Wonderful! - Wonderful! 238: Wild Stories About Music Stuff

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

Rachel’s favorite beef song beef! Griffin’s favorite spaceship sound!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaTrans Youth Equality Foundation: https://www.transyouthequality.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, what's up? This is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. This is a show we talk about things that are good, things we like, things we're into. Uh-huh. Only the best for you, the cream of the crop. And you're hearing this from the past as we jet set across the globe on our way to- Slash country.

Slash country, which is part of the globe. True. As we make our way to our new home of Washington, D.C., the room where it happens. And we're so happy that you have chosen to be here with us right now on this special day. I'm just, see, the room where it happens, was it New York at the time? I was speaking sort of more, just sort of like um figurative i didn't know if we were like going direct hamilton like i guess it was in new york then well okay you're right the joke was bad and i should feel bad i think that's what the takeaway is this is gonna be a tough one i think this is

listen this is let's let's really put the tiger on the table and yell at it. Rachel and I have been embroiled in a, I would call it full-blown, it's not a battle because it's not two-sided, right? No. We have been just very, very- Under siege. Under siege from a contractor who will remain nameless in the Austin, in the greater Austin area. In the heating and cooling and plumbing and everything that can ruin your life. Department.

Yes. Who in the last two and a half weeks has broken our air conditioning, gone two weeks without repairing it, during which time there was complete radio silence, and then came in and installed a whole new system we had to pay for yesterday. And then today the ceiling is leaking because they didn't put it in right, and now they're giving us the runaround again. It is a level of rage that I'm unaccustomed to. Yeah. that I'm unaccustomed to. Obviously, I feel the same sort of like latent background rage that every, I think, sort of like online person feels all the time. But this is very concentrated and it's very focused.

And it's also, it's very toothless. There's like nothing we can, there's nothing we can do. Aside from leaving what I can only imagine will be a full-blown chemical warfare carpet bomb Yelp review. That will be my magnum opus. You know, back in the day, my parents used to write letters to the Better Business Bureau. I don't know if that's still on the table, but that is the thing that I would be willing to do. And I'm uncomfortable being that way because it's antithetical to the type of person I am and the type of vibe that I try to adhere to.

Yeah. But this fucking Yelp review is going to, I am going to get a fucking like Peabody Award or something for this Yelp review. They will publish it, a review in the New York Times. It'll get 100% good score and they'll write things like the rage of a generation.

I really, because of the level of stress we are experiencing currently given all the things that are happening for us that are monumental, it is an unfortunate time for somebody to come at us because we have like a very short amount of patience. But when it started leaking today, I had that feeling that the people in the medieval times

had where I just wanted to go burn their office to the ground. Which we would never do. Which we would never do. Which we would never do. But we're stressed enough as it is without having goddamn Marmaduke come into our house and just like kick a big bucket of paint fucking everywhere. Like we're trying to do some shit here. Stop breaking our shit, please. I'm begging you.

I've heard that this happens when you decide to sell a house. Like inevitably something will happen right before you like are ready to put it on the market yeah but i just i don't know i was kind of hopeful that it wouldn't be you know yeah this we it's obviously it's it's whatever it's small it's small deal in the grand scheme of things but it is uh there was a point a couple of weeks ago when we started dealing with this where we were like hey i just went over the top and you were like yeah i also just went over this ac thing has just pushed us just past that precipice of of stress so all that to say we're

fighting to keep it positive when griffin and i entered the studio um there were concerns i think but i am excited uh to get started and get in the positive space do you want to try like just as sort of an amuse-bouche do you want to give me a small wonder yeah i think we should do that okay uh i will say that uh as part of my farewell tour of austin last night i got to go see brandy carlisle at austin city limits which was so great it's such a nice like bookend like you and i have been lucky enough to see a few shows there yeah and i have been to a handful of tapings at this point uh and so it just felt like a real nice way to say like hey thanks austin there's a lot about this town that's good uh and i get to do one of those things and that was great i'm gonna say a cold shower after hot work yeah i don't know that i've

