yeah, I mean, and this is a man at war with himself out of step at the time.
And Richie is very much like, what if Henry Hill was starring in After Hours?
But one of the things was, I wish that it had the drugs are a huge part of this.
into a two-day bender.
Yeah.
Ought to feel creepier than it did, you know,
because it honestly, maybe this was the TV of it,
or maybe this was our expectations
of the rhythm of these types of shows.
...orienting when he walked in.
Ultimately, he was just, you know,
repeating the my comedian,
you mentioned a pretty interesting actor.
Okay, he was the best thing in pilot, too.
That is slanderous.
What a slanderous take
to say that Andrew Dice Clay was better than
Kate Blanchett and Blue Jasmine?
Do you actually believe that?
Listen, our listeners, I do, and our listeners know, this is what we're known for.
The parents, Winter, a lot of talent, and a lot of talent.
It's pushing past the frame.
Yeah, well, one thing I wanted to talk about a little bit here is just the, and we've brought
this up on the show a couple of times over the last 18 months, basically from True Detective
Season 1 through the Nick and the idea of directors, you know, more visually accomplished
directors or more visually distinctive directors getting involved in television.
and to what extent television remains a writer's medium.
And this, I think that one of the tensions you could feel in vinyl was a, you know,
the pull of a Martin Scorsese film and the push of this needs to set up all of our characters and all of our conflicts.
And so Scorsese, you could tell, had wanted to try and capture what music,
or what role music can play in a person's life.
So that's why probably the best thing.
single moment in the entire pilot, and it's a pretty high moment, is when Bobby Cunavale and Ray
Romano are talking about Blackboard Jungle, and they talk about the snare clap, right?
And that's that feeling where you can, Scorsese is so good at identifying how popular
culture can give somebody a sense of their own personality or can shape someone's personality.
But then at the same time
And there are a few
Or in life when characters speak the same code
You know when they suddenly realize that they
I mean these are best friends in the show
When we watch them and we're like
Oh they speak the same language
They're they're tuned into the same cultural frequency
It's kind of exciting in the same way
It is when you meet someone who likes the same stuff that you do
Yeah exactly and that those guys are
Already sort of out of touch with what's going on
I mean the artists that they have now
I mean that's sort of the cool thing
It's an interesting choice because this isn't
a label that's at the cutting edge of music today. This is a label that's largely falling away,
right? Like they're making, they haven't found a new artist. They're passing on Abba. You know,
I mean, Richie comes in and he hears Abba and he's like, they're going to be selling stadiums in two years,
but everybody there is eating deli sandwiches and just being like, look at these Swedish people,
like whatever. And it's interesting to find them, you know, what was a really transitional period
for music anyway. And it's the end of Ziggy Starta. Slade is really big. There's a lot of pomp,
circumstance to music Zeppelin is obviously
the sort of biggest band in the world
and then there's this sound coming from the streets
that Richie by the end of by the end of the pilot
becomes so connected with
that he is literally
underneath the streets when it's over
you know and yeah so it's it's
that there are parts of it that made me really really excited
and I do wonder whether or not
with something like this if one of its calling cards
which as Martin Scorsese presents,
is actually it's going to get better
once Martin Scorsese is out of the way.
The number one, if I could make a critique of the show,
which I think I'm going to take that right.
And you know what?
It's not even fair to call the critique.
It's really more, I'm sort of positive.
This is a show about one of the most exciting, strange thing to me
is itself makes it an old person's show.
And what I mean is so much of TV is laying down the stakes and the fence.
And like, okay, you could do anything,
but here's what we're going to do.
it's not Matt Weiner.
I want to make a show about these people in this live at one.
And last year when we were talking about Hald and Catch Fire and IMP, I was saying the mistake
between the person, the mistake they made in the first thing, the right world, the way to go.
Yeah, right.
As opposed to Jamie, who's Juno Temple's character, finding basically the next version of the
Stooges at the Coventry Club or the Mercer Arts Center, wherever she first sees them,
that's exactly what, you're exactly right.
