Wonderful! - Wonderful! 150: Fireball Dance Energy

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

Rachel's favorite ambitious music video! Griffin's favorite outdoor treasure hunt! Rachel's favorite snake reproduction! Griffin's favorite bass riff!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaFor more ways to support Black Lives Matter and find anti-racism resources: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/Support the Northwest Response Fund to aid those affected by wildfires: https://www.redcross.org/donate/cm/kgwmediagroup-pub.html/Register to vote: https://vote.gov/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Coming at you hot, coming at you straight shooters. That's right. Everything we've said so far has been a lie oh like in all our previous episodes yes every episode we've done including rose buddies it's all been lies and it's time for us to just fess up and i think it's time

that we start being straight shooters and not the kind of curvy shooters that we've been so let's i guess let's do top three lies that we've done on the show that we want to try and make up for okay uh griffin and i are not actually married no we're in fact you know what we're the same person no that yeah that sounds right this whole time we've just been one person doing it's actually a ventriloquist situation but you'll never guess which one of us is the dummy it's okay what's our second one well the second one is that this is a podcast is a big one a lot of people listen to this they think it's a podcast it's not it's a very long movie with no pictures that's experimental guys and they release it in parts

like kill bill you know how Bill, they were like, this movie's too long, Quentin. You need to break it up into two movies. And he was like, okay, we did that, but we've done it now 150 times. It's like a boyhood, but in real time. It's like a real time boyhood. Like if boyhood was you, instead of it was a movie, it was 150 little movies. And each one was a year in the boy's life so he lived to be 150 years old and then the final eye is oh can i can yeah please uh my name is not rachel nope gertrude gertrude yes we are rachel was like sexier for today's audience you know yeah i mean there's probably a lot of gertrude's listening to this who just got their feelings very

hurt i think gertrude is a very i'm just saying what our market research says that is not my opinion sure um when you said that we weren't married it made my heart shrivel shrivel up and get very cold you started this premise i was just trying but i didn't say we weren't married i I was trying to yes and you a little bit. Except you were saying no, but to our whole deal. We are very happily married. Made me sad.

Coming up on seven years. Coming on up. This winter. Wow, geez. And what's the seven year anniversary? What is that? That's like me... Slurpee.

Slurpee. That's right. It goes paper, copper, onyx, light is four. Number five is diamonds. Every five is diamonds. Six is, I think- Rubber band? I think it's corkwood.

Corkwood. Number seven is Slurpee. Number eight is meat. eight is the meat anniversary i can't wait for that do you have any small wonders um i do well this isn't totally above board but we have found episodes never before seen of people baking uh in the great british style uh that have did you forget the name of this show? No, because it's not technically Great British Bake Off. It's the Great British Stand Up to Cancer Bake Off. It's their celebrity edition.

They did a series of episodes that feature celebrities, comedians, just general personalities that do not have baking experience. No. And it is very enjoyable and not widely available, so good luck. Good luck out there, guys.

Good luck finding it. We had to do some digging. Yeah. Yeah, I don't feel as guilty about that because it's literally impossible for us to watch those. And there are some genuine treasures. That was going to be my small wonder too. I will do a side pivot and just say,

in general, James Acaster, because his performance in Great British Bake Off is like the best. That show is so gentle and sweet and straightforward that you almost never see anybody truly catastrophically fail. And so it is like delightful

to watch comedians like catastrophically fail or in Terry Hatcher's case, catastrophically succeed. She has whatever the baking equivalent of a green thumb is, a golden, golden brown, crusty thumb. Yeah, we did some research. Apparently she's like a real baker now. Very talented baker.

That's her thing. Good on you. I think maybe you go first this week. I do. Okay, what do you got? I want to talk about the grandiose music videos of the 1990s. the grandiose music videos of the 1990s. This, you sent me a particular sort of reading aid for this topic that I watched this morning.

And it is- Did you watch the whole thing? I watched the entire front and back. And I'm so glad I did because it might be the best piece of media ever created. And I don't know if it resonated with me because uh i was well i guess this video came out in 88 so i was one year one years old oh no this no this one's 91 the one okay so four years old then still not old enough to really appreciate its art well and i don't know you know with some of these lengthy music videos i don't know that they were aired in their fullness consistently.

