WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1520 - Thurston Moore

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Sonic Youth founding member Thurston Moore is not just an influential figure in the evolution of Noise Rock and the no-wave art scene. He’s a chronicler of subversive music and other forms of artistic expression, as detailed in his memoir Sonic Life. Thurston talks with Marc about living on the Lower East Side in the ‘70s and ‘80s and the people who were part of the scene, including Patti Smith, The Ramones and Thurston’s future bandmate and wife Kim Gordon. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca. All right, let's do this. How are you? What the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucksters? How's it going? I'm Mark Marin. This is my podcast. I'm waking up. I'm barely awake. I'm in Providence, Rhode Island. Yeah, Providence, where are you? What's going on? Where are you waking up? At home? I'm out here, man.

I'm out in it. I'm looking at the gray day, the wet gray day out of the window here in Providence, Rhode Island. It brings me back, people. So look, I am obviously not home. I am recording this on Sunday. So I don't know what happened last night at the Oscars. And for some reason this year,

it feels more important than other years. To me, I wish I was watching it, but I'm gonna be doing a show in Tarrytown, which is pretty exciting. These shows have been great Honestly, just great. I you know, I talked to many of the Oscar nominees and I think it's a good bunch of movies. I'm excited that Kimmel is hosting. It should be funny I'll have to watch it after the fact. I guess I could maybe live, maybe I could do a live simulcast and we could all watch it in Terry Town on my phone during my set. I'll just check in

with it occasionally. I don't know if that's what I'm gonna do. I do think, I do think a couple of the people I talk to might win. It's funny. I'm up here, oh by the way, Thirst and More is on the show today. Now this is, this is one of those ones where it's pretty specific. He's a founding member of Sonic Youth. Rolling Stone ranked him as one of the greatest guitarists of all time and he just released his memoir last year, Sonic Life. Now I've interviewed him many years ago before When I had a radio show in LA. I was not happy. It was late at night. I didn't know enough about Sonic Youth I thought it was uncomfortable talking to him. I felt like he he thought I was an idiot

So that's what I was bringing to the table today or when I did this I had to I had to make sure I was up to speed. I like Sonic Youth Enough. There's a lot of records, man, and I like that world of music enough, but I don't know much about it. I interviewed Kim Gordon a couple years ago, and I read her book and talked to her about New York in that era and about Sonic Youth and about music in general. But also with Thurston, I had to kind of really engage with the arc of that sound and what they invented and how they changed music. But his book is kind of great

because for at least the first hundred or so pages, it's really just his experience coming into New York City at that time in the 70s. You know, the later 70s, mid to late 70s as a teenager and what was going on in music in New York was just, you know, spiraling down. It was broke. It was kind of gnarly. And that's where all that sort of music of the 70s happened in terms of the beginning of punk, you know, the Ramones and New York Dolls and the Heartbreakers and Verlaine and Patti Smith.

And then it moved into, you know, what he became part of, which was no wave music. And this is sort of a blind spot for me historically. You know, you know things, you kind of hear things, you put things together in your own mind about this stuff. But that book is very clear and very personal about what New York felt like at that time, which is a very specific time.

And what happened in those few years was kind of incredible musically, but he really kind of makes all the connections with all the people of that time. And for me, it was great. And also, I'm glad I read it before I talked to him because I could be more specific But this time with Thurston we had we had kind of a great conversation. It was it was pretty fun and He was in good spirits, you know, he had some health issues He's he's through them and it's's a unique, rare conversation with a guy

that was very important in rock and roll. Rock and roll history, the sounds, man. So my tour continues later in March. I'm in Atlanta, Georgia at the Buckhead Theater on Friday the 22nd, Boise, Idaho at the Egyptian Theater Saturday, March 23rd at Comedy Fort It's part of the Tree Fort music Fest Madison, Wisconsin bearing more theater Wednesday, April 3rd Milwaukee, Wisconsin Turner Hall Ballroom on Thursday April 4th

I'm at the Vic in Chicago Friday, April 5th Minneapolis at the Pantages Theater Saturday April 6th Austin, Texas at the Paramount That's Thursday April 18th as part of the Mo the Paramount. That's Thursday, April 18th as part of the Moontower Comedy Festival. Montclair, New Jersey on Thursday, May 2nd at the Wellmont Center. Glenside, Pennsylvania, it's the Philly area Friday, May 3rd at the Keswick.

And Washington, DC on Saturday, May 4th at the Warner Theater. You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour for tickets. I will also be announcing new tour dates and locations tomorrow so check my social media pages for presale announcements. Oh my god. Hey you know it's almost springtime people which means it's time for spring cleaning but spring cleaning doesn't just stop with your house or your yard or your car it's a great time to spruce up your online presence. Even if it feels like you just updated your house or your yard or your car. It's a great time to spruce up your online presence.

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filthy smart comic. It's, you know, what a relief. I didn't know her. I met her at a record store in LA. She was a friend of Sharpling. She said she did stand up and like, all right, and then I needed an opener. And so now we're doing it.

We're driving around for hours in a rental car, spending a lot of time together, but she's very smart, very funny, creative person. So it's been pleasant, pleasant and good, learning new things, listening to new music, you know how it goes. But the show important was great. We drove down to Medford, down to Boston. And right when we got there, my buddy Ed Thill, he's got a bagel place, Goldilocks Bagels,

right in Medford, where we were doing the show. We got there at 12.30. He was closed, but he's been working on making these kind of Sicilian style pizzas. So he said, just come by a shop and knock on the back door. We'll have some pizza. So we drive into Medford. We're at the bagel place, walking in the back,

eating pizza, maybe a vegan pizza. He's a guitar guy showing me an SG. This is all happening. This is life. This is how it goes. You get pizza like it's a drug deal. Hung out there for a bit, then went back into Cambridge, checked into the hotel, went out to the Boston Commons,

walked around, beautiful day, nostalgic. This is the road. This is the life. This is, it's actually fucking amazing. The life is fucking amazing because I am engaged in the world. Thank God. Had a nice time, did the show at Medford,

1600 seats sold out, excellent, Chevalier Theater was awesome, was awesome. Great show, one for the ages. Thank God. Next day, I left my charger at the theater. It's, I think part of my life is to redistribute chargers at venues across the country and hotel rooms. Why not just leave a charger for the next guy?

That was a good charger though. But I woke up, looked up an Apple store and there was one 300 feet away from me. How often does that happen? Where you just, you know, like, I gotta get this fucking thing. I don't know where I'm gonna have, oh, God, what? I'm in the Apple store. That's where I'm sleeping, worked out.

And the whole day sort of unfolded pretty well. Drove down here to Providence. There's a place called Plant City, which is like a vegan food hall in Providence. Insane, insane. Had a vegan Rubin. Not quite enough fake corn befond it, but it was good. These massive onion rings ate a plate of onion rings and then needed to nap in sort of a coma-like state before the show. Nothing like loading up on fried food and

bread before you have to do an hour and a half show. I did go over to Empire Music though. That did happen. I did go over to Empire Music, you know, and I was just hoping, hoping with all my heart that they, they did not have a guitar I wanted. I know that's weird. It's like you ride that edge where you're sort of like, you know, I don't need any more guitars.

I want to get rid of guitars, but I kind of want this guitar. And if they have it, because I did sell out the show the night before and I deserve something, right? I'll probably buy it and you get there and you're like, thank God, no old guitars that I want that I don't need. The big awards for movies and acting

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my buddy Dean, Dean Falcone from over there in New Haven, the pizza guy, the guy who hooks me up with pizza and music of different kinds. He told me that Pepe's Pizza, that's one of the New Haven pizzas, is actually doing a, introducing the Paul Giamatti pie, but it's only on Sunday, March 10th, but that's Pepe's New Heaven, and New Heaven.

Wow, they're gonna love that, New Haven, and it's got a little picture of Paul holding a pizza. He doesn't know that, but I did text it to him. I texted, I said, I hope you snag that thing tonight, the Oscar, but if you don't, you know you'll always have this, the Paul Giamatti Pie at Pepe's in New Haven, Connecticut. Okay, look, Thirst and Moore, this was kind of an amazing interview. If you're interested in music and modern music in New York City and Sonic Youth and Patty Smith in that whole era. It was a joy to talk to him. Sonic Life and Memoir is now available wherever you get books

and it's a good read. This is me talking to Thurston Moore. Calgary is a city built by innovators. Innovation is in the city's DNA. And it's with this pedigree that bright minds and future thinking problem solvers are tackling some of the world's greatest challenges from right here in Calgary. From cleaner energy, safe and secure food, efficient movement of goods and people, and better health solutions, Calgary's visionaries

are turning heads around the globe, across all sectors, each and every day. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look how at CalgaryEconomicDevelopment.com. So, okay, so we did, I'll tell you what happened. We met, was probably 2007. I think it was the release of, I don't know, which solo record? What would that have been? Well, for me, it could have been 2007.

Two thousand, uh, Trees Outside the Academy. Yeah. Then, and then, because Sonic Youth was still in business in 2007. Well, I feel like it was a solo record. Yeah. And I was hosting a show at KTLK late at night. It was a disaster. I was not happy.

And you came in as a guest. And I remember I felt like I immediately offended you because of my lack of knowledge about, you know, sort of noise rock. Oh, okay. Now, because the only thing that I could bring up for some reason was my bloody Valentine, and you were just sort of like, well, all right. Yeah, I mean, well no, I'm not saying you were wrong.

No. You know, but I didn't have Sonic Youth or you in a proper perspective. You weren't going deep into like the noise rock cannon. I was not, no, I didn't know anything it and I and I didn't get up to speed But I'll be honest with you so I've read this is funny because I I've read a lot of the book Yeah, and I'm literally right around the part where you meet Kim so spoiler alert. I heard you you start a band, right? Yeah exactly

I heard you, you started band, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. But it's great because this time I'm well versed in all of it. Well, you certainly, if you got to that part, you kind of can see like where we're at as far as like wanting to sort of employ a noise guitars and... But what I was fascinated with, because I lived in New York I Guess I got down there. I was second between a and b 89

So it was done Really by the time I got there Yeah, I mean it was definitely heading into high real estate territory right time beginning Yeah, the 90s really get yupped out. Right. Around that area. Because like when I was there, you still had the kind of ongoing homeless flea market, you know, from like fourth all the way to Tompkins Square. I was there when the ban shell came down.

Yeah. The squatter protests. People selling stuff on cardboard on the street. Oh yeah, all kinds of. All day, every day. Yeah, appliances that you hadn't seen in a while. Things you didn't know what they did. Yeah, things from the back of your friend's car who was visiting you the day before.

The night before. But I thought what was great about sort of leading up to what you became was that there was... You're five years older than me. So the difference between being 15 and in 73 and 15 and 76 music wise is big. Oh yeah. And people who are five years older than me. Yeah.

And then they were in New York from like 71. Right. They kind of, they made that transition from wherever they came from. Right. Because most people in our scene who come to New York, you come to New York, the ones who grew up in New York are rare or you're part of a different scene. Yeah.

Punk music in New York was never really that indigenous. Hardcore punk was more indigenous. It was like kids coming out of Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx, what have you. But Manhattan, like the kids were coming out of art school. Well, that was what was cool. And also like, you know, going back to where you grew up and stuff that all the way through the book, you know, despite whatever your feelings were about the music you grew up with or even the music that was going on around you in New York that you kind of moved past is that you yourself always refer to wanting to be in a rock and roll band.

Yeah, definitely. So the idea that rock and roll, that you had to almost come around to it after the period of art. I guess so. I mean, to me, punk rock was experimental rock and roll music, you know, because the Ramones were a straight up rock and roll band, you know, because he's had the Ramones were a straight up rock and roll band, but they were kind of high concept.

Okay. You know, there was like this, there was this total idea behind it that was very artful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, dressing it the same, taking the same last name. Right. You know, Patty Smith was like a, you know, she was a poet and a painter as well as it

being a vocalist and a lyricist and, you know, and a performer, you know. And it's just like, so you always have the sense that arch was part of the rock and roll thing. But you sort of had these intellectual types on the same stage as these kind of street rockers like Johnny Thunder. Right, sure. And that collaboration to me was always fascinating. And that always, for me, is what defined whatever that was, punk rock, etc. So Malcolm McLaren with the Sex Pistols.

He's like a university educated provocateur, and he has these ideas. It's a brand manager. Yeah, and so he's like, oh, let's have a band represent the store, wouldn't that be cool? And a band that's sort of like what I saw in New York or around like Richard Hell and New York Dolls. What could that be? It's like, well, how about the kids who come in here and rip shit off?

Right. You know, like Steve Jones and Sid Vicious. Let's get them to be like the representatives. That would be so cool, like the street rats. So that collaboration between this kind of high-mindedness and this kind of street vibe, that to me was like really, that was really curious. There was a certain kind of blurring of class distinction or at least a coming together, you know,

that was really exciting and it created fireworks. But what was exciting, what was interesting to me is that you're coming, you know, you primarily grew up in Connecticut. So you had that proximity. And I mean, your dad was a music guy. My dad was a music guy and he was an education guy. Mom was a homemaker.

But you know I was sort of living in rural Connecticut and I was attracted to everything you know whether it was kind of like dumb rock kiss or if it was like kind of like this is kind of more like smarty pants music like Genesis or something. Yeah. Or yes. You talked about it. The problem all, it was a real problem with yes. Yeah. The problem with yes. Just say no to yes.

But that was happening when you were a kid. I like that there's, you know, I did this, I do this sometimes I just wanted to be up to speed but there's this point where your mind is kind of changing and you're spending time in New York and then you go back home to the towny world. I mean, you had that one friend who was with you and your partner in car, Harold. Harold. Yeah, but still you'd go back

and then somehow you get caught up with some, like Nairdoo well. Yes. And you still like, you know, you still got to deal with Aerosmith. You still got to deal with KISS. Yeah. And you liked him. I liked him.

And I liked the idea of trouble. Trouble was rocket roll to me. Right. It was on the edge. You're kind of like fucking the system a little bit. Sure. Did you watch Keith's cover of I'm Waiting for My Man? I did.

And? It's amazing. Right? Beautiful. It's great. Beautiful, really genuine. Yeah, I've watched you like four or five times Yeah, and in like who else deserves that song more than him Exactly exactly as long as I've Lou had written that for like Keith Richards You know and the weird thing is is that Keith I guess he gets credit

I mean certainly through Johnny Thunders and and and those guys in the New York dolls But I ended up in a rabbit hole where I'm watching the Stones at the Marquis Club in 71 doing Midnight Rambler. And Keith looks like he's about to die. And he's so raw and weird. I don't know, do you think he gets the amount of credit he deserves? He transcends everything in the history of rock and roll music. You know, even like when punk rock starts happening in 76

and it's just like drawing a line and a wall, anything that happens before, very few people before that can actually sort of be accepted. And it's certainly, the stones funnily enough are accepted only because of Keith. Of course. You know, of course Iggy and Bowie and Mark Bowlin. Right.

Yeah, yeah. These guys are okay. They're safe, you know. But without, with... They define so much of what's going on. But Keith always did. Look at Patty. She, she totally cut her hair just like Keith Richards.

Right. And also, I don't think the New York Dolls know how to dress without the Stones. Exactly. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But like, I like the idea that you were open-minded enough, New York dolls who know how to dress without the stones. Exactly. Right? Yeah. But like I like the idea that you were open-minded enough.

And I think this is important history, heading into what becomes Sonic Youth is that, what was going on in New York when I get there in 89 was just the fumes of what you live through. In a way. Yeah, 89 is weird because you're transiting into the 90s. In the 90s is when we start getting like kind of big major label and then we start getting this profile.

And of course, the nova of Nirvana is never mind and like what is it? 91, 92. They owe complete debt to you. I mean, I think literally, right? Didn't you broker that deal somehow? Yeah. But yeah, but everything changes there. It's a different world.

But I think downtown New York City in 89, I mean, it's still kind of interesting. When I was doing this book, I had to do a lot of research in library. Into you? Yeah, into my, yeah. Now I had to go to the library and get microfiche. Microfiche, really, still around?

It's still around. Well, I've liked the Village Voice and stuff. Yeah, but it's dusty and musty. Yeah. And I had to go to a, there was only one library in the United States that had the entire run of the Village Voice on microfilm. Where was that? It was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Wild. Yeah, I was calling like New York Public Library. You know, it's during the pandemics, a lot of libraries are closed, but the ones that answer were like, you know, it's criminal, but we don't have digital on these closed, but the ones that answer were like, you know,

it's criminal, but we don't have digital on these. Florida wasn't closed, did you go down there? Well, Florida was not closed. I know Florida, you know, the only reason I went to Florida is because Florida needs all the love they can get. I guess. Your bigger man than me. I just canceled three dates there.

I'm like, fuck it. Well, Miami, I'm sort of down in Miami. And Miami is just like New York City. It doesn't really represent anything except for itself. That's true, that's true. It's very unique. And you have roots there, don't you? I was born in South Miami, so yeah,

my family was all around South Miami and Coral Gables and Kelo MacGrow. Still? Anybody? Few people. Oh really? A few people. So I went down there to help with my mother

when she was passing and she had a rental house down there. And I kind of took it over. And my wife, Eva, fell in love with it. So you kept it? And I was like, you can't really sell Miami to anybody, but if somebody falls in love with it, God bless them. And I was like, it's in my DNA already. When I go down there, it's like the iguanas

and the lizards come out and I'm like, yeah, I'm home, baby. But it's also kind of a noise underground scene in Miami that's really intense. Now? Yeah, there's a guy there called Rat Bastard who's been there. He's as old as I am. He was born in 58. And he's always been sort of like one of the main practitioners of like really underground noise music. And he puts on the International Noise Conference every year in Miami. Oh, I think I've heard of that. Yeah. So hundreds of people show up and you can only play for 15 minutes, no laptops and usually

no synthesizers. Oh, just heavy equipment. Just whatever you want to do as far as like making like an unbridled noise. And in Miami, the noise people down there are kind of more insane than the rest of the world. They're really into like taking their clothes off and running out into the street and jumping on top of cop cars and with like microphones strapped to their jettles and stuff. Important stuff.

Well, sounds pretty cool, you know. Somebody's got to do it. I think that I have to like remember that that's sort of what it's about is that, you know, there is, you know, with what you're describing certainly in the book at the time, the sort of schism between, you know, what you see is these dirty punks that eventually just sort of become the tropes they were mocking. And the artists is that, you know, even when it comes to noise or Glen Bronca, right, that there is a lofty element to it, that you believe

you're witnessing art. Well, I mean, somebody like Glen Bronca was, he was really like intensively studying like radical ideas of composition that had come before him. Yeah. You know, and so he was very well versed in it. And he, and, but a lot of it was all about being self taught in a way. Right.

You know, or coming out of some other discipline. I mean, he was coming out of, Glenn Brackett was coming out of like, like experimental theater, like in the early to mid seventies, you know. In New York? In Cambridge, Massachusetts, coming down to New York. But then seeing suicide on a vague on stage,

standing there, like twitching as if he was just coming out of some kind of Vietnamese psychosis kind of hospital thing on stage and with a leather jacket that was ripped down the side where the arm is just hanging off. And Martin Rev is like playing like this super high volume kind of cheapo beatbox. To him that was theater. It sounds great too, but he really got into... That had a big impact on you. Yeah, he got into this idea of like the electric guitar, like being this instrument that can create these really magisterial pieces of like noise music.

Glenn did. Yeah. Glenn did. And then he got involved with other people who were more seriously involved with that kind of music like Reese Chatham or other really marginal kind of musicians like Charlemagne Palestine. Yeah. But you were just a kid, right?

When you moved down there really. I was a teenager. I mean, I moved there in 78. I was, I mean, I was, I was 20 and 78. So it was kind of- You started going down in your teens. Kind of getting hair on my chin. Yeah.

But I started going down there when I was like 17, 18. And it's the late 76 is like when I first went. But like, what was it? Because like when, like like 17, 18. And it's the late 76s, like when I first went. But like, what was it? Because like when, like for me, like I know a lot of the references and I know, I don't know that particular scene in terms of no wave. But you know, just the idea that you were open-minded enough or you were, or that, you know, I was a bit too, but you more so were still, you know, the things that we were judging Ardon and what was cool was still sort of post-Beatnik stuff, right? So, you know, just the fact that, you know, Verlaine changed his name for a reason, you knew Palt Paddy's love of Rambo, and this is stuff that, you know, I don't know, I don't know if anyone knows about that stuff anymore. But I was reading about it. There's

magazines, there's Rock Mags. And they were at the local supermarket. They weren't that hard to find. Cream. Cream especially. And then even more kind of had a more commercial profile was like circus. Yeah, yeah. Sure. That circus had a side magazine called Circus Rave. Yeah. They couldn't get it. There wasn't enough room in circus. So they needed more real estate and they created like another magazine, Hit Parade-er, which was like basically geared about like the lyrics to songs on the radio, but it would have information on where it's... Patty Smith, weird stuff, you know? But a lot of it had the same New York editors,

like people like Lisa and Richard Robinson and they were there in the scrum. So like Lou Reed was like kind of hanging out at their place and writing songs and showing them the new songs he has for this record called Transformer and Post Velvet Underground. So there was always a kind of this downtown New York hip scene around the warhole of Velvet Underground thing that was kind of infiltrating these magazines because these writers were pretty cool. Right. And so when Lester Bangs, who's like a huge fan of like Iggy Stooge and Iggy Pop and

that and music that was, I mean, Iggy and the Stooges, they weren't selling records. Nobody was buying Stooges. Like in 1970? They probably sold nine records for the first one. But it was famously the nine people who bought it, like started bands and those people started bands. Those people started bands. That's the whole Eno kind of math, right? But those magazines are super important.

And to me, those writers, specifically like Lester Bangs, Patty was a writer, Richard Meltzer was a writer. And these people, how they were writing, their energy was the same energy that I wanted to hear in this music. And they were writing about this band called the New York Dolls, this band called the Dictators, you know, or this band called the Ramones. I was like, what did this sound like?

The records were hard to find. Even in Connecticut. Oh, yeah. Finding a Stooges record was impossible. That first Stooges record was only available in the Woolworths cutout bin. And so there'd be like 20 of them with a corner cutoff. And there were 49 cents. And I would look at it every once in a while and go, like, is this really worth 49 cents?

And it was a label release. It was an electro record, but nobody bought it. It was immediately discontinued. And so I remember like putting down like two quarters, going home and just thinking like, what the fuck is this? Yeah. You know, cause it was like, it was completely monotonous. The first one. Yeah, the first one.

It was like, every song sounded like this kind of monotone like fuzz and kind of bored. And like, but I was fascinated by it and kept going back to it. And what friends would come over and we'd play records. Yeah. And they wanted to hear Emersonic and Palmer and I'd put that on. And friends would come over and we'd play records. And they wanted to hear our Emerson-Lake and Palmer and I'd put that on. They would look at me like, what is this garbage?

You know, like what are you like? But you were infected with it. I love something about it. I loved the attitude of it. Let's put it that way. And I love its otherness. Right. It was subversive.

And for some reason, I write in the book a little bit about trying to analyze like why did the subversive attract us for some reason, I write in the book a little bit about trying to analyze like why did the subversive attract us or me or you or whatever. And it's like, why does that lead you to New York? And it's like, I had a middle class, you know, rural upbringing, it was safe. The house was safe. Then my father wasn't hitting us. You know, well, not much.

I mean, you know, it was like old school, you know, the belt and the kind of thing. But no, there was no abuse in my house. It was loving. My mother was a Catholic, you know, taking us to church until we stopped. And then, well, I think also there's the idea that like subversion in the suburbs, which you talk about a bit, is that, you know, it's just like causing trouble, you know, being a little vandal, drinking, driving around. Even that has a status quo to it.

So, something like New York and you're getting the Stooges, you're like, holy fuck, there's a whole other world that I don't even understand. Yeah. Yeah. So that's compelling. When you hear about the, you know, they hear about the Stooges, like, you know, the singer is like pouring hot rocks over his body at Mexican City. I want to see that. You know, I saw Rick Wakeman and his cape doing the fucking King Charles and his court.

Right. You know, it was like one of the big concerts I went to. I was really excited. I had the record, or I had the ATREC, or whatever. I knew every note. And then I went there and I was like, this is really interminable. This is like, This is like, and it was packed, you know. It was like a sold out arena concert. And I was like, this is boring. I don't know why I never, even as a kid, you know, in high school in 78 or whatever, I could never wrap my brain around.

There was one Emerson-Lake in Palmer, there's one yes song, and around the, I just like the rock part. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ding, ding, I'm like that's the best part of that song. Yeah, yeah. The rest I could do without. And I've tried to go back, I can't do it. I can't do Genesis.

I can't do Russian. I mean, that's the thing though. A lot of it was like people our age, like being attracted to punk rock, because it was kind of fetishizing the best parts of rock at all Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that was it that fucking, you know, four chords, max, max, got too complicated. Yeah, but you know, but at the same time.

You don't mention the Beatles once. Well, the Beatles, I don't mention the Beatles once. Maybe once. Wow, maybe I got edited out. I don't mention the Beatles at all. It's all right. I mean, the Beatles, you know, are there, there's such an, the Beatles are such an ur text to everything.

Well, that's right. It's almost like Christmas songs. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just like, they're mentioning the air that you breathe. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is like Christmas songs. I mean, the Beatles to me were like, reviewing the Beatles catalog through the 60s is a lot

of nursery rhyme action going on there. I think it really appealed to that kind of arrested infantileism that we all have. Sexual repression possibly. Out of the 50s. But also the Christmas songs in the way, they're just dug in. You don't even know how, but you know all of the songs. And they're just there. They're not seasonal, but occasionally they pop up

But it was kind of wild to watch that did you watch that get back documentary? Yeah, yeah, totally It's fucking crazy. Yeah, it was one of the great bird's-eye views of all time of like Something so perennial like that because none of these guys have personalities in your mind really and then when you see them Interacting as people you're like, oh my god, they're human and they were just magic. They're just like us. Celebrities. They're just like us. I always like, one thing that really stuck with me in some earlier Beatles doc was Paul just saying like, we were just a crock and good rock band. You know, that's what he said. We just like really, we really like could swing together.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it was that Hamburg club stuff and I heard this You know, that's what he said. Like we just like really, we really like could swing together. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it was that Hamburg club stuff. And I heard this thing. I really need to get it validated that they were just hopped up on, on surplus Nazi speed. Oh, because the owner had a bunch. Wow.

And that makes sense. If you watch those, that footage of them, get it. And, you know, just going at it. Yeah. So they put in all those hours. Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. No, they were inspired by all kinds of information. That's for sure. And then they learned songwriting from, you know, they learned songwriting from the ground up. I mean, they were listening to

Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, right? Exactly, which was kind of new to them as, as 19, 20 year olds. Well, yeah, because 57, that's the beginning, right? Right. And they're in the early 60s. It was like they were close to the source. They were indeed. And I think Paul's musicality is extremely obvious.

He's completely gifted. I mean, the guy who's singing that voice, his sense of melody, and John's rock and roll. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The voice, the sense of melody. Yeah. And John's rock and roll. Yeah. Raw shit. Raw shit. That collaboration is just, is gold. So when you go, when you start going down there

to New York from the suburbs, you know, you see Patty. Well, not as, not, not familiar. No, no, no. But the first time you see her, because I've interviewed her and she let me play with her once. Yeah. And it was like really distinctive from any other journalist who was all lowercase and prosaic and it was all about celebrating the music and the record that she was talking about.

She was never, her critique was all about sort of this elevation. It had nothing to do with like parsing any other data of the record that like a male rock critic would do. But so she was super interesting and very evocative and made you want to hear this music that she was championing. And so when she did, hey, Joe, Piss Factory, seven inch in late 75, whenever it came out. And I saw an ad for it in like one of those magazines.

I immediately sent away for it. But I basically, I wanted to hear, what does a rockwriter sound like on a record? You know, like how audacious is that that a rockwriter is actually going into the pantheon of which they write about. You know, I thought that was rather kind of an interesting kind of transition. So and the record was amazing. You know, I remember getting it and it was just like unlike anything else I had ever heard, it was so like, unlike anything else I had ever heard,

it was so like plaintive and simple. And again, to kind of like build up on this kind of scratchy guitar thing, you know, Tom Verlaine is like playing this kind of free form, you know, scatter shot guitar style. He's a monster guitar player, isn't he? So yeah, so I mean, there's all these things going on on this record that are so singular to me and so astounding and the quality of her voice, the recitation on Pissed Factory,

this poem, you know, that's what I wanted to write about. The book was basically, I want to write about these documents. I want to write about these signifiers that define so much of what a kid like me goes towards, you know, and all through his adulthood even now. Yeah, sure. And so, yeah, seeing Patty for the first time, I wanted to, but you know, we were also teenagers, like, well, how do you get in your car and go to this like abstract place in New York City? Which low?

I just didn't know. But then we found out she was playing at Westport, Connecticut, at the Westport County Playhouse, which was an hour away. Right. And we jumped in a car and went. And it was right before horses came out. Oh, yeah. And she came out and the band came out and they started raving up into the velvet undergrounds.

We're going to have a real good time together. She had a leather jacket on, came out chewing gum, took the leather jacket off and threw it on the drum stand and just went for it and that whole concert was amazing. It must have been great. I was sitting here with my friend and my friend at Carole actually got up to dance, do a little boogie and some security guy came over and said, you can't stand up.

I was like, I knew right then, this has to change. This is Westport. This is Westport. This is Westport, not LA. Yeah. Well, that, I just, like those moments, and you had a few of them. I mean, you know, I had not really put Wayne County into any sort of perspective and how important he was down there. Super important. Yeah. Even Lydia lunch says when she was a teenager and she ran off to New York City in like 76 Yeah, she said she immediately saw Wayne County deejaying at Maxis Kansas City She went up to him and said I need a place to stay and he's like you stay with me, honey You know

Yeah, he was a friend to all and a friend and he understood like these young subversives coming to town and he was like gonna Protect them and Wayne County was super important, you know, coming out of the… As a performer and a DJ? As a performer, just sort of as somebody who was like just kicking down any door in the way. You know, he was a transsexual rock and roller. Yeah. Like, and really funny, really bawdy, you know, and riding good songs,

you make me cream in my jeans, a great rock and roll too. Sure, yeah. And also, yeah, then there's the suicide experience. And the suicide who had been performing since at least like 69, 70, you know, like in like weird little hobbles, they would like play in these kind of anti-war kind of hangouts, you know, that the hippies would sort of like on Houston Street and Broadway.

And you know, New York at that time was kind of like, it was kind of like a little dirty, little broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down.

It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down.

It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down.

It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was broken down. It was like a party bone drawing of the hippie. It's like, watch his other hand. You know, there's a peace sign in one hand, his fist in the other. It was a little bit of that vibe. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, there's those weird kind of like New York hippie nerds that seem to be living in their little cave apartment with all kinds of ephemera. Even moving there in 76, 77, 78,

that whole period right there, there was that last vestige of hippie culture that was just like walking up and down St. Mark's street, like super burnt out. You would see cult leaders sometimes and flowing white robes that were dirty on the bottom and like kind of be draggled speed freaks following them around. For a while, you would see that. And then kind of where'd they all go? And it's like, they left town because, I don't know, Trash and Vaudeville opened up

or something. I don't know where they all go. Yeah. That's like, they left town because I don't know, Trash and Valdiville opened up or something. I don't know where they all go. But when I go there, after living down where I did and near where you used to live, like it's interesting when you see, because I go back infrequently, but I walk around the same blocks. Yeah. And every once in a while, you see some 75 year old dude, you're like, oh, shit. Yeah. He's still walking around that guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind's kind of great. You're like, you know, in there like saggy leather pants. Right, right. Like what did they see? What are they doing?

I talked to Jan Deck who was like the Texas singer songwriter who put out hundreds of albums and nobody knew who he was because he never made an appearance and you had to send away for these records and he was a real mystery. And then he finally, a few years ago, came out and played. And he's my age. He's a really tall, gaunt Texas guy who always wears this kind of same kind of hat, same kind of, he kind of dressed like, actually he kind of dressed like Richard Lewis. Kind of black. And I played with him. And we were talking about,

I was like, how's Texas, but he goes, well, I used to live in New York in 72 and 73, but then I moved back to Texas. And I was like, Jan Deck, I was like, you lived in New York in 72, 73 in the Lower East Side. I said, you must have seen like, you know, Patty at the St. Mark's Poetry Project with Lenny Kaye and the New York Dolls getting their thing together

at Mercer Art Center and- That burnt down, right? Yeah, and I was like, that must have been an amazing time. And he just looked at me and said, I saw nothing. And that's kind of, I think really, where there's the most common kind of experience for a lot of people is like,

you don't know really what's going on. And if you do, you're lucky. But when I was living there, it's like, there's so much stuff that did happen at the Poetry Project, I wish I could go back in time and walk up the street and experience it. I wish I could have walked up the street

and seen all this free jazz and the Hunkard jazz. So- And that was all happening, and you missed a lot of it? It was all in my neighborhood. But I was only interested in like trying to catch, you know, the Ramones and Patti Smith. And even no way if I was like kind of taken a front by these are people my age who were kind of making

these pronouncements like oh yeah Patti Smith's a barefoot hippie we're not interested. We're not interested in television the guitar solo's are too long. But this is a year after it started. I know they're already attacking like the sacred animal. I was just like no no no no you can't do that. That's the amazing thing about the book and also about the history of it is that, you know, the resistance to what was this new thing happened almost immediately. Yeah, by these really like freakos coming in from wherever. I mean, Lydia comes out from

Rochester, James Chance comes in from Ohio. He comes in from Minneapolis, I think. And then like all this Cleveland people come in, this is Florida contingent. And they all find each other in the streets and they're real ragamuffin. And they start playing music without knowing anything about playing music. More so than, at least, I mean, the Ramones knew some bar chords. Patty Smith group was basically an accomplished bar rock band with a really amazing singer. Yeah. Blondie group, they kind of knew how to play. Yeah.

You know, talking heads, you know, taught themselves like, you know, tropes of like how to actually play. Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and the Contouristians and DNA, these guys picked up a guitar that morning and like did a gig that night without knowing anything. But that appealed to me because I thought that was like, why not have it to be the most brutally new language ever and like have it just dispel anything that can inform it except for your own heart? Well, that's interesting.

Yeah, there's a – I think I underlined like one thing which is not unusual for me in the book and it was like around, you know, you're thinking about that. Oh, here you go. Inspired by the sounds I'd been consuming and that had been gestating inside me, I started thinking that with my electric guitar, I might dispense with any reliance

on traditional notes and chords in favor of wild and scattershot noises I could create along with the instrument's neck. I began to see music not just as something composed, but as sounds that could be created spontaneously. If the right sense of openness could be conjured, the mind freed to the possibilities of chance and magic. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. So that that's where I could have said it better.

I forgot I wrote that. That's pretty good. Well, that's why I read that book someday. Yeah, it's pretty good book. This guy Thurston Moore wrote it But it was before it was I mean obviously when you're looking back on this stuff. You can realize, you know kind of put Intellectual ideas into what was just a kind of yearning. Yeah, but but you know that seems to make sense of that but also oddly I'm getting excited for reasons is that Really, that's the different like even with basic rock and roll what what the difference between a bar band and and and a genius is is making it your own yeah and and that's always been the weird kind of magic of it this three chord shit right but it's sort

of like why is johnny thunder so fucking amazing because nobody liked that there's nobody like that guy nobody nobody can play that e-cord the way he played that yeah there's nobody like that. There's nobody like that guy. Nobody can play that E chord the way he played that E chord. There's a certain thing he does that he always does in just about every song where he's just like, this kind of bending of the A minor or something, whatever it is. And I can do it, I've seen other people do it, but nobody sounds like Johnny Thunder's doing it.

Nobody sounds like Johnny Ramone with his downstroke. Right. I could play bar chords all day long with that downstroke. Johnny Ramone's like swing with that, or Ron Ashton from the Stooges. Oh my god. I sat across from Ron Ashton when we were doing music for Velvet Goldmine.

And it was like the most amazing crash course and like how to, how, how, what not to do when you're cut, when you're doing a Stooges song. Cause everybody who plays Stooges songs covers them. It's a real sort of bombastic kind of pumbling thing. Yeah. It's not. He's like swinging.

He's like jazz. He's like, he's a little, and his brother Scott, the way he played drums, he was never just like pounding. He was behind the beat like just blues playing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, the Stooges were like electric blues band. Of course. You know, they were, I mean, the whole punk thing was like, maybe that was from Iggy's

delivery and maybe that was from the fuzz box Ron was using. But other than that, man, they were like a greasy blues. Sure. It was that drive. It was that drive of that guitar. So when you started the coachmen, what were you guys playing exactly? Those guys were a little bit older. They were coming out of, wrote out on school design.

They were the class after like David Byrne and Chris Francis and Tina Weymouth. And those guys had already been in New York for a couple of years and these guys floundered around the RISD campus, and they were doing different music things, and they finally make their way down the New York City to follow in the footsteps of their friends who came out of the school, most successfully, the talking heads. I just ran into one of those guys at a record store in New Haven, Connecticut, and we exchanged numbers. It was just as easy as that, because he was looking in the velvet underground bin and there was nothing

in it. I mean, it was empty. And I was just like, wow, you know, it says velvet underground, but there's no records, which was, you know, very, that's a very common thing in these record stores. You couldn't find these cool records because they were gone. And you also talked about the beginning of zines, which got everybody kind of locked in. Yeah. The zines were really important. And in that era of fanzines that were precursors to the punk rock explosion of fanzines that you would find stacked up at Rough Trade Records in London or Bleakerbots or whatever in New York, there was a precursor to it where you had these people who were reading Lester Bangs

and Patty Smith and Richard Meltzer creating their own fanzines. There was actually one that some rock writers had put together. It was actually called Punk before there was Punk Magazine. It was another, it was a punk newspaper. Not McNeil, not Legs. It was before Legs, you know, and so that's kind of interesting, but there was that period of fanzine culture that predates punk from like sort of 70 to 75 is super interesting Barring Coley the rock writer and I've been always toying with this idea of doing some some kind of book that sort of covers that period

Right of underground rock Fanzines because they're really cool because there that's where a lot of people our age before punk were discovering That's where a lot of people our age before punk were discovering Boister Cult or, you know, the dictators or the dolls. They were actually getting interviews with these bands that the mainstream press wasn't dealing with at all. Sure. Kim Fowley. Yeah, yeah. Kim Fowley was just like, who's this guy?

You know, it was like, why is he making this crazy record called Outrageous? You know, which is... It's a crazy record. It's one of the greatest records of all time. Concept record about paranoid hippie, like the cops beating down the door. Fantastic. Oh, and you wrote about seeing the runaways and you were really kind of electrified by them.

One of the best rock and roll bands ever. Yeah. In the world. Yeah. You know, to this day. And you saw them at CVs. I saw them at CBGB and I saw them at the Palladium opening for the Ramones. Oh, man.

And both times they were just incredible. But the Coachman, that was your first gig where you got on stage, right? Yeah, yeah. And they were not, was it satisfying music for you? In some ways it became satisfying. At first I was kind of like sort of a satellite player and they were like, well, you can play on these four songs

but these other songs we already have something going on and it doesn't necessitate a second guitar. You know, it was very loosey-goosey. Nobody knew anybody. Nobody knew the coachman. I mean, the coachman didn't have a name or anything. And we would play at art lofts that were places where like these kind of wrote-out-on-school design crowd hung out. The first gig I played, the audience was like maybe 30 people, audience,

it was people building around, like talking to each other while we played. But it was like, it was David Byrne and his friends. It was like, that was the audience. I've met David Byrne a couple of times. I've never said, like, you know, by the way, you were at the very first gig I ever played, but he wouldn't remember that, but he would remember the other people who were there. Sure. You know. Well, yeah, that was the mixing of the scenes and the entry into the art world that's fascinating. Like in the book, we obviously can't go into it,

but as a history and a document of witness of that period in New York, it's fucking amazing. Oh, that's cool. I mean, like just the living situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That feeling, because I lived on second between a and b and 89 and there was still that feeling of sort of like Yeah, I remember the one time I couldn't find a parking space So I parked in front of the thing next door, which I knew was a drug thing Yeah, and I knew they had lookouts and stuff and I got out and there were four dudes in my car

Just going through shit. I walk out my tires were flat and the my car just going through shit. I walk out, my tires were flat and the dudes who did it were standing right there. Because they knew I shouldn't park there. No one parks there. But I was late, it was late at night. So the tires were flat and I asked one of them, is there a place I can get tires?

And I go around the corner to talk to someone about tires. I come back, they're all in my car, going through my glove compartment, and you just see nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do. It was like the guy was plugging into your wall. Yeah, he's like, you shouldn't live here. You shouldn't live here.

I was like, well, I do. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Yeah, I mean, I really wanted to talk about what life was like on 13th Street, in A and B, in like 1979. You know, that to me was really something I felt like like I'm 13th Street, A and B in like 1979. That to me was really something I felt like I could be even more of an eyewitness to

and make it come alive more so than like seeing whatever gigs or whatever kind of like quote unquote famous people like I had interactions with. I didn't find that so interesting to talk about, especially because there's people my age, younger and older, who have way more experiences with interactions, with like, you know, celebrated individuals and the geniuses who walk among us.

And it's just like, well, I, you know, there's a few people that I kind of like, you know, maybe I did a color Xerox for Jean-Michel Bosky, a big deal. But you saw him in his musicians, you know, he worked buddies. Yeah, but I have good friends who like, you know, slept with the guy. Yeah. So I was like, yeah, I don't have anything. I was like friends who like, you know, slept with the guy. Yeah, I was like, yeah, I don't have anything. I was like, that's, you know, that's the book. It was always pretty exciting. I mean, I even in the 90s, I remember my Coke dealer lived between B and C on like seventh

and he kind of managed the building. And anytime I go up there was like some sort of weird salon of Hasbens and, you know, it was wild, man. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But, but so what happens like I know, well, you know, there's a lot of experiences you talk about with people and you're kind of coming of age around, you know, gender stuff and violence and all kinds of things.

But like when you meet Kim, it wasn't an immediate musical partnership. It was, no, it was actually, because I was already playing with this woman who was a very good friend of hers. And this woman was part of the, she was an integral part of the no-waves scene. She was playing with Reese Chatham in different bands. She was playing in this band called Arsenal. Yeah. It was her and Rhys Chatham. And this anarchist singer-songwriter, provocateur who relocated to San Francisco, whatever.

But I started playing with her in 79. Yeah. And right when the coachman was kind of disbanding for lack of any kind of like appreciation for what we were doing. And so I started like kind of, by that point I had met some other people that were sort of a part of that society. Who was it? Like that community.

Swans? Her name was, no Swans come later, but her name was Miranda. And so I was working at a shipping job and I met her boyfriend who was like managing New Order for their US dates and after the Joy Division stopped because of you. And I was going to go see Joy Division but he killed himself and so all of a sudden New Order came in. It was like this whole thing was happening all within a year's time. That's another thing. It's like so much happened in like a two year period.

Like state died, public image happened. Everything, I mean people dying, bands beginning, music ideas morphing into like a whole other thing, like from the pistols to the public image limited. You know, this is like within like 24 months. I was like, oh, there's so much goes down, like 78 to 80. I mean, it's insane. You know, it's like a wildfire of change.

And so you're living kind of amidst that. And you don't really think about it. You're not articulating that when you're there. It's just like happening. And you know that you're in the right place. So for me to be introduced to Kim through like one of her best friends, like, you know, you got to meet my good friend Kim.

She's probably really into like what you're doing, which was like this kind of reform guitar stuff. Yeah. You know, and she was like, I can't really play with that, but I think she probably could because she's kind of into that. And she was down, she was already sort of in sconce with the downtown art scene. She drove out from LA with sconce with the downtown art scene. She drove out from LA with Mike Kelly, the artist. They were a couple. And so he went back and she

stayed. And then within a year's time, I kind of got connected to her. And we just started to hang out. Yeah, we became boyfriend and girlfriend. And then I was already like, I want to have a band. And she had a practice amp, a bass amp that she got, and that was being used as a side table, like a men table. And so we just started like having this idea of playing. And then I met this other girl who had no, there was no romance there, but she was really cool. And she was the girlfriend of Vita O'Conn.

She, this artist who was associated with Dan Graham, an artist that Kim was very close to and that's how she got her apartment right below his. And I think Dan Graham had some idea that, oh, well, maybe I could be boyfriend, girlfriend with this young, you know, art girl. I kind of stepped in and screwed all that up. But me and Dan would eventually become very good friends. And the three of us became a bit of part of this whole art world

downtown and our band developed. That's what I kind of try to write about and parse in the book about the beginning of Sonic Youth. Like, you know, so. Well, I mean, but who were the bands? And who were the artists when it was all happening, when you guys started to come together? The other bands that were of your ilk?

There were, it's interesting because we, when I met Lee and Kim, Lee was already playing with Glenn Bronco. Lee's had a band himself that was kind of odd and they kind of played with the, they did play with the coachmen at CBGB and we kind of fell into each other And we'd go see each other's band. Yeah, when I met Kim. She was playing music with a no-wave

A woman named Nina canal who yeah, I'm called out and so she was involved and they were playing really kind of just abstract You know almost anti music kind of but there were songs. I mean I shouldn't say anti music. It was all it was all music But there were songs. I mean, I shouldn't say anti-music. It was all music. But neither Sheen or I really knew how to play proper guitar. So you had no theory being a guitar. I knew how to play E chords and D chords. But I had no desire to play covers.

So I didn't really, a lot of that logic I didn't really get into. I just wanted to write songs with however I could. The first Sonic Youth album is all standard tuning. It's the only one. So that's how that began. But when you're just like, when you're noodling around on a guitar without having any sort of background

in open tunings or necessarily any theory. So when you're just coming up with these almost dissonant kind of riffs, you're just feeling it out. Feeling it out. I was never noodling, by the way. What's the other word then? Is it John Coltrane noodle? No.

No, I know. And that's another thing is like when I started playing with Kim. Rithing. Kim had this whole background of jazz appreciation, which I had yet to experience. So that was interesting. And I think that aesthetic. What part of jazz, abstract? Just I think that no, core training is, you know, classic impulse record stuff.

And I think that, but just the aesthetics of that music, I think, was already had informed her intellectually, whereas I had yet to get there with that. And that was, in retrospect, I can see how that was important. Lee was coming out of like a Lot he was a practice guitarist who listened to the Grateful Dead before punk rocker He knew how to play like you know kind of mixolydian. He could do some country groove exactly He could pull that out. Yeah, he could sing in tune. He is a very pitch-perfect singer Kim and I just opened our mouths and let it bleed right. Right, so there was that kind of thing with Lee's

more sort of the traditional technique in our kind of completely lack of, it was kind of interesting. And I think Strummer was kind of also primal and self-taught. It wasn't until Steve Shelley joined where he actually brought like some traditional technique. Well, that's what I was gonna say that that I mean now that was a big difference.

Yeah. I mean Shelley you know I changed the game. He changes the game quite a bit because he in some ways he makes us a bit more sort of accessible. Right, exactly. You know, which is like you can say it's for better for worse. I thought it was it was for better because we had to sort of progress somehow otherwise we would just sort of be locked into this kind of, you know. Almost a boutique act.

Yeah, like a part act. Yeah. But even like later when doing some solo work or Kim and Julie Kaifetz would do free kitten, people would say like, oh, they're pretending not how not to play or something. It's like, no, they really know how not to play. They almost invented it. Well, I mean, well, that's what's interesting because like Bad Moon Rising gets like a lot of attention, but it doesn't put you over the top. Well, we're just sort of feeling our way into sort of more traditional tropes and trying to employ them into these kind of more experimental music that they've been already fully into.

Right. I mean, there's a musician in London that I really like named David Tup. He's a musicologist. He's been around since the late 60s doing really interesting experimental music on the British scene. And he was around during the whole punk scene and digging it. And I asked him about some of these bands. He said, you know, the best bands by far

were the ones who did not know how to play because they were the most interesting. That's father is too. They were like, he would like, those gigs were exciting because the music was entirely new. Right. Yeah. To them too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So we always wanted to keep that element as a central aspect of Sonic Youth, even though we would like started becoming more sophisticated in our own playing techniques and styles. We always wanted to keep that element as if we just like,

we just pick up the instrument that morning. Well, I mean, I think that, but that plays because like even being more sophisticated in your own, you know, methods, which were already a bit abstract. So you're just sort of mastering that. So it is all kind of new. We're seeing how far we can push it and still sort of get some kind of critical appraisal.

You know, I mean, when critics started saying, getting excited by us, and that was really interesting because I mean, at first we were sort of, you know, kind of people didn't really give us a time of day, you know, for a year or two. And then all of a sudden sudden music writers started liking us. But which album? I would say Bad Men Rising. Right. The second record.

And a lot of it has to do with the British gentleman who released the record. Yeah. Paul Smith on Blast First and he could have tap danced on everybody's desk and listened to this band. Yeah. And that was very… Would you call that concept record kind of? It was definitely thematic.

I mean, you know, the idea of having all the songs sort of bleed into each other with certain cassette tapes that we were using. And it originated from this idea of like, we kept changing the tunings on the guitars between different songs and doing that live, there would be these five minute breaks between songs. It was before tuners. I think that the muted tuner doesn't really come in until like the late 80s. So if you listen to live recordings of television or Jimi Hendrix or whatever, you always hear that between song like you're like tuning up.

I miss that. I really miss that. I always thought that was like, he's like hearing, like tuning up. I miss that. I really miss that. I always thought that was like here like going to the symphony orchestra and hearing like the tuning for 30 minutes before they start. That's the best part of the gig, man. That's what sounds so cool. You know, but so I miss, I really miss that.

But we, so we decided like instead of having these like, you know, long breaks where people just start, you know, like start heckling you, like, come on, you know, you have another song or not. We started playing cassette tapes through like a separate amplifier through like a radio shut cassette player. And we would, and we would sort of push people's buttons by getting the current hits of the day where there was Pat Benatar, you know, stopped using sex as a weapon. That was a good one. You know, and then like, or something really bad ass, like run DMC's Jam Master Jam, you know, like was just blasting distortedly through an app

while you were tuning. Right, you know. That was good. Well, I mean, you also talk a little bit about what else is going on New York community wise and different types of music and just how, you know, in some ways you were kind of insulated down in the village, but you knew that there was all this stuff in the boroughs going on.

There was, well, the stuff in the boroughs was mostly like this kind of half-generation younger as far as for me. I mean, you know, Kim's five years older and Lee is, I think, three years older. And so I was kind of the young guy until Steve Shelley comes in. And I was always the young guy in my micro community of like these RISD college kids, just like on this scene. I was the 19 year old, I was a 20 year old. And so I was always the youngest guy until I was not.

You know, and then when the hardcore kids started coming up in the early age, like the Beastie Boys and Reagan Youth. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, these guys are really young. They're like 17, 67 years old, minor threat coming up from DC. And I just thought all those bands were amazing, but a lot of the people I had been playing with did not. They were like thinking like, punk died with Sid.

I mean, why would anybody want to continue playing that form of punk? It all comes back around. But I was like, it's not really, they're not really playing like Pistols' punk or even Ramon's punk. They're playing something else entirely. It's like this, and it was this language of punk that they were trying to glