Welcome to Night Vale - I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats: Episode 1, The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton

Episode Date: September 28, 2017

A new podcast from Night Vale Presents. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. John Darnielle and Joseph Fink discuss the role in their lives of art, faith, and satan with John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars and the upcoming Turtles All The Way Down. And we learn why making the job of creating art more difficult can sometimes make the art itself better. Premiering a new cover by Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! Buy Laura Jane Grace’s cover of “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” on iTunes, Bandcamp, or wherever you buy digital music. It supports both the artist and the show! Pre-order the full cover album on vinyl and digital: http://smarturl.it/I-Only-Listen Learn more about John Darnielle’s two novels here: http://www.johndarnielle.comListen to more music by the Mountain Goats, including their latest album Goths, here: http://www.mountain-goats.com Check out Joseph Fink’s other shows, Welcome to Night Vale (http://www.welcometonightvale.com) and Alice Isn’t Dead (http://aliceisntdead.com). His second novel with Jeffrey Cranor, It Devours!, is out October 17: http://www.welcometonightvale.com/books/ Thanks to our sponsor Bombfell! For $25 off, go to http://www.bombfell.com/goats Credits: Joseph Fink (host), John Darnielle (host), Christy Gressman (producer), Grant Stewart (editor), Vincent Cacchione (mixer), and Rob Wilson (logo). Produced by Night Vale Presents in collaboration with Merge Records and the Mountain Goats. http://ionlylistentothemountaingoats.com http://www.nightvalepresents.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, Joseph Fink here, creator of Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn't Dead, and I've created a third podcast. This is my first non-fiction podcast. It's called I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, and it's for anyone interested in the constantly shifting line between fan and artist. I wanted to play you the first episode now. If you enjoy it, please do subscribe, and also please rate and review as that helps make it more visible to other folks. Thanks. They say you shouldn't meet your heroes. Hi, I'm Joseph Fink. I'm a novelist and the creator of the fiction podcasts.

Welcome to Night Vale and Alice isn't dead. And this is I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, the show where I meet my hero, hang out with him in his basement, and have conversations about songwriting, art, and life. I've loved the band The Mountain Goats for years. The music of John Darniel, singer and songwriting, of the group has been with me through some of my toughest times and happiest moments.

And this is a show where I sit down with him to talk through his work song by song. It's a show for fans of the Mountain Goats or fans of Nightfail in my other work, but it's also for anyone interested in what it means to be an artist or a fan, or as many of us are, both at once. This season we will be covering the 2002 album All Hail West Texas. Certainly the only number one Billboard charting album to ever be recorded entirely on the built-in microphone of a boombox. For every episode, we will also have a cover of the song we are talking about, each one by a different artist and recorded just for this show. Let's go now to my conversation with John, in which we will talk about the first song of the album, the best ever death metal band in Denton.

So it's really weird in a lot of ways to be finally doing this podcast, because I think I told you this, before. This is an idea I had years ago, and I'm honestly trying to remember how many years, probably at least three or four years ago. But with Deep Purple. But with Deep Purple, it was a completely different show in a lot of ways. It was also just, it was just like a scripted comedy show. It was called Smoke on the Water. It was called Smoke on the Water. We sound both a little tired and a little relieved to be talking, don't we? I had flown down to Durham, North Carolina, where John lives, late the night before. We were supposed to record starting that morning in John's office, a professional situation, in chairs,

but we had spent most of that day dealing with technical problems, and for a variety of reasons, we ended up talking on a mattress in the basement of his home, surrounded by old touring guitars and boxes of the master tapes of his albums. You'll occasionally hear basement noises, water rushing through pipes, his kids running around upstairs. It's a basement, not a studio. So I had this idea. The original version of the show was that we would collect all of songs you'd ever officially released. Right. Assign them all a number and then use a random number generator to just assign one of them to people.

And they wouldn't be able to choose or note beforehand. They would just be like, here's your song. Artists would love that. They're all very open to that kind of process. People are very easygoing. Especially musicians. They never say, oh, I wasn't thinking about doing that one. And then.