No. I imagine not. I was looking at some of these videos and, you know, I mean, music video heyday really was like around this time, late 80s, early 90s. What do you mean by heyday? like around this time late 80s early 90s what do you mean by heyday like just like when it was like starting out like becoming like music television was a thing vh1 was a thing right you know like this was like if you're gonna put on an album everybody wanted to know what your video was gonna be right uh so i was looking at the most expensive videos of all time and 10 of the 15 on this list were from the 90s okay um the most expensive uh was michael and janet jackson in scream uh which came out in 1995 and cost uh at the time seven million

dollars that's quite a bit yes that's quite a bit um the one I wanted to feature though, is Too Legit to Quit by Hammer. Is, sorry, quick side track. Is Jamiroquai's virtual insanity on the most expensive? Because how do they even build that room with the moving floor? That must have cost a pretty penny, huh? A lot of money you'll see spent on these videos are like special effects. Right. CGI stuff.

Yeah. Okay. Uh, which is for example why scream was so expensive there are a lot of videos from that time period that got really excited about the like let's make everything look like water and morph into everything else yeah i think that movie the abyss came out that was the one that had like the well in the matrix for example too right the abyss i think predated the matrix by a significant amount and it was like the underwater water ghost monster thing.

And people saw that technology. Like, how can we use that? I think Busta had a video that very prominently featured like that. So like Alex Mack technology. Yeah. God, how many people do you think haven't understood a thing we've said in the last two minutes? We're using a lot of 90s slang. So the thing that is exceptional about this video for too legit to quit uh it's 14

minutes long uh it features a tremendous number of cameos uh cameos makes it sound like they just kind of wander into frame it features a lot of starring roles from a lot of unexpected individuals. So the first eight minutes is just like narrative setup for this video. And this is the thing I really like about these kind of epic music videos, the time period, is they are telling a whole story start to finish that may or may not really be related to the song. But this one in particular, you can tell pretty quickly how it's going to relate to the song the song is called too legit to quit and the premise they start out with is that hammer has quit and i know you and i know you're thinking i have been made certain assurances by mr hammer that this is that this is an activity he will never engage in. And yet, here we are. So prior to the video's release, Hammer had over $14 million in sales of Please Hammer, Don't Hurt Him. He had also produced and starred in his own movie called Please Hammer, Don't Hurt Him, the movie, in 1990.

He was riding high. Yep. 1990. He was riding high. Yep. And and this kind of reminds me of that, like Eminem thing of like, telling your audience like you thought I was going away, but here I am. And Hammer's kind of doing that with this of like, can you imagine if Hammer quit and what would happen in the world? So it's it's Jim Belushi as a newscaster. I imagine a lot of people just got like whiplash from like, whoa, whoa. He is announcing that there are rumors that Hammer has quit.

And then we get a lot of reactions from celebrities at the time period. Yes. Including Queen Latifah, Danny Glover, Tony Danza, and then a series of athletes. So I didn't realize this, but Hammer was a bat boy for the Oakland A's. Oh, I didn't realize this but hammer was a bat boy uh for the oakland a's oh

and so we had a lot of like sports connections from that okay which i guess is a possibility if you are a bat boy you also get to watch jim belushi have a full-blown panic breakdown yeah it's a strange they really gave him some rope on that performance yeah uh but so roger clemens jose conseco is in it uh and there is just and there's a lot of repeat there's a lot of bouncing like okay let's talk to eze let's go back to danny glover okay and then now let's go talk to the actor that played bud bundy on married with children and then let's go talk to the actor that played Bud Bundy on Married with Children. And then let's go back to Danny Glover again. seems to be mocking Hammer for quitting at his peak and suggest that maybe Hammer's fame was too much for him. And then he starts doing impressions of Hammer related. Not great.

Yeah, not great. Not great, Jim. So then, kind of inexplicably, and this is where some of the cost came from on this $2.5 million video. We go to James Brown, who is in this palace and he is presenting himself as the godfather and Hammer is going to him to get power in the form of fireballs. Yes.

This is kind of a fun fact of the video. So James Brown was in jail and was set to be released the day video production began. So Hammer arranged for a private jet to pick up James Brown from the South Carolina prison to bring him to L.A. the day he was released. And then I guess in addition to that cost, there were two extra days of private jet time so that James Brown could go to Vegas. So the originally planned 18-day shoot turned into 30 days.