ever intentionally taken a cold shower i think this honest to god i think it has been being without air conditioning it gets sweltering hot in our uh bathroom uh because it's like not ventilated at all and so the sun shines in there through these big windows and just like turns it into a convection oven yeah uh and so like we've been working non-stop to get everything packed up and doing a bunch of like stuff outside today i hauled everything up from like our backyard into the into the garage and was just like the sweatiest freddie ever yeah i hopped in that shower turned it turned it right down to cold just for like 90 seconds just like a pretty short shower just a little scrub and go yeah and it was exhilarating what no i just i like i like i like that you had that solution for yourself

of pouring cold water on my body well and kind of you know getting your head back in the game after some tough work oh i mean it wasn't from like i know some people do it to get unhorny i guess that's never made sense to me that's not what i was suggesting oh okay i was saying you were doing some difficult physical labor. And I think a lot of people will be like, well, that's it for the day. And you're like, know what? Cold shower, right back at it. Yeah, except the it that I'm getting right back to is being grumpy on a telephone with a contractor and then sitting down and talking about good stuff with you, my beautiful wife.

Yeah. Do you want to do your thing? I do. And I want to kind of take you on my journey towards this topic. You keep quietly clapping with every word and I'm excited where it's going. Because typically what I would do is I would reveal my topic. Yes. And then I would go on to talk about it.

How, what other option is there instead i want to kind of take you on the journey and then have you help me decide what my topic is great because what happened was i started out with one topic and then at the end i got excited about the other topic i discovered during my research. So let's just start out. This is fucking fun already. Minute one. I'm going to say I wanted to look up the story behind ba-da-ba-ba-ba. I'm loving it.

The McDonald's? Yes. Okay. Yes. I think about how this is a real thread kind of through the McElroy comedy. Yeah. I have noticed. It is not uncommon to listen to a McElroy product and hear somebody reference this song.

And I will say, also, I have listened to a lot of other comedy podcasts and everybody does this. It's a funny way to say you like something. Yes. The very nature of like saying that you love something just kind of, I feel like, motivates. Why say I love the thing? Like, I watched Triple R last night. Why would I say I loved it versus I'm ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba loving it? Exactly.

It's way more fun to do the latter. It's fun. And it's difficult because it's not like I love that song as a piece of art. But I just like, there's something very satisfying about it. So I wanted to kind of find the story about it. Do you know anything about it? The ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba loving it? Yeah.

Of course not. So you like, like if I asked you who sang it first? Prince. Okay. Prince? We got a lot of work to do. So this is like, this is the longest lasting campaign that started in 2003. And you will still see this today in commercials on occasion.

I feel like you don't get as much of the ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba like acapella performance. It'll just say I'm loving it at the end. Yeah. Yeah. Or it'll just play like a little jingle like ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba with like a piano or something. Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. like with like a piano or something yeah okay so before that the longest running ad campaigns

1967 to 1971 was mcdonald's is your kind of place which i just i like as a slogan it's just like you would like to eat here i don't know that i've ever walked into any establishment and been like, this is my kind of place. My kind of place. 1984 and 1988 was, it's a good time for the great taste of McDonald's. Okay. Which, you know, okay. No, it sucks.

It's awful. Both of those are so terrible. So 2003, I think early 2000s when there really was a lot of mounting concern about fast food. And so a lot of fast food entities were trying to figure out how to get people back. And so McDonald's held a competition between 14 international ad agencies. And the firm that ended up winning was this tiny firm located in a Munich suburb in Germany. And the idea was Ich liebe es, which translates to I love it. And they were like, sounds great. Thanks, Germany. But hold on. Did the firm, did they also come up with the ba-da-ba-ba-ba? Or just the word,

literally the words, I love it? because that's not even it guys it was kind of so it was a combination of things so what ended up happening after i love it so mona davis uh as a like a music entity like helped deliver that that five note thing or whatever it is yeah yeah uh and then um once that was all packaged up that was when they brought in justin timberlake wait really yeah he did the original yeah not only did he do that this is what was kind of genius about it and this is not unusual for justin timberlake if you think about his properties. I'm Loving It was a full Timberlake song that was developed and released in advance of the campaign. This was a transmedia entertainment event is what you're telling me so mtv news in august 2003 reported that i'm loving it

uh was um leaked to the radio and internet and so he's going to release it this fall he partnered with the neptunes which was a duo of pharrell and chad hugo Hugo to produce the track and they developed a music video and then a three song I'm Loving It EP was released. In partnership with McDonald's or? No so this it was all part of the strategy like I mean the the start of it was McDonald's and the motivation was McDonald's. Yes. The start of it was McDonald's and the motivation was McDonald's.