But I said I decided to go through one hour. album of yours in order, because I think in a lot of ways it's an interesting album to start with for a show like this. So we're going to be going through the album All Hail West Texas, which coincidentally means we get to start with, I would say arguably your most popular or one of your most popular songs, would you say? It's top five. Certainly among the people who like what we do, Denton is a big one. Before we go much further, let's listen to the original album version of the best ever death metal band in Denton. The best metal band out of Denton

With a couple of guys He'd been friends since grade school One was named Cyrus And the other was Jeff And they practiced twice a week In Jeff's bedroom The best ever death metal band out of Denton Never settled on a name

But the top three contenders After weeks of debate Were Satan's fingers And the killers and the hospital bombers. Misbelieved in their hearts, they were headed for stage lights and lear jets and fortune and fame,

so in script that made prominent use of a pentagram distanced their drumheads and guitars with their names. And this was how Cyrus got sent to the school where they told him he'd never be famous. And this was why Jeff, in the letters he'd write to his friend Help develop a plan to get even When you punish a person

For dreaming his dream Don't expect him to thank or forgive you The best ever death metal band out of dent Will in time both out peace and outlive you Hail Satan I don't think I played it hardly at all on the And there wasn't really an official

All Hell West Texas tour I didn't have album tours at that time I just went on tour when it was time go on tour. But I don't think I played it much for a long time, because it was in an alternate tuning that I hadn't preserved. So now I played in drop D, but I don't even think that's right. Several of those and also let an ice coffee just like that. Thank you very much. Delitri has brought energy drinks and iced coffee. You are the best. Thank you so much. We're going to just leave all of that in. Yeah, we're not going to see, we don't believe in fixing it in

post. Even though I'm sitting right next to the reels onto which Ohio's Texas was transferred at Tiny telephone by Alex Newport, and there was, in fact, a lot of EQ work done. It's not exactly what was on the cassettes. On the cassettes, it needed EQing. I was kind of trying to think about these songs on a musical level, which I know how to do to a certain extent. My father was a musician and taught me music from a young age, but I was never great at music theory. So what is alternate tunings is that, you know, I've played guitar. I've played guitar for years. I've never gotten to a where I feel super knowledgeable about the instrument, and alternate tunings is always like the line that feels like I don't know enough to understand even, what is like the advantage of doing?

Well, it's not about understanding. It's actually about taking your understanding and skewing it a lot of the time. It depends on who you are. David Crosby is a profoundly accomplished guitarist whose ability to parse harmony and who's understanding of this stuff, he's at this extremely deep level, right? So when he does an alternate tuning, he's got reasons like why he wants to be playing on a certain area on the fretboard or he thinks. it is going to satisfy something he needs melodically. But for a lot of us, including me, it means that I won't know what I'm doing then.

And that can be really good, right? So you're facing this new challenge that you don't normally face of how do I make this, make enough chords to make a song? So like by retuning, you are just forcing yourself to not really know how to play the instrument again? You're taking away some of your knowledge,

which is, I think in writing and everything, there's always great advantages to knowing what you're doing. but if I take a little of control away from you, I take a little something away and force you to think on your feet, right? You may resent it. You may enjoy the process less, but you will probably find stuff you weren't going to find otherwise. And when you find that, you'll be excited

because you will know I wasn't going to get there by myself. It's similar to kind of why I'm super into using random number generators for things because it forces you into directions and ideas that you wouldn't have tackled otherwise. I do a lot of my work by random number generation, because it just forces you to make decisions you wouldn't have. I can only offer one experience of the music of the mountain goats, my own. So I wanted to also bring in other artists who love the band as much as I do. Now, when it comes to famous fans of the mountain goats,

they don't come much more famous than John Green. He is the best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars and the upcoming Turtles All the Way Down. He sold more books this past year than I will in my entire life, and he is an unabashed and absolute fan of the Mountain Goats. He also is an incredibly nice person, and he and John Darneal both helped me significantly when my first podcast was just starting out. We talked with John Green about the best ever death metal band in Denton, as well as the newest album from the Mountain Goats, called Goths, and the Bible passage to Corinthians, which I read so that I could give you some context for those. narration, but frankly, I think maybe I'm just too Jewish to get it. I should tell you that we were speaking on a day that Trump did something truly evil and destructive. I know that doesn't narrow it down

a great deal, but I just wanted to give you some sense of where we were all at when this recording begins. Ah, yeah, I mean, I don't want to let Donald Trump control my every thought, but he kind of does. Well, it's not, this is the thing. It's like, one of the virtues of this is that like, you know, I was thinking about it, you know, why am I angry today? Well, it's because I love Jesus Christ and he tells me that, you know, I have to love people all the same, right? Or I'm not answering the call, you know. And when you wake up to find somebody who's like done something that's like the exact opposite of everything I know about Jesus, right? Yeah.