And these were like 18-hour days. Jesus Christ. Just filming all of this. Because in addition to this James Brown scene, there's scenes in what looks like to be some kind of industrial fire factory. There's like a city street. You know, the industrial fire factory

that every single music video of the 90s had to incorporate in some way, even when it wasn't like part of the narrative. I think Fast Car, like very briefly jumps to the fire factory. Madonna did a lot of factory work too. Yeah, Lisa Loeb in the middle of stay, like runs out of that apartment

that she's just kind of walking all around. It's like, hold up. I got to go to the fire and sparks factory real quick. We'll make a quick one there. And then we're coming on back to the sad apartment. There are countless dancers in this video. There's also an auditorium scene. So after James Brown gives Hammer the the firepower and tosses him

around the room telekinetically yes yeah and suggests that hammer get the glove uh which we find out later about in more detail uh we cut to an auditorium that is just packed with fans waiting for hammer to come out or come down down, come through the Nexus portal that James Brown summons. It's in the shape of the Earth for some reason. Yeah, there's a globe that spins around

like a screensaver. And the globe sucks up MC Hammer and all of the dancers' souls and sends their souls through the globe sailing around. Yeah, I wasn't sure how to interpret the globe.

I think the globe is about, I think the globe, sailing around. Yeah, I wasn't sure how to interpret the globe. I think the globe is about, I think the globe represents mortality. I've got a whole, we can talk about it afterwards. At which point the music, as I mentioned, eight minutes in, finally starts, because Hammer does come out on stage and perform Too Legit to Quit.

Too Legit to Quit, not just a fun name. It is a six minute long music song yeah there's a hand gesture that goes along with it um too legit to quit yeah exactly yeah that must have been really great for the audience uh this song i think was also featured in the Addams Family movie, if I remember correctly. The hand gesture, you get confirmation on the glove, because at the end of the video, we cut to a booth, like a video production booth, where we see an impersonator of Michael Jackson wearing the one sparkly glove. Yes. Doing the two legit to quit. His agent is like, oh no, he's coming for us. MC Hammer,

did you see this guy? He's so skilled, but he's got nothing on us. Isn't that right? And then the Michael Jackson glove does. I didn't realize there was beef there, but okay. Yeah, they were both kind of vying for peak sales at that time period. And you know what? Let's call it a tie. You know what? Let's call it a tie we'll go you know what let's call it a draw who can tell uh some of you may all not may know this about hammer um five years after this video was released he event filed for bankruptcy

um but he's doing okay now yeah sure he he just kind of you know i mean if you release an album and you get 14 million from it he just he went a little wild yeah sure his purchases uh has since kind of gotten his finances in order uh everything worked out okay for hammer in the end it is a truly bonkers of of this genre video that you are talking about i cannot think of one that is better than like this is all this is all time like most representative of like that wild 90s creative ambition uh that like people who didn't necessarily know how to channel it the best could do but the what comes out of that is so, so pure and so strong. Like you're watching James Brown throw fireballs at MC hammer and levitate

him all around his room. And you're like, I don't know what the fuck is going on or who thought of this or who thought this was a good idea, but I'm so glad they did. It is. It's like I was telling Griffin, it's like a time capsule.

I mean, not only does he get a lot of the like notable personalities of the decade but the special effects and his approach it's very representative of the time it's so good uh it is not a video i had seen in its entirety until very recently nor i what was the other one you were telling me about oh november rain november rain yeah so that's what kind of got me on this track uh is november rain is a Guns N' Roses video that follows Axl Rose from like falling in love and marrying a woman to her untimely death and there is a lot of

a lot of set work a lot of there's actual drone footage in there of Slash playing his guitar solo another very expensive video yeah Guns N' Roses did quite a few as did madonna and michael jackson i imagine meatloaf probably clocked in some you know i didn't do any research on meatloaf

i mean just by nature of the fact that his songs are these nine minute long true extremely dramatic ballads god i get november rain is one of those weird songs that like I cannot remember anything about the song except for the ending lick which is like iconic like best guitar lick ever but I can't remember like how the actual verse goes is that weird it's kind of weird it's a little weird um can I do my first thing yes uh my first thing's pretty quick it is geocaching oh it's something that like i feel like i was super into for like a year uh and then haven't really done that since uh because austin has like a pretty decent geocaching scene but it's all like weirdly concentrated uh and we don't live like anywhere near the geocaching hot spots we used we used we used to uh yeah when we first or when i first moved to austin i lived in a neighborhood that was like in the shit um geocaching is an activity where folks hide