Yes. When it was released, though, it was explicitly released as a Justin Timberlake property. So Steve Stout, who is a music industry veteran market executive who introduced McDonald's to Timberlake, described it as, quote, reverse engineering, where you would boost the credibility of a brand's message by first putting it in a pop culture form that isn't connected in any way to a brand and then uh and then promote it before the campaign and then start promoting the marketing slogan so there's like momentum with it and it feels like uh oh they got that hip new song in their commercial but they fed timberlake that like five note like yes ostinato yes that's fucking bonkers there's a whole music video you can find it online it's like him running around chasing this woman through new york and like well that's that's fucking menacing it's kind of menacing because it shows her like getting in and out of public transportation and him like racing to catch up with her. And every time she gets out of a subway car, he's like there.

Like, hey, it's me. Aren't you enticed? You gotta cut that out, Timbo. So this was huge. Timberlake got an estimated $6 million from McDonald's. If it just paid in like hamburgers or – you think? Just the dollar menu. Did Pharrell get his cut of Tasty Burgers or –

This is what's interesting. And so this has started leading me down a different path. Uh-oh. So there's a Pitchfork article that came out about the controversy which is you know i told you about like the german company and the german music house timberlake and all this so pusha t came out who was part of a rap duo at the time with his brother and said he was involved that he put together the but i'm loving it that like those notes and that whole initial concept that he was involved in it okay so everybody associated with mcdonald's kind of denied that said no no it's this it's this german

agency but steve stout that same marketing executive that I told you about earlier, gave an interview in 2016. And he said, quote, that's crazy that Pusha T wrote the song to McDonald's, I'm loving it. So he kind of like fed this fire and everybody was kind of like, wait, who is it? like wait who is it okay so part of what lends credibility to this is that timberlake's album justified was produced by the neptunes and uh the neptunes also produced the debut album from clips which was a duo comprising pusha t and Malice, which was his brother. So there's this kind of connection of like all these people are kind of working with the same people. And this idea that the Neptunes were involved with Timberlake and Pusha T kind of at the exact same time. There's this kind of suggestion.

So Pusha T has given interviews since then saying that he just got like a lump sum payout of like $500,000 and that was it. And but nobody will nobody on McDonald's side will validate those claims. So the reason all this became interesting, especially to me, is that very recently, as of 2022, there is an Arby's commercial. Oh, God. Called Spicy Fish Dis. It has Pusha T taking aim at McDonald's Filet-O-Fish. Fantastic. It's all full circle.

And so there are lyrics in there basically suggesting that he created the I'm loving it song but now he's coming out to do this thing on behalf of McDonald's so I wanted to share this short clip with you oh please I'm the reason the whole world love it. Now I gotta crush it. Filet-O-Fishers, then you should be disgusted. How dare you sell a square fish asking us to trust it? A half slice of cheese, Mickey D's on a budget? Arby's crispy fish is simply it. With lines round the corner, we might need a guest list.

Eggs at stage left, the sandwiches taste fresh. A little cube of fish from a clown is basic say less this argument is baseless drowned and tarted that baleo fish is tasteless see arby's only deals in the greatness i bet the house on it like it's vegas look i could sell water to a whale how could you ever think i'd fail yeah the crispy fish sandwich blazing trails That is an official? The Unparalleled Arby's. Well. Okay, that's the one I wanted to play.