But who also is claiming the mantle of the very guy who tells me not to be as he is. I mean, it's like it's a burden. It's like it's really, you know, and I know. I know that we will all, well, I can't say all, but I mean, I know that we will fight. But yeah, I mean, I have a lot of friends who have been suffering since November 5th, and today's got to be a hard day for them. Yeah, I feel the same way. And I also, I feel the same frustration of feeling like my faith has been hijacked,

but also like it has been hijacked in the most the most theologically indefensible way. Yeah. I mean, it's being hijacked by the guy who read two Corinthians. Yeah, good old two Corinthians. Everybody's favorite. It's a guy who literally has never cracked the ball. book open. And that's what, I mean, you can, you don't even, the other things, you don't need the Bible to know that excluding a bunch of people because of who they are from the same opportunity

everybody else has. This is not a biblical question. It's just what's frustrating is that, you know, for sure, if you believe the basic precepts of the guy who got nailed to a tree, number one is you don't deny anybody a seat at the table. It's like, that's the central teaching of the whole deal is that everybody is invited. Yeah. So, So welcome to I only listen to Mountain Goats where we talk about Jesus Christ. Hi, John. Hi. It's so good to hear your voice.

It's been a long time. Yeah, it's good to hear your voice too, although I have been listening to it constantly. I've completely fallen for Goths. Oh, thank you. I fell for it initially, you know, in the usual way that I fall for a mountain goats album. But now I've fallen for it in a deep hard. It takes me back to a place that I haven't been able to visit and need to go to way. It's just real special.

Thanks. We're very proud. It's my favorite. I mean, the new one's always my favorite. But, you know, taking the guitars out, just when I was talking about formal limitations, how you take something away from a musician or a writer, doors to new places open up.

And when I went, what if I just don't even take a guitar to the studio? What if I just don't, right? It's like so much new stuff came in. Yeah. There's just so many little moments in those songs that, because I was a goth kid in 1992, in Orlando, Florida, wearing a trench coat in 110 degree heat. It's a really great, it's a really great gift to, I don't know, to this me that I'd really

lost touch with. God, thank you. That's huge to hear. Thanks. So thank you so much for joining us, John. Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. And to talk about the first mountain goat song I ever heard. Is this the first one?

Yeah. Where did you hear it? Well, tell us the story. I was in a hotel room. It was in New York City. It was this period, weird period of my life after I dropped out of divinity school. But before I had a book deal or anything, and so I was an assistant at a magazine and blogging and stuff. And I had a blogger friend who I went and visited in New York City.

And she said, have you ever listened to the Mountain Goats? And I said, no. And she said, you should really listen to this song. And she played me this song, like, a very kind of cliche, romantic way with one earbud in my ear. and the other earbud and her ear. And it was the first song that I listened to that just made me cry. It was sort of a romantic occasion with this person I was with, and I really ruined it by bursting into tears.

I've been ruining people's romantic stuff for years. I mean, to be fair, she played you the best ever death metal band. It's not the most romantic of songs. It's possible. It's possible I was misreading the situation to begin with. But yeah, so I remember she played me that song, and I was like, who are these guys? And then she told me that the band was called The Mountain Goats. The album was All Hail, West Texas, went back to Chicago, bought the album, and that was the beginning of it for me.

I was trying to think if I remember the first song I heard. I think it was probably, what's the name of the first track on The Sunset Tree? You are your memory? Yes. I think probably I was like, someone was like, you should listen to this album. And so I did. Is that the one that starts, I stepped into a bargain price reading in Loscianica? That's a great song.