caches all around the world and they leave clues uh and coordinates that folks can follow to hunt down those caches using a gps device or uh an app on your phone. Yeah, I was going to ask. That's the thing. How do you access this? There's an app called geocaching that now, unfortunately, has a subscription fee attached to it. Oh, that's a bummer. Yeah, I know. It used to be free,

but I think for whatever reason, it costs money now. But I think there are other free geocaching apps. It's just that this one has the most caches registered because anybody can like yeah create an app and then it's kind of or can create a cache and then it's sort of like peer-reviewed and gets like bumped out of the list organically if it's not a good one um so caches typically include like a log that people can sign when they find the cache before replacing it

uh and my my favorite kind of caches uh are actual containers that include little trinkets or doodads that you're supposed to take one and replace it with with something else do you remember our sad story about being out in i believe it was driftwood yeah and we found that little spoon yeah and then what was it replaced with with a lick uh card that had all the holes punched in that's not a sad story that's a great story i got a fucking rad spoon that's like one of the i have that listed here in my notes as one of the best caches no i think the spoon was great i think leaving a discount card it's not a discount card it is a free ice cream and it didn't expire i checked i was very careful about this it was fully punched out so like what i put in there was a ticket for free good ice cream from like like a pint of ice cream

if anything i got ripped off with my spoon i loved that spoon it was like a state spoon for like alaska or something like that like that's charming so is free a pint of free ice cream i can't believe you came after me for that. Anyway, geocaching is, it was originally purposefully thrown off by up to like 100 meters. Like there was a programmed in inaccuracy to keep people from know 100 square meters or whatever is like a huge area of of a huge margin of error to try to like find things in um but then they turned that off in 2000 and geocaching became possible uh the first geocache was hidden in beaver creek oregon uh and it was made of a big black plastic bucket that was filled with software videos books money a can of beans and a slingshot it's a pretty fucking cool treasure chest on earth how did those items come to be together i wonder just this one dude hid this

cash and posted about it on some web forum and then folks went and found it it was tragically destroyed in a lawn mowing accident this first cache but now there is a plaque that sits where it was hidden because it was the first geocache ever hidden and apparently the can of beans survived the lawnmower accident so the can of beans is also like a geocaching old grandpa beans still there there are over three million caches hidden all around the world today. They've been discovered over 640 million times. So there's like a lot of people doing this. And they are hidden all over the globe in 191 countries and even Antarctica.

That is not the wildest place that a cache is hidden. For nine years, from 2008 to 2017, cache GC1BE91 was hidden on the International Space Station. Whoa. Good luck logging that one. I cannot think of many other caches that have been clocked fewer times than the ones hidden. What was it? Do you know?

I do not know. Is it some astronaut ice cream? Probably, yes. So what I like about geocaching isaching is one the people who hide them can be like super clever about it the containers themselves are oftentimes like pretty clever a very common one is a film canister with like a magnet glued to it so you can stick it to the underside of like a metal table or something like that and it blends in so well so you have the coordinates on your phone that will get you in the general vicinity of where the thing is, and you will have a clue that will tell you where the thing is,

but it's up to you to actually find it. And sometimes they're really, really, really well hidden. So a long time ago, when people used to put film in cameras, it would come in a little pill-type container. Yes. And that is what a film canister is for our young listeners yes um the geocaching like app that is the like main one has a bunch of different sort of like ratings that you can do so it lets you know how many people have found a cache and then you can rate it for difficulty or accessibility if it's like hidden in like a wild hike that you have to do or climb a tree or something like that like i never fucked with those um what i really liked doing was just kind of like walking around the neighborhood opening up the app and seeing if there was anything close by that we

could go find and i feel like when i first moved to austin and you and i started dating and we would like go on walks around the neighborhood it was kind of a cool way to get to know the the neighborhood this was like pre-pokemon go for us yes and so it was like an activity you could do out in your own community uh that didn't cost you anything it had kind of an adventure element to it and that adventure element made it like my favorite thing to do outdoors for the year or so and it was like a thing that we were actively doing all the time maybe when henry gets a little bit older we will uh do it again but i feel like i feel like once you reach a certain age then you just want to play Pokemon Go.

But it's where I found out about Sparky Park, which is just like this cute little art park. Yeah, it's where we took our engagement photos. It's where we took our engagement photos, yeah. And there was also a very well-hidden cache there that took us a very long time to find. There are also virtual caches where people will plant QR codes that you can scan and then sign the virtual log on the app. There's also a whole game called Munzee that is basically geocaching with QR codes that you can print out and do the same thing. But it's scored. So if you hide one of these little QR codes, if someone finds it, you both get points.