I guess there's multiple versions of this out there. That is, this is a wild, wild, wild, wild romp that you've taken in today. Is there more to the romp? No, that's what I wanted to kind of highlight i understand why you had trouble sort of putting it into words yeah right so like that became more interesting to me yeah i would say to summarize initially the like the justin timberlake which actually ended up going on to be performed by destiny's child what the fuck so 2003 timber lake does it apparently he told gq in an interview that he regrets doing that deal and then a year later destiny's child i regret my six million dollars i got for the hamburger song

so yeah so then all of a sudden when i discovered this controversy and then discovered push a tease the arby's diss track which like then made me think like should i call this wonderful thing the fish sandwich wars no god don't do not start that that's not no that's not what it is this is a celebration of music uh at the end of the day is what it is. Hey, can I steal you away? Yes. Got a couple plumb bobs here for you. And I would love to read the first one if I may, because it is for future micah and maybe grace and it's from past micah who says

howdy future micah and maybe grace it's past micah here to haunt you happy birthday hope being 26 is going okay and that paying for health insurance is sufficiently offset by finally seeing mcr grace if you're listening and even if not i love you and can't wait to be married to the most wonderful woman in the world. Remember, fear is the mind killer. That's a really romantic deployment of the Dune thing. Did you remember that's from, we watched Dune together, yes? No. Oh.

No, I was trying to figure out what MCR is. Oh, well, what did you land on before I tell you the correct answer? The Marvel Cinematic Reboot. figure out what mcr is oh well what did you land on before i tell you the correct answer the marvel cinematic reboot yes uh the marvel cinematic reboot they're doing spider-man again um do you want the next one oh it's my chemical romance oh thank you welcome. See, I know about that stuff because I'm kind of a scene-ster. This next message is for Alyssa, Ben, anyone that can relate. It is from Alyssa. Fuck yes.

I like this. I do too. What a nice, what a generous way to use your jumbotron. So kind. Just like anyone that can relate. Breakups hurt and are not so wonderful, but listening to Rachel and Griffin has inspired me to look for love like theirs. I hope anyone that hears this jumbo bubbly

is blessed with love success like theirs. And forever sending love to my kitties, Harold, Maggie, and Coco. Y'all are the best. That is phenomenal. Sorry to hear about the breakup, but you do deserve so much better so much better it's true i like a blessing in a jumbotron yeah that's sort of i think that's going to be the hot

thing for the rest of 2022 it's just a sort of like hi listeners this isn't for any particular person but today you will have extraordinary luck and if a stranger asks for help give it to them because you might just form a soul connection wow yeah i want to more talk about the fact that uh do you ever feel like we fooled everybody when they comment on our love like maybe like if they really knew us oh if they really knew how we did when the cameras aren't rolling and the and the shit gets so real y'all the other day there's a lot of no you a lot of no you do it it's dude uh-huh um what happened the other day oh well you know the the meatballs uh-huh you remember what you know, the meatballs. You remember what happened with the meatballs?

I made them in the microwave for our little son and he ate them real fast. No, the big meatballs that I made for both of us. And you let one roll. And I said, this is too spicy. Yeah. And then I cried for about 45 minutes. I can't even joke about our love not being real. It hurts my heart to even do a make pretend of it.

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 week on MaximumFun.org.

Or wherever you get your podcasts. Your podcasts. Hi, it's me, Dave Hill, from before. Here to tell you about my brand new show on Maximum Fun, the Dave Hill Good Time Hour, which combines my old Maximum Fun show, Dave Hill's podcasting incident, with my old radio show, the goddamn Dave Hill Good Time Hour, which combines my old Maximum Fun Show, Dave Hill's podcasting incident, with my old radio show, the goddamn Dave Hill Show, into one new futuristic program from the future.

If you like delightful conversation with incredible guests, technical difficulties, and actual phone calls from real-life listeners, you've just hit a street called easy. I'm also joined by my incredible co-host, the boy criminal Chris Gersbeck. Say hi, Chris. Hey, Dave. It Chris Gersbeck. Say hi, Chris. Hey, Dave. It's really great to- That's enough, Chris. And New Jersey chicken rancher, Des. Say hi, Des.