It is a very good song. This podcast is going to be weird for me because, like, I'm not, I'm proud of what I do, but I always try to change the subject if people tell me that my stuff is good. It's trying to talk about other people's stuff. We're just going to be listing songs and then saying that's a very good song. It is really awkward, though, to basically be the co-examble. host of a Mountain Goats fan podcast when you are yourself a Mountain Goat. It's weird. I've been wondering about it because I totally do.

You know, people say, well, hey, this is a good set. I go, yeah, no, but you saw Christine Fellows, right? She was amazing. Hey, it's a free podcast, and you know what that means. That's right. Ads. They help art happen and put food on artist's tables. And to find the kind of advertisers you're going to want to hear from and that will help us keep making the show. We just need to learn a little about who you are. We have a quick, anonymous survey at podsurvey.com slash goats. This will go a long way to helping advertisers see how great all of you are. And by completing the survey, you can win a $100 Amazon gift card.

So again, this is genuinely a huge help and an easy way to support the show. Don't wait, just head over and take one minute at podsurvey.com slash goats. John and I are so grateful for your support. If you're like me, you are often too busy to shop for. clothes and definitely too busy to take stock of your style and think about what might look better on you. Well, bomb fell is an easier way for men to find the right clothes for them. It's as simple as can be. You complete a questionnaire. I think it took me all of 30 seconds. And then a dedicated personal stylist handpicks pieces specifically for you. You take a look at the selection and have 48 hours

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Bomfell is offering $25 off your first purchase. Just go to bombfell.com slash goats. That's B-O-M-B-F-E-L-L dot com slash goats. You are a couple easy minutes from your new favorite outfit. Bomfell. Open and close. So I went back to Chicago and I still had all these divinity school friends, you know, and like, and I was always trying to explain why I had dropped out of divinity school and why I wasn't

going to pursue, uh, the ministry. I've been on kind of on the track to become an Episcopal minister. And several times over the next few months, like a friend would be over at my apartment and I would be like, I want to play you a hymn that I heard recently that is like the best him I've ever heard. And I would play that song. And I would be like, I think that is like a properly good him even though it ends with like hail Satan, hail Satan. And the theological difference that I had, I think, with my church ultimately was that I still think that that song is a great hymn, even though it ends, Hail Satan, Hail Satan. You know, it's one of my first religious songs is the thing, because when I said that, I remember tracking this song, right? I remember that was a very productive

week for me. My wife was at hockey camp in Canada, and I was alone in the house. And I feel like Internet was 56K at that time, so sitting on the computer for nine hours was not really something you did unless you were very hardcore. Which I wasn't. I was working my day job and I was writing songs in my spare time. I didn't have friends because I don't do I are all friends. And I was writing all these songs while she was away for a week. And I got this idea. It was after work. It would have been like around dinner time. And I didn't have an ending for the song. And I was sort of recording it to see how it sounded and see where it was going. and the Hail Satan wasn't written down. It was a spontaneous eruption. But it felt like a religious confession.

I mean, not obviously, you know, the dark principle that people talk about, you know, the Satan, John Milton's Satan. You know, that's not what that means. It means, you know, it's a celebration of two people being true to themselves. You know, it's like, it's a celebration of that later satanic principle of self-knowledge, which isn't really Satan at all, right? It's actually godlike. Yeah, I've found the, uh, The Hail Satan really interesting because I think the song as a whole is in a lot of ways an angry one, but to me that Hail Satan always feels, and maybe this is the context that you experience it,

but it feels very joyous to me. Well, it's an eruption. It's a transgression. There's always a little joy in transgressing. You know, there's always a good feeling to break free from something you're not supposed to do, especially if it's something, it's a complex thing to say, Hail Satan. You know, it's like, because of course you don't, if the Satan of the popular imagination is real, then no one really worships him because that would be a person who will torment you. His whole, he will find the thing that makes you unhappy and make you unhappy. But that's not what Satan means in that context, right? Like, it's different. I could really. Yeah, it also, I think it also means like that community, you know, the community of people who love death metal and make it together and how that community can come. kind of hold you up. And so some of it, to me at least, is a celebration of that, which is very real and powerful and holy. That's one of the things I always loved about that song. Joseph, have you ever been at a concert where that song is played and then the crowd takes over