Like, why go with a person who,
who has already had their moment in the sun
trying to regain their crown when you could have a younger person
who is trying to convince these older people
that there's a new sound out there.
And it gives you potentially access
that generally fuels television drama
and certainly fuels Corsese's best work.
Right.
So that's a reason to it.
Romano.
He's good.
Everybody does love Raymond now.
Yeah.
This thing we have Seinfeld money coming off of the sitcom
and then was like,
I think I just want to see if I could be an actor now.
Right.
And he's done parenthood.
Good on parenthood.
Good on parenthood.
really good on the show and has a sort of unique aspect.
I really like watching him.
But the thing that the show allows,
the thing that they bought themselves motto to be like,
to come into the show with a firm point of view
as to basically be like, you know,
this kind of music, rhythm and views,
what I mean?
It allows them to come into a binary of music
as opposed to a pure excitement of the people like Juno Temple's character
who probably haven't quite gotten about who's making the show
and something about who, especially considering
there are so many more interesting
I mean you can see season four of the show
coming with the invention of hip-hop
you know what I mean like just the fact that he went
he's for hip-hop in the first episode
that was the one thing I was super out of
there's a scene in this show
the first episode where
it's a perfect example of like I think you could
call it like Scorsese
and the immoral cool
you know where basically something
deeply immoral is happening and because of
the world
Way Scorsese films it and presents it, it feels really cool.
And in this one, it's Richie's speech about recoupable costs for artists.
When the guys from Polygram are like, you don't make any money.
And he's like, technically, you are right.
But really, we always make money because we basically bill everything against the artist's earnings.
So even if they sell a million records, they don't actually make a million dollars.
That million dollars is owed back to the company for everything that we've paid for.
And usually what happens is these scenes involve a lot of whip pans and something from Side D of Exile on Main Street playing.
And this happens in Wolf of Wall Street.
And this happens of Goodfellas where they're just, nobody can find the cocaine lining of like a really terrible act like Scorsese.
And it was interesting though because like as a growing up like those are some of my favorite moments in all of movies.
You know what I mean?
like watching Henry Hill explain how they would rob people or like run bookies or even how they robbed an idle wild airport or whatever it was before it was LaGuardia or JFK.
Those are like these iconic scenes in my mind.
And then what was weird watching it last night because I was just like these guys are just talking about absolutely screwing other people out of like their dreams.
Maybe it's because like I just we know so many we've seen.
so many artists come up and just...
You never worked at it...
You never worked at a living...
Right, exactly.
I mean, we know the, like, the stories of guys who are, like, on their...
Like, they owe a record label five more albums, and, like, the label refuses to put
anything they do out or whatever.
I mean, I do think that, obviously, we're meant to consider Richie not only a unreliable
narrator, but also not a particularly good person.
It's not like I'm confused about that.
I wonder how much of the show is going to be about his salvation and how much of it will be about his downfall or if it's just going to exist in the middle.
I'm, I guess this is a long way of saying that obviously this show touched on so much stuff that I'm interested in that I'm going to continue to watch it.
And I do think there's a lot of really cool stuff like Ray Romano.
I am interested in Olivia Wilde's Andy Warhol background.
I'm interested in the invention of punk, but also going back and finding out what happened to Lester Grimes.
it's there's a lot of stuff going on
yeah it saw drinking buddies
which is a movie I really loved years ago
thanks to the Olivia Wilde is a much more interesting
actor than you would have pretty
make it bums to me obviously the more whole stuff is
you know that's that good thing
but make the co-lead the wife who's at home being like
don't you dare drink but I thought that was an above
like that was a pretty good scene though I thought the way that she talked
to him that was a good scene and similarly Cannavalli
he's such an interesting actor that dude like you know
people describe some actors as
they're like heady actors.
This dude is all muscle,
like all muscle in you. I don't even mean like his
physicality. I just mean everything.