Hey, Dave. The Dave Hill Good Time Hour. Brand new episodes every Friday on Maximum Fun. Plus, the show's not even an hour. It's 90 minutes. Take that, stupid rules. We nailed it. This episode's starting to feel a little bit like a Mental Floss article, but I'm okay with that.

Because I want to talk about the theremin. And this is sort of a spiritual sequel to my vocoder segment that I did like two episodes ago. I prepped this and was like, why does it sound kind of familiar and it's because i also did a very sort of uh uh kitschy synth uh very very recently yeah i thought we had talked about a theremin too we've not talked about the theremin and i'm glad we haven't because there's a lot of buck wild shit in the story of the theremin i believe that i believe that because the concept and the execution of it like all of it is so unreal. Yeah. Buckle up. So the theremin is, if you don't know, it's and you probably do. It's an electronic instrument. You play it without touching it. It's sort of the big the headline. It's an instrument that you play when you need something to sound like scary or a spaceship. Basically, it's it's a very.

That's a very succinct description. If you need a musical instrument that evokes it's a ghost or it's a spaceship, the theremin is where you go for that. And I appreciate the sort of specificity there. You control a theremin with two inputs that you control by holding your hands in proximity to two antennae. One of the antennae, it controls the pitch, where the closer you get to the antenna, the higher the pitch of the note gets. And then there is a volume antenna that the further your hand gets away from it, the louder the note gets, which is like almost a sort of reverse polarity, I think, of the other one,

which is, there's a lot of reasons why the there I think, of the other one, which is there's a lot of reasons why the theremin is kind of difficult to play. I forget who said the quote, but there was a quote about why the theremin's difficult to play, and it's that you not only play the notes, you have to play the rests because you can't just drop your hand

because then it just plays the notes. So you have to like, you're always moving. You are always articulating by sort of like shaking your hand to get like vibrato effect. And it's a very difficult instrument to master. Also, I feel like all of those kind of like instruments that, you know, how a guitar has a fret, like frets on and a piano has keys. you get into like trombone violin territory where it's like not there's not like little things that you can touch to show you what notes you're playing like it gets harder and theremin doesn't have anything for you to touch while playing it so that's that's that's you know

challenging and i appreciate that i also appreciate that it's just instantly recognizable when you hear a theremin in a song like there is no confusion of like what it is that you are hearing uh and and i also do love that it is a very genre instrument like you don't hear it in in a lot of pop songs uh but if you know you're listening to a horror sci-fi movie soundtrack you're way more likely to hear it on on that uh the history of the instrument is what i really want to dial into because I think it's more interesting than the instrument itself. The theremin evolved

from Soviet experimentation with proximity sensors, like for military purposes. There was this electrician and inventor, I don't know why I said the word that way, this inventor named Lev lev sergeevich terman uh and he is the first person who adapted the uh proximity sensor technology into a musical

instrument all the way back in 1919 uh so the theremin is much older than i think a lot of people uh appreciate so he took this weird musical instrument and he toured Europe with it, just kind of like on a, like almost like a technological showcase. He went around showing it to people and people were kind of blown away because it was, it made music and you didn't touch it. That's, you know, in the, in the, the roar in twenties, a pretty wild concept. I think it's still kind of a wild concept today. Yeah. And, and so like people were really fascinated by it. And then he moved to the U.S. in 1928 where he was able to patent the invention.

The name, well, he changed his name around that time to Leon Theremin. So Lev Sergeyevich Terman became Leon Theremin. And that is where the name of the instrument comes from. Oh, okay. It's his name. So he sold the commercial production rights to RCA, and they went into production on it, but they started selling it during the stock market crash of 1928. So it didn't really set the world on fire, but it still had this very niche place in the hearts of like touring musical performers and so despite the fact that like it didn't become an instrument that a lot of people owned it was an instrument that a lot