and keeps like chanting, Hail Satan, Hail Satan after the song is over? I have not. That sounds amazing, though. Does that happen? and that often? So I tend to leave the stage after the little rave up and then the band plays on for a while. And so I don't, I haven't, I didn't hear it. That's amazing to think about. I'm trying to think of how to phrase this in a way that isn't loaded in terms of forcing you to answer a certain way because there's a lot of ways that this could be true. But I mean, do you feel like encountering music like this affected your writing? Oh yeah. No, I mean, the mountain goats are a huge part of every book that I write because it's really the

the only music I listen to while I write. Mountain Goats fans who read my books find little Easter eggs in them from the songs that I was listening to, little phrases that I'll use from the songs. So, yeah, it's a huge part of my writing. But I mean, honestly, and it's awkward because I know John's here, so it's a little awkward to talk about this. But to be honest with you, it's the most important art in my life for my whole adulthood. It's guided the way I think about being a person,

the way I think about being a person in community, how to imagine the lives of people who are distant from mine or feel distant from mine. And also, you know, there is a thing that music does really, really well, which is that when you are alone and you're scared and you feel unheard or unhearable, great music, the right music for you can make you feel less alone and can make you understand that whatever you're going through

is not unprecedented and is not without people who feel compassionately towards you even if they're very far away. And even if they maybe don't know you, that they still, that their love for you is genuine and can reach across space. And that's something I always feel when I listen to the mountain goats. I always feel like heard, I guess. It's a huge gift.

Thank you. It's like, you know, I'm always saying when I was a child reading the authors that I loved and listening to the music that I loved, you know, the thing I got from that is what you're describing, that feeling of being understood somehow, you know, by a stranger in that weird connection, you know, it's like, where it's not the person, it's not the stranger, it's the thing they've made that opens this space for self-reflection for being able to see yourself through an outside eye or something like that. A huge gift to hear that.

Thanks, man. There's that line I don't want to misquote it I always misquote your lyrics to you I can totally I didn't get to be a teacher so I can 100% correct you Now I'm just gonna look it up

And quote it correctly You have the internet I bet you have the internet over there There's that there's that heartbreaking line And hast thou considered the tetrapod Where you write Hoping you don't break my stereo Because it's the one thing that I couldn't live without

So then I think about that And then I sort of black out music really is that for a lot of people, you know? And I know it's kind of awesome and overwhelming responsibility to be one of those bands for a lot of people, but you are. It's a blessing, though. It's sort of, it's, you know, and then it's responsibilities are gifts. If you have a responsibility, then, you know, that's a, that for me is a hedge against the dark places. You know, when I have a responsibility, I can be outside of myself. And I think that's a lot of what making art is about is like being able to make some connection where you have something bigger than you to take care of.

And that connection that I get, it's a huge blessing to me. Yeah, I mean, I feel the same way with my work, like that it's this gift exchange, you know, that by them trusting me or trusting my work, it also makes me get up in the morning and want to do it, makes me understand. that I have to do it and knowing that is really, really good for me because otherwise there would probably be months or years when I wouldn't probably get out of bed. So I agree. It is a blessing, but it is also, you know, it's a lot to hold. It's a lot, but I have a therapist. I'm happy to, I don't know, it's like I can, when I've, I've had some depressed years, you know, where then it feels like a lot. And those are the,

but even now I know if I'm in that space, then I don't leave. the Jurassic Room after I'm done playing. I do what I do, but I try to limit my contact a little bit so that, you know, if you're in that headspace. But, but for me, you know, it's like, that's one of the things that I have been constructed somehow to do is to be able to stand in that space, you know, and it's a, right. For me, it's just because it's giving back, because I can't, you know, I can't even begin to list the musicians who were those people for me, you know, who's music. Amy Grant's the first one, you know, seven inches over there. I'll never get to tell her what her music meant to be in 2008 or nine, but I'll never forget it. It's so to be able to stand on the brink of the abyss for somebody. It's an honor for me. Yeah, there's an interesting thing, I think,

that anyone who becomes an artist that has any following at all has to confront, which is that people feel about you the way you felt about others. And it's weird. suddenly being on the other side of that equation. And it's an interesting thing to process, I think, to try and understand. Because it also, I think, maybe makes you think about the people making the art that was very important to you differently. Because you suddenly realize, oh, they were just me. They were just people.