And the points differ depending on how difficult it is. It's like a whole thing. But I just I like I like the idea of geocaching. I remember me and my family do a walk on Christmas Eve every year where we kind of just reflect on the events of the past the past year and the year where we were all super into geocaching. That walk went for like an hour and a half because we ping-ponged all around ironton at a certain point we just like got in the car and started to drive around we like rooted around a graveyard for like a half hour it was before i think any of us had children and so there was there was no urgency to there was very little urgency to the log now the walk

is quite brief uh especially when children are taken and get cold instantly. But yeah, I just think it's a cool, it's a fucking cool activity. Like it is something that I think about occasionally, even though we don't do it that often, but like if we're at a playground or, you know, it's not like we're going out to various public events at all these days, but back in the day, you know, it would be anytime we were out in a park or anything,

it would be just cool to open up the geocache app and see if we could find a treasure real quick. There's something very appealing. Yeah, for sure. You know what else is a treasure is when we do advertisements and we are paid. Can I steal you away? Yeah. Oh, the jumbotrons are here. They are.

Do you want to read the first one? Sure. This message is for Evan. It is from Sarah. Dear Shmev, I love you with all of my heart, and I can't wait to marry you in May. You are smart, funny, enthusiastic, caring, and the best partner anyone could ever ask for. I am so lucky to have you. I've been really nice to you throughout this message, so I'm going to roast you now.

Your farts smell like swamp cheese. Love, Scara. Yeah, that's gross. I don't know what to say else about it. I'm trying to picture what swamp cheese is. I mean, somebody else in this world got me to say fart on a recording. And that is an accomplishment in itself. I guess so. You really don't like that, huh?

You know, I grew up, you know, in Downton Abbey. So that's what informs my word choice. Yeah, I guess so. Here is a message for Adina. It's from Mike, who says, Adina, you are the most wonderful thing in my life. Every day I spend with you just gets better and better i love you so so much and i am so happy that we are building this life together love mike can't help but notice there is no mentions of farts or stinky cheese in this one some people you know they love out loud and they keep that love free of bodily functions.

Almond Joy's got nuts. Mounds don't. Something for everybody. Different strokes. Yeah. Hi, my name is Graham Clark, and I'm one half of the podcast Stop Podcasting Yourself, a show that we've recorded for many, many years. And at the moment, instead of being in person we're recording remotely

and uh you wouldn't even notice you don't even notice the lag that's right graham and uh the great thing about this go ahead no you go ahead okay okay go ahead and you can listen to us uh every week on maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts your podcasts can you tell me your second thing yes okay let her rip my second thing is a ball python that is 62 years young at the st. Louis Zoo. You love this snake. Yeah, sure. This big snake you love. There is a story attached to this snake that I find particularly charming. The snake got a name?

You know, didn't find it. Didn't find the name. Almost certainly has a name. I would assume so. I assume the zookeepers have an affectionate name for the snake. But that is not what I am featuring today. Okay. This 62-year-old snake laid some eggs this summer.

Okay. The snake hasn't been in contact with a male python in decades. And at 62 years old, may be the oldest snake to lay eggs on record. So wait, what? How did it happen? So there are some animals that can do asexual reproduction. Not as common in snakes, but it does happen. Sharks, birds, and lizards are the only vertebrates capable of reproducing this way.

They have not figured it out yet. They're doing some testing to find out how this came about. They just, they showed up and there were some eggs in there uh and two of the eggs were not viable uh two were taken for genetic sampling and the remaining three are being kept in an incubator and expected to hatch that's that's pretty cool uh-huh like i knew that that was a thing that could happen but i guess i didn't assume that like a thing as big as a ball python could do it. I've always thought about it being weird amoeba stuff, amoeba level shit. They say it's possible the female snake was storing the sperm and waiting to fertilize the eggs with it. Wowzers! it wowzers there is one male ball python at the zoo but is kept in a separate enclosure and the

snakes have not had physical contact since the 1990s what happened in the 1990s when they were like we gotta get these two fucking snakes apart it's possible the snake has been holding the sperm for decades just waiting waiting waiting until she felt ready, you know, to be a mother. Yes. And I respect that. Yeah. But also how incredible. It boggles the mind, doesn't it?

There's so much about this that boggles the mind, right? Like if that is the thing, we are no scientists or biologists i think that is fucking abundantly clear at this point but like sperm doesn't stay living like viable very long maybe in snakes it does unless we don't know but like there are certain environments if you just like drop some sperm on the ground like it's it doesn't that sperm is no longer good. But if you like put it in a special container. Or a snake. Or a snake, I guess it can just keep on.

For decades. For decades. That or this is an immaculate snake conception. So I was nervous about bringing this story. So I saw this story a few days ago. And I thought, oh no, has this been a hoax that has been uncovered and there is going to be a zookeeper that says oh yeah no i got those snakes together all the time okay i don't know it may still come out as of recording i have not seen an update to

the story okay i just googled the snake if it has a name and it doesn't she is identified by the number 361003 give the fucking snake and this snake is this snake just did a pretty remarkable thing i think if you can either immaculately conceive and or hold some sperm in your body for 30 years yeah you get a name you get to have a cool snake name uh these snakes are not on display to the public right now so you can't go check out these old snakes they belong in a museum i know well museums don't typically have living no probably um i love this i love you know those little miracles out in the world that you see even in these troubling times sure you gotta love that got to you You are required to love that. I also, I just, I love this old lady snake

just taking control of her body and making a decision for herself and her community when she's ready. So that is my wonderful thing. My second wonderful thing is, I feel like I haven't done like a part of a song yet or in a while, which I want to rectify right now. I want to talk about a specific part of a specific song. The song is If You Want Me to Stay by Sly and the Family Stone. And the part of it that I want to

really focus on is the bass line, which is the fucking freshest, best, my favorite bass line in a song ever, ever, ever. That was so good. I did not recognize the song by the title, but then once we got a few seconds in, I did. Yes. And I wish you all could have seen Griffin's face as we were listening to it. Yes, I just played Rachel a little snippet so she would remember the song that I'm talking about. You made some real guitar face. It was lovely.

It's the best bass line. It is. I love a good bass line it is in in there's i i love a good bass line a song it's like not an instrument that i think about it's not one that i've ever had like much interest in learning which is rare because i've had a lot of interest in learning a lot of other like weird instruments uh but the bass riff on this song is like this is my favorite slice song by a huge margin and i think think the baseline is the major determining factor for that decision. It was, if you want me to stay,

it was a 1973 single off of, I think the fifth album, sixth album from Sly and the Family Stone called Fresh. And it's one of their most well-known songs, right? It's probably just below like Everyday People is probably the best known Sly song. And Fresh, the whole album was written by sly stone over like two years uh and apparently at this point he was pretty tough to work with

like he was very um perfectionist um this song at one point was pretty much done and ready to like go on the album and sly stone trashed the master recordings and like started over with like a version like a different version apparently that original version like exists out there and it's like a very rare find uh and there have been several albums that have had different versions of this uh song but in every version the bass line rips ass so fresh and there's a riot going on which was the previous album from Sly and the Family Stone, were these super rhythm forward albums. Like the drum and the bass line on these songs was like the featured element, which was kind of rare for really all recorded music here in the early 70s. for really all like recorded music here in the early seventies.

Um, and you get that, like that rhythm forward focus so hard on, if you want me to stay, uh, the drum and bass is the first thing that you hear in the song. And it like permeates the whole thing. Uh, it's like smack dab,

right front and center, every other sort of like melodic element. Like there's some piano and some organ and, uh, some horns. Those are all like panned really far away and like much, much quieter than, than this bass and this drum machine. And it is, it is, they just stay the stars of the song the whole time. And I think that that is very, very cool. And it gives this song, it's like sort of memorable flavor. I'm going to actually like

put it in the show now so that our listeners at home can hear it. If you want me to stay, I'll be around today To be available for you to see I'm about to go And then you'll know for me to stay I got to be me. You'll never be in doubt, that's what it's all about. You can't take me for granted and smile.

I feel like that bass line launched like a million amateur bassists like into the profession. Because even though I don't have any interest in the bass you did see me trying to fucking lay it down because this song is so fun the bass line is very very syncopated uh and that provides like most of the rhythm to the song but you do get like in addition to that there's like occasional little funky like walking triplets that come in like it is uh such a simple thing right like it's not like the most complicated it's not like uh what is it uh you ought to know by elena smores that has like a wild like like all over the place baseline this one's like very

very straightforward but it is also like it because of its simplicity, the little variations on it are just so fucking fresh and good. Maybe that's why they named the album that. So Sly Stone was this prolific multi-instrumentalist who put down the bass on most of the other songs on Fresh. But for If You Want Me to Stay, the bass was played by Rusty Allen, who was a newcomer to the band. He played around with and kind of trained under the previous bassist,

who I can't remember their name. But he only played on two albums of Sly and the Family Stone and really left a sort of indelible impression on the bass instrument in general, just with this one performance. I did a bit of research on Rusty Allen. He started playing bass with bands living in Oakland when he was 12 years old. And he used to have to draw a mustache on his face with a pencil so that he

could play in bars and appear older than he was uh which is that's like two kids in a trench coat it very much it's yeah it's two kids in a trench coat playing the bass guitar yeah uh and rusty allen would go on to play with like george clinton and the temptations uh and had a i think he had like a jazz group of his of his own but this is like the best bass performance that he has that is like the most well known um i just think i think the sign of a good bass line is one that sounds fun to play like one that i spent a lot of time prepping this watching tutorials on youtube and it just like looks it looks fun to have your hands move across the instrument like that. I know that's like a weird thing. But now, like, especially once I started doing like research on this, I cannot hear this song anymore without thinking about like what that bass line would be like to play.

It's just so good. Yeah, I think maybe I should learn the bass. Oh, good. Yeah. I think maybe I should learn the bass. Oh, good. Basically, this whole segment was a backdoor, me trying to make it sound okay. I will let our listeners know that after talking about a hurdy-gurdy, Griffin has still not purchased a hurdy-gurdy, and I'm very impressed at his restraint. It's because it's a wildly expensive instrument. Bass guitar, I imagine I could get for a song. Yeah.

Hey, do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Hannah says, my small wonder is Gels Marble Runs League. It's an Olympic style event done entirely with glass marbles. There are 16 teams of different design marbles who compete in relay slash endurance style events. You become so invested so quickly, especially when you pick a team to follow more people should watch these with a global pandemic i would be okay if this is what sports became i watched a lot of these uh there's a three hour long compilation video of all the 2020 events

so far in the season and it's just like races and so are these like rube goldberg style setups um partially but most of it is like racetracks with like those little staircase things that care like mechanical staircase things that carry the marbles back up to the top or there'll be like a narrow track and they'll send like a team of marbles down it to see who can stay on the longest.

There's like different events, but there's a commentator for the whole thing who's like talking about how these things are good. It is, I clicked into it like, oh, this sounds weird. And then I watched like 40 minutes of it. I was like, oh shit, that was 40 minutes. Here's one from Daisy. Something I think is wonderful

is pictures of proud gardeners holding enormous vegetables they grew. Oh, this actually, I have a very specific family picture that I have kept for a very long time. Believe it is my mom's grandpa in overalls in a field holding a tomato the size of his head holy shit it's just this old black and white photo and i'm just so charmed by it that's delightful i was thinking more of the i feel like there are a lot i feel like gardening is top five things that people have gotten very into during quarantine.

The others being like baking sourdough bread and like skateboarding, I guess. And it is cool to like see people, even when it's like people I went to high school with that I have not talked to in 10 years, seeing them holding up like a big eggplant. I'm like, fucking good on you man yeah way to way to grow that's that's a great eggplant person i haven't talked to in 10 years who now harbors some troubling political beliefs that's a great eggplant credit where credit's due good eggplant though good eggplant i disagree with you and everything that you stand for uh and will not hesitate to let you know that but that that's a big eggplant, though.

Can I tell you about Bowen and Augustus who let us use our theme song, Money Won't Pay? Please tell me about it. Which you can find the link to in the episode description. Yeah. I just did. Okay. And thanks to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Thank you, Maximum Fun, for hosting our show.

So many great shows. I am going to recommend The jackie and laurie show yes uh but please please check out anything you want it's all free for your listening pleasure you do not need our permission um to listen to these shows because that would be wild uh anyway uh we're gonna oh looks like james Brown is throwing fireballs at us and we're levitating. So I do think we need to go do our concert. And I guess we'll, I don't know where tickets are.

We probably shouldn't be doing a concert. Yeah. And it'll be a virtual, we'll figure out the specifics a little bit later, but I'm floating away into the soul globe. So. Bye, Griffin. Yeah, I'll see you next time this really burns is it supposed to burn i think so Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay.

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