He makes a full
line of dialogue. Yeah. And
sometimes like on Boardwalk Empire, I thought
his meter was turned up too high.
He was having fun and the show itself wasn't having
fun and so it was kind of disconnect.
He felt every part of this.
Again, I can't imagine
if they had cast that part differently. Like,
would I even been interested in any of it?
You know, like, would, yeah, but just as a final note, we possibly high bar.
But that Winer wasn't a lot about a world that he never experienced.
Nick Jagger or Martin's first baby, not only were they alive and it almost necessarily
if you can make great art something.
Yeah, it's funny.
It's, there's a moment in the show where Jamie Juno Temple's character, I think she says,
she's telling Richie about going to see the nasty bits and she was like they were killing it.
and I was like, did people say they were killing it then?
Like, I feel like people only started saying that like five years ago.
Maybe they did, but it was like a weird moment where I couldn't tell whether that was like a line that was thrown in from the writer's room to kind of keep it, keep it of like give people of like a window into it from a contemporary perspective.
But what you're saying about being.
I would put Gino Temple, the guy who likes her in the ANR department.
Yeah, Clark.
I thought the only forced line was when he was like, bro, did you see the picture of pizza rat?
I put on Snapchat this morning.
I thought that one was kind of a towel.
He's like, dude, did you see what title did with what of Pablo?
But your point is, I like your point about whether, you know, these guys are making a show about when they were a time that they lived through.
One thing that's really interesting about as they get closer and closer to the invention of punk rock is that that's where you really start to see a schism from interlocutors and people who really live it.
you know punk rock was very much an ethos and it was a lifestyle and people were living in these
flop houses on st marks and people were living basically hand to mouth and playing shows that were
you know attended by guy you know getting bottles thrown at them and i don't mic jagger it wasn't
dealing with that because because mc jagger and martin scorzi were not probably really shooting
with people in the gym when they were like doing heroin in on st mark's you know in in tenement building
in Alphabet cities.
Oh, you mean the next generation?
Yeah, or just, I mean, I think that we're in this weird transition in terms of
1973 from like glam and arena rock when it starts to get to a little bit more of a street
level kind of sound.
I'll be fascinated to see what they decide to do with it.
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One thing that, so we've been talking about this idea of
you know, the cinematic influence on this show
and obviously, like, having somebody like Scorsese
direct it, and it does feel like a Martin Scorsese movie
for better and for worse.
But the other show we wanted to talk about
this week, Hors and P is a decidedly,
decidedly an act of the television arts.
But this show is super old, too.
Yeah.
You know, and I thought, in terms of the sensibility,
and frankly, it's interested in engaging
with anything even remotely.
In that, it actually makes
Proletico combo review with final.
Yeah, so we're talking about Horace and Pete,
which Louis C.K.
sort of surprised everybody with about two weeks ago
by putting up on his website for five bucks.
You could just download an episode.
Each episode will come with a certain price tag.
I think one's $3, then another one's like four or five bucks again.
He's put out a couple.
I've seen the first one, Andy's seen the first one.
We haven't gotten to the future, the ones after that.
But, you know, it's a Cheers style multi-camp.
sitcom shot on basically one set.
And it's sort of a hybrid between like a piece of theater and an old school
television, it's almost like a television play, like the kind they used to
have at the invention of television, at the outset of television.
What did you think of this, what did you think of this show?
I do want to preface it by saying people are, people, I've heard chatter that the third
episode features an amazing performance on my opinion, but the thought is possible.
Yeah.
I found it, you know, let me go macro just to say that, like, one of the reasons why I really, really like and admire, and just even within the world of TV, is that he is chasing his own muse, and sometimes that chase is to the detriment of the audience, and he doesn't care.
And then he runs in a different direction and I'm with him.
There is no show that is, there aren't as many shows that can be as rewarding, but you sort of have to be willing to take the wheat, the chap with the week, you know.
If, you know, if he did an interview and he was like, well, I wanted to do this myself because no one was fun.
it, you kind of want to be like, so shit.
Like, there's a pretty strong reason for that.
Mark Zuckerberg, fund my multi-camps-it-com about racist-ass,
proclanates.
You got Zuckerberg on the phone and was like,
give you what you want, whatever you want.
That's what I'm here for.
He's like, it's really what I want most.
Like, Kanye, I am your dude.
I have the open checkbook.
I have a bitch in my hand.
What can I write it out for?
What am I funding?
He's like, I just have always wanted to see Alan Aldo,
say the C words.
Yeah.
And he's like, done.
Two words.
Racist cheers.
I mean, it's kind of amazing watching these, essentially, as he said, it's shot like a
sitcom.
Yeah.
But there's no lap track and there's no music.
Right.
I was like, what do you think about the Super Bowl that's coming up?
Now, exactly.
So, in my mind, it does suddenly become valid because it's like, well, what we're
calling it TV, we have all these different delivery streams.
If you get the art in front of people, this is what he wants to do with it.
Yeah, it's not quite dramatic enough to be moving in that way, and it's certainly not very funny.
So I guess it's supposed to be a slice of humanity, but it felt like a stageful of straw men.
I mean, every single person was sort of there to be like, here's what somebody who was voting for Trump might say.
And here's what a really nasty drunk woman at the end of the bar might say.
But it's like none of the characters actually felt very real to me, with the exception of Horace.
Pete? There's nothing inherently in sight.
Right.
You know, if you just sort of have all these people open themselves up and just reveal who they are.
And, you know, don't be upset about it.
I had a cousin once.
She was a nice fat girl.
And it's like, oh, it's shocking.
And they're being mean, but they're kind of being real.
And we're dealing with this, except we're not.
Everyone's just sort of putting something on the table and looking at it.
Right.
And it's not.
There's no extra layer to it.
And, you know, in fact, some of what I'm saying, criticizing, that sensibility has trickled
But what he often brings to Louis is a kind of inventiveness, you know,
in where he will play with filmmaking styles and cutting and editing funny.
Yeah, right.
No.
He certainly still does that.
He doesn't stand-up show.
It's just that this is not nearly as rewarding.
Well, on the one hand, you're like, I don't want to be like clown, go ahead and be funny.
And on the other hand, I don't want to just be like,
Louis C.K., the all-time genius has done it again by releasing like a not quite funny sitcom
that's not a sitcom.
And I think that there's a little bit where this is not a dissimilar to what I was
thing about vinyl, which is if this had happened a few years ago, I would think, oh, wow,
Louis C.K is really upending all of our, the expectations you have about a multi-camera sitcom
by taking away the laughter and what's there if you take away the laughter. And there is a little
bit of like, what if she was white to it? Like, it was like, what if there was no laughter? You know,
it's like, that's, that's your dude. You're good thing that, dude. But it's, I don't know.
I just didn't really connect with me, and I guess it's just sort of difficult.
Like you're saying, it's like two hours of vinyl, it's like a lot of hours of Louie there.
It's like there's a lot, there's a lot of demands on your eyeballs.
Let me make that point, though.
We often come at it that way, be like, well, there's just so much TV and there's so much
biolistically and in terms of voice.
But let's think about it from a different perspective, which is to say, I don't know if you could find
two shows with more extreme, extremely opposite and investment.
Vinyl has been in the works for probably close to 10 years from the moment that like
the Mick Jagger like, you know, put down there.
They're not looking.
Do me a show.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
I was just like, yeah, yeah, let's lock it out.
And when they actually did this, and just, you know, the tens of millions of dollars that HBO
spent on getting every detail right and that enormous cast and having everything looks so
burnished and good.
So when we see Kay, probably like on December 2nd being like, oh, Steve Bessmi's number
is burning a hole in my iPhone.
Like let's do something with it.
Right.
So when you think about that, I mean, you can make the case who's making better use of
the pipe for both is as it always ran.
Absolutely.
That's really hard.
You're right.
It is really hard to sort of be great at this thing.
And one group of people who are going to try and continue to be great is the crowd over
a Better Call Saul.
They have a new season starting this evening.
It's Monday, so it's coming out Monday night up against the Grammys.
So alternative programming there for you.
But, Andy, I haven't seen the new season at all yet.
Have you checked it out?
What can people expect?
Yeah, I've watched the first two.
I think people who like the first season can expect to keep liking this show.
I mean, one of the things that we really love,
dependable Better Call Saul was, even in it.
I think we had a lot of, about the validity of the project or how they could keep
this thing going or even why they were doing it.
But pretty quickly, it proved itself to be one of the more
nimble shows on the drama, to comedy.
Now, and it was worth noting
before we recorded, both of us were like,
stick with us. Now, obviously it was a year ago.
I think the first season premiered in January.
That's a long gap in the season.
But it definitely didn't
like, other than the you broke my boy part
from the Mike episode, and we
spent a lot of nights in September
just missing our gang. Underrate that.
You know, I don't want to sell that short because the thing about the show is
you turn on an hour of better
call Saul and you're like, I'm in good hands.
But I like these people and I like where they're taking me.
And more importantly, I trust as much as we talk about like
demographics or like burnished resumes
or strong trust. I mean, it's like TV is
becoming door-to-door salesman or something.
Like, how do you actually get an adorable?
Brand loyalty.
Yeah.
Last season ended, people who don't remember.
Yeah, right. Because they realize
they maybe had like a really good show on their hands, right?
And maybe we don't need to just like turn the TV show.
When is the soon as possible we can have Aaron Paul
join us? Right. Yeah.
I think that part of that soft reset happens in the parts of the fans' minds too.
I remember when Bitter Caw came on my sort of concern or one of the reasons why I maybe wasn't
dying for it to happen was that I couldn't really see where the show would go other than to
the beginning of Breaking Bad.
Yeah.
I didn't know where the, where the end point for that show would be.
And if your entire thing is just building up to a thing that people already love, that's a, that's a difficult road to
the accordion sort of like
of time of chronology really does affect this show
it's like how how much are they going to stretch out
or squeeze events to go towards this endpoint
or sort of slow like you're saying pump the brakes
and weirdly like with the second season I'm already back to like
so what was the show about again are we just right
this is just going up to the point where like he meets Gus right
like and in my I know that as soon as we get to episode three of this show
I'd be like I don't care I really like this world
I really like these supporting characters.
I love Ria Seahorn.
I love all these people who are in the show.
But from 30,000 feet up when you're just thinking about it,
it does seem sort of like, what is the show doing again?
What if I were to tell you that Ed Begley Jr. joins the cast here.
Are you more in?
Sure. I love Begley.
Yeah, but let's then let's just say this,
that, you know, the things that we eat praise on Vince Gilling for
and Peter Gould got as well,
sort of immaculate planning, or at least
the real trick of breaking
bad was that we all walked away from it being like
it was no, I don't think it was any more
plans than most TV shows.
Sure.
The planning in this show, in the transformation
of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman,
it's the way.
Right.
So you were alluding to, you know, about,
okay, do we just have to,
is this not working, do we pump the gas as quickly as we can
and get to air and Paul Cammyon get out of here?
Or have we built a show
that could sustain for a while at Jimmy McGill?
first moments of the premiere,
they showed,
it begins with Saul
the post-scrake.
Yeah.
It begins post-breaking bad.
So the thing that the show
can always do if and when it needs to
is it can pull the emergency release
and become a sequel.
I'm sure that that's nothing.
AMC can't wait for him to be working in a Cinnabon.
It's just...
I would have...
First of all,
the brand integration is strong with that one.
That was, you know.
What if I told you
I was going to make an Alexander Payne
movie set it as Sinabon.
Take it on TV, take an Atlantic premise, and then make them cops.
Riddle you one thing.
Could he also be with a cop?
Could he solve crimes?
So what I'm saying is...
One other note.
What if he were white?
And a third note.
What if he worked in a safe way?
Like, my point is, take anything that you want that networks already love, that third
heat, that special thoughts would be branded to grace.
Yeah, right.
So seriously, though, like, if you could make someone be the head.
of CSI New Orleans night manager they've ever walked through the doors TV.
Speaking of which, go to Best Buy for all your needs.
We should wrap things up here by talking about the sort of central topic of our lives
for the last couple of weeks, which is the actual sort of release of Life of Pablo,
which may or may not be considered officially done now.
I came in this morning and we were kind of talking about it.
And then our buddy Sean Fantasy was just like, yeah, and they're still working on it.
there's still going to be like a different version of it once it gets to whatever the next, you know, non-etherial, like in the ether version of it that's on title that people can't get, but are getting apparently charged for.
Yeah, like, my feeling is that the version of the album we have now is the one that's locked in title control room with Doug.
Yeah.
Like Doug at this point is wearing his tie around his head like a band.
I feel like the beta blockers and the Benzos and the 19 cups of coffee are now.
fully at war with each other.
I feel like Doug is like Brad Pitt
at the beginning of a spy game
where he's just like chewing gum
and about to do like paddles on himself.
I think that's exactly right.
I think before the week is over,
Brad Pitt will be like
Mrs. Brad Pitt at the end of seven.
But I think we're a little bit
I think that's getting ahead of ourselves.
The last song on Life of Pablo
is called What's in the Box.
Here's what's the interesting.
We're at the moment now
And we've talked about this, I think, in relationship to other records,
where the anticipation, maybe not yet,
this still isn't a done deal.
And maybe it'll never be.
Maybe this is...
Right.
And I can't tell right now.
But I have always trusted him in whatever the wildness of his vicious is communicating it.
Okay, well, he's just, I prefer a short album to do.
I thought that it was...
And so now when we hear this version, radically unified, to go...
Yeah.
And there's the other stuff.
Now, I don't want to live in a world where we don't have 30 hours.
Some dude was telling you about a Korean movie.
to go into this anecdote a little bit deeper?
Not really.
I was waiting inside trying to buy the easy boots.
You were running into the Mercer Art Center?
I was running out of it.
Dog, you've seen this Korean movie.
Someone is just like, okay, so here are the tastes of your life.
You can review them, but you have to take one moment.
I'm probably blushing this, but this is living the second act of vinyl at the moment
at the time you're telling me this.
So this is a Korean version of Albert Brooks is defending your life?
first of all
glad you mentioned that
I've always loved that movie
I've always wanted to try the sushi
in his version of heaven
but you pick the moment in your life
that you want to live in forever
and not that you live it like a loop
but the way you felt at that moment
you could just sort of dissipate
into the emotional ether of that
when the drums come in on 30 hours
that's all I'm saying
but
I tell I feel when the sister Nancy comes in on famous
me too
when sister Nancy
that is the most glorious
musical moment of this year
the full stop, maybe since the Charlie Wilson break
on down too.
The album is full of stuff like that.
And there's even, you know,
the little concise statement that he almost
in spite of himself managed to make.
That's my short thing.
So the rapping on Famous kind of reminds me
very much of I'm Good Era Kanye
of just like the teddy bear Kanye.
And it made me sort of start to think
of this record as a new version
of his early mixtapes.
Like Get Well Soon.
And I'm,
good. And it also took me back to the time. And I know other people have mentioned this. John
Cameronica mentioned this in the Times and Jason mentioned this on Pitchfork, where it's, Kanye is like an
amazing producer. And I don't mean producer like he's a great beat maker or, or anything in particular
about the production cycle because Hudson Mohawk did work on this record. And, you know, Mike Dean is
playing a lot of instruments on this record. And lots of people have lots of hands on these beats.
But Kanye is an incredible producer in the traditional sense of the person who is in charge with the final
product and making sure everybody is in their lane and all those lanes go towards the right
on ramp to heaven and that's where he takes you and when everything works out and he has
chance the rapper the dream kirk franklin and kelly price on his song and you're like how did nobody
ever think to do that before that is incredible and the same thing happens with famous where you're
like he just took the very the most perfect part of what riana can do and put it on a song
and it's gorgeous i can't but it's okay we can just let's just wrap it up
We can't hear her anymore.
I thought that the moment of, I mean, Kanye or a level producer,
there's no question that he is an egomaniac.
There's no question that he might be disturbed or his once and hopefully future friend Rhymefest
has been alluding to, like maybe off his, you cannot watch that and not be like,
and not just be moved by the joy he takes in collaboration,
from building the stage.
So from the moment when he just walks away from his own incredible song and performance
and I apologize to you
all of the Johnny trombone project.
You're like Bobby saxophone, what is this?
Look, you're going to be a style.
You're just got to get a different name.
Reach for the hot cake and you get burned.
Okay?
Like, that was on me.
I was wrong about that.
But you watch that and you just always want pop music
to give me that feeling where anything is possible.
Where the guy you think is just like one of the dudes
who hangs out and reads like ball main catalogs for him.
Oh, that's actually a 54-year-old elder bard
wearing a white
on denim jacket
and singing tooth
I guess the adventure
is not over
Yeah I mean I'm sure that
Easy seasons tend to run
for a little bit longer
than just an album
I mean whether or not
he'll take this on tour
what that tour will be like
given the sort of
you know frankly
the state that he's in
right now
he's definitely like
we joked it
we didn't mean a joke
but I mean we were talking about
like Kanye
definitely feels a little bit
untethered right now
and
maybe that's all just like hype for the album and he's just like this i'm just going to say whatever
comes into my mind to pump things up or maybe there's some other things to play there but
it'll be kind of fascinating to see how how how much longer he can sustain this kind of like
always on the three ring circus you know because it's it's draining it's draining for anyone
I mean this up there I don't even mean this in the sense which is like of his mental
chemistry but there's something very carry-math of him about this yeah yeah yeah yeah um
But the thing about him, it was interesting that he was tweeting the thing about being like a
$53 million with a bunch of faces up it and then all the strings lead back to Doug from
title.
Oh, exactly.
Because the strings are wrapped around the bed and his neck in the picture.
It was interesting, you know, we were tweeting about John Fennessee last week.
We were just talking about the connie stuff and we were talking about questions we may have about
them.
And one of the questions that came up is like, for real, though, like, how does this guy make money
other than being married to a Kardashian?
And I actually, you know, don't really care about looking at a tent.
I have to remark on the fact that, like, he does put the money where the mouth is.
Like, he made a video game about his mother climbing into heaven, you know?
Like, he brought all those people onto the Saturday Night Live space.
Yeah.
And bought them that thing out there.
That's what he feels is worth doing.
There is a different world where Kanye, you know, is the executive producer of Empire.
It is making crazy money from just making beats of that or collaborating with Katie Perry or whomever.
because you can get hundreds of thousand dollars
just for walking into the studio.
He's not doing that.
He's paying those hundreds of thousands of dollars
to like sister Nancy's relative
for taking one line from her 30-year-old song
and laying it over a Taylor's...
And turning it into like a chord progression, yeah.
It's just in terms of being a fan of pop culture and pop music,
it is as good as a guess.
Well, because this album is never going to be finished,
we will never be finished talking about it,
but we will probably have a watch re-up later this week
to talk about the first episode of Better Call Saul,
maybe to recap London Spy and do some recommendations.
As always, you can subscribe to the watch
on the Channel 33 Podcast 3.
You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and SoundCloud.
Andy, good to talk to you as always.
I'll talk to you on Thursday, man.
Great, Tom Bransky.