Like, the work was important. But there was this moment where you realize that there's not this untouchable barrier between you and the people making the things that meant a lot to you. I think it's a nice moment when you realize that those are also just human beings, you know. And also as a musician, you learn to listen also to the drummer, you know, and the bassist. It's like, when I listen to Amy Grant Records, a lot of people listen to anybody who performs under a single name. He goes, oh, David Bowie, David Bowie, or whoever, right? But it's not just them. It's not just me.

That's why we're the mountain goats, right? It's like, it is not John Darniel reaching out and touching you. Even if I'm the only guy on the record, it's the sum total of a bunch of other stuff. that I brought to the table when I sat down to write. You know, it's not, it is not a wizard in a tower with his last copy of the book of spells, you know, doing a spell that only he can do. It's a communal exercise, even if it takes place in solitude, which is why I think there's a lot of that in my music. There's people who are by themselves reaching out to some place beyond.

Yeah, no, I mean, that's, I think that's so true. I think that's so powerfully true. There's this quote about Shelley that someone said that I've never been able to try, back down since college. So I might have made it up. And if I made it up, I apologize. But somebody said of Shelley, now there was a cracked vessel that shone a lot of light. Oh, man. And the idea that part of it is you, but part of it is just that if you can let through the cracks within you, if the light can shine out and be helpful to people, that's the work. And that's not really in the end. Like, it doesn't really have anything to do with individual genius. It mostly has to do with the cracks.

Well, yeah, there's the, that's the, I went through moments of horror about that in therapy, you know, about thinking, you know, whether if you could make yourself a perfect life, you know, or restore the gaps between the newer transmitters that, that, that caused you to fall into, well, there's a Borges poem about this that I'm always quoting, where he observes that the good thief, I'm going to try and do this without crying real hard. The good thief, the one who was crucified to the right of Jesus, right? Who one guy says to Jesus, you know, what is wrong with you? Curse this God who has obviously failed you, right?

You're sitting here dying and bleeding and all your bones are broken and your life is terrible right now. So admit that this God is a loser. And the other thief on the other cross says, you know, you be quiet and says to Jesus, I'm going to do this and says, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus says, sure, absolutely. And Borges points out that the same thing that made this guy a thief, it's the same thing that dragged him into pits of iniquity, and that made him a bad person, right, that made him a bad person in a lot of people's lives, right,

that made him a person to avoid, right? But the same tendency is the one that allowed him to seek and gain paradise. Right. Yeah. So his brokenness eventually leads him, to freedom. Yeah. Sorry. I was thinking, did you know

Leonard Cohen does a version of that line? It's the ones who've cracked that the lights shine through. Yeah. I find that idea so powerful because one of the hard things for me is that I want to make it about me.

Right. Especially like my books. You know, like I want to make them about me and I want to put myself in them and I have to fight against that and fight against that and fight against that. And one of the ways I fight against that is to remember that, like, when it's at its best, it's not you. It's inclusive of you.

Yeah. It's not driven by you. That's a hard thing to communicate to other people, but especially if you're a musician standing on a stage that's elevated. You know, it's like you're above everybody in this hero fan stance, you know. But it's not. It's communal. A music especially has always been communal. Like recorded music is a very strange blip, you know, prior to the invention of recording.

Nobody ever would have thought, I'm going to go home and listen to something. thing by myself. Listening was something you did together. Yeah. I don't know. I have a very strong love and memory of a lot of live shows. And to me, I kind of blend music and theater in that way. And that it's less about what's happening on the stage and more that at a really good show,

whether it's a play or at a concert. I don't know. There's this feeling that it's not so much about the work that was intended on the stage so much as the work has created this moment in which we are all people in this room experiencing something together. I can really remember strongly the nights that did that for me. And now when we do these Night Vale live shows, that's always my goal is I just want to create that moment for other people of. I want to have a night where people feel like we were all in this room together and we experience something. That's such a great feeling. That's such a great, you know, I was there

about something that maybe nobody else even hears about, this was even cooler before everybody was taping everything, right? That you could say, well, there's no evidence that that happened, except in all of us. Yeah, there's something very, I think, attractive to the idea of art that disappears the moment you create it, but then you want to keep that art around. Oh, you know, let me tell you a story about All Hail West Texas

that's kind of great, these reels that we're looking at, these two reel-to-reel tapes, the two half-inch reels to which the album was sequenced. And when we went to remaster it for the merge release of it, I got the original tapes and I took them into the mastering guy. And he sequenced them all and did what he could. And then we abed it with the CD, the original, the Emperor Jones version, and the new one didn't sound as good. And he said, you know, these tapes have gotten old and particles have dropped off and we can't really make it sound as good as it did. And I went, well, you know, there's also these reels. And he said, oh, you should have shown me those first.

And so, but it was almost, if I hadn't remembered that I had these two reels, the actual original source would have been lost. Like, it would have been, you have the CD that was issued and that's it. Yeah. Wow. There's something about that. Like, when that happened, I was sort of momentarily pleased that, like, the tapes themselves, what was on them is gone. The first cover of our season is by Laura Jane Grace of the band Against Me. And it was a thrill to be able to work with her.

I think what's really interesting about her cover and why I like that it's the first one, is that it is an absolutely faithful cover. Almost every other cover we are going to hear through the course of this show really changes the nature of the song to fit the artist's vision. And some of them end up places that are quite far from the original recordings in some really cool ways. But Laura doesn't do that. She plays it as she heard it, but with a feeling that comes entirely from her. For a couple guys who've been friends since grade school

One was named Cyrus and the other was Jeff And they practiced twice a week in Jeff's bedroom The best ever death metal band that of Denton Never settled on a name With the top three contenders after weeks of debate For Satan's fingers And the killers and the hospital bombers Jeff and Cyrus believed in their hearts

They were headed for stage lights and weird Jets, fortune and fame, so in script they may prominent a use of a pentagram, stenciled their drumheads and guitars with their names, and this is how Cyrus got sent to a school where they told him he'd never be famous. This was why Jeff in the letters he'd write to his friends have developed a plan to get even when you punish a person for dreaming their dream, don't expect him to thank her, forgive you. The best ever death metal band that I'm dented one time about pacing outlive you. Hail Satan!

Hail Satan! Tonight! Hail Satan! Thank you for joining us for the first episode of I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats. Let's quickly plug some stuff from the folks you heard today. If you liked the cover by Laura Jane Grace, you can buy it wherever digital music is sold. Links in the show notes. Buying the track supports.

both the artist and this show, and is a very cool thing to do indeed. And you can pre-order! I only listen to The Mountain Goats, All Hail West Texas, right now in the Merge Record Store. This is a special double vinyl release which will contain every cover from this season on two LPs, one pink and one blue. All pre-orders will include, and I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats patch. Check out the newest album from the Mountain Goats, Goths, which is out now.

You've been listening to Instrumental for you. versions of its songs in the background of this episode. And the mountain goats are probably playing live in a theater near you, because they are hardworking folks. John Darniel's second novel, Universal Harvester, came out this year, and is the horror slash mystery slash family drama slash slice of Iowa life that you have been looking for. My own fiction podcasts, Welcome to Nightville and Alice Isn't Dead, are running now, both absolutely free wherever you listen to podcasts. And in just a few weeks, on October 17th, the new Welcome to Nightville novel, It Devours comes out.

You don't need to know anything about the podcast to enjoy this thriller about romance and sand monsters. Hey, let's do some credits. I only listen to The Mountain Goats is a production of Nightfail Presents with Merge Records. It is produced by Christy Gressman, editing by Grant Stewart, mixing by Vincent Cashione, all music courtesy of the Mountain Goats and Merge Records. Thank you to Christina Renz, Ryan Madison, the Darneal family, for letting me intrude on their lives, John Green, Laura Jane Grace, the staff of Nightvale Presents, and

Christy Gressman for taking a weird idea I had and turning it into a show. Check out Nightvalepresents.com for more information about this show and all of our other shows that are each incredible in their own way. And remember, when you punish a person for dreaming his dream, don't expect him to thank or forgive you. Thanks for listening. Inhale Satan.