of people were like built a career around touring and performing with uh which is it's super unique uh and uh after world war ii it pretty much fell completely out of fashion as a musical instrument too, but it wasn't completely forgotten because in the 50s, it went from being this like musical fascination for musical performers and became more of a technological fascination for like electronics enthusiasts and whenever you have that crossroads of like electronics enthusiasts and music enthusiasts is robert moog who did indeed sort of get dirty with theremins as well he actually credits like the things that he learned by building his own theremins with like the work that he would then go on to pioneer with music synthesizers. He actually started selling build your own theremin kits to consumers to sort of like really capitalize on the like electronics nerd aspect of it where it wasn't just like,

here's the instrument, go play it. Here's a, it was, here's a big box of parts. Now build the theremin out of it, which is still like kind of part of the, the theremin allure today. Like you can buy one at a guitar center, right, and get it out of the box. But there's a lot of companies that just like sell you a box of theremin parts and then it's up to you to kind of like construct it. And that's like inarguably pretty rad.

It is still, you know, obviously a very niche thing uh but it has been featured prominently in a lot of soundtracks like all the way back to like the 60s uh the original soundtrack for the the original the day the earth stood still was lousy with theremins uh first man the the freaking uh oh shit i can't remember anything about it's about the first man on the moon and it had drive in it the man from drive you know at first man on the moon it had drive in it um most recently loki the disney plus uh show that came out had theremin all over it and that soundtrack for that show is like so good um and that's all well and good leon theremin's story from when he licensed the rights of rca uh and and then on into the future is even more wild so in

1938 he returned to the soviet union under mysterious circumstances uh and the reason for his return is like debated. There were reports that he had been essentially kidnapped by Soviet agents and, you know, repatriated back to the Soviet Union. He would later go on to say that he had just run into significant financial issues in the United States that he was sort of eager to evade. financial issues in the United States that he was sort of eager to evade. But he was imprisoned when he returned to the Soviet Union, and he was put to work in like a secret gulag lab on like radio technology. Specifically, he was working on creating espionage, like listening devices. And he made maybe the most famous listening device uh in in history which

is called the thing have you ever heard of this no i hadn't either it is a like large wood carved version of the great seal of the united states with the eagle holding the arrows and all that jazz uh and in 1945 uh soviet school children this, the thing, this wood carved seal to the Soviet U.S. ambassador. And it hung in his office in plain sight for seven years during like the origins of the Cold War, just like recording and transmitting everything. That is wild then you know it's like something we were watching the americans for a while yeah then i was just like kind of like oh this is a clever device for a television show but like that was that was real life that was happening and honestly like there's a lot about how like bugs and stuff were portrayed in that show that like

kind of is is true i feel like because it the the thing was discovered by accident there was just some like british radio officer who was like dialing into some frequency and was getting these this this signal from this bug uh and so they found it after like a sweep of all of the ambassador offices uh which i imagine then kick-started whole new echelons of paranoia. So yes, the guy who invented the theremin, the weird instrument that you don't touch, also invented the most infamous espionage device maybe in the history of the Cold War.

Yeah, I thought that was really cool too. Anyway, this whole thing has been cool stuff. Thanks for listening to cool stories, wild stories about music stuff. This is kind of like an episode that like starts out about one thing and becomes another thing. It's like a, oh gosh, what's it called?

Like a metamorphosis, let's say. Yeah, like a transfiguration. There you go. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for a theme song, Money Won't Pay. Find a link to that in the episode description.

And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. MaximumFun.org is where you can go to check out just all kinds of great programming. There's lots of other stuff. McElroyMerch.com's got all our merch. Bit.ly slash McElroyTours

for our upcoming shows. We got some in Detroit and Cincinnati and D.C. and maybe a couple other places. But that's it. No episode next week as we complete our eastward migration. Hopefully. Have you thought about all the time zones that we're going to cross in the next few weeks?

It's going to be pretty fucked up. It's going to be brutal, I think. It's not going to be. But in some ways, that sort of like muscle confusion might be a good way for us to adjust back well for me back to eastern time my home time of eastern time i've never lived outside of central time this is gonna be wild for me all these east coast people they stay up so late they stay up so late and we move fast baby all this text all these texts

I've been living with for these past this past decade it's just been like come on guys hurry up I'm on eastern time over here

I'm eastern time hey hey money MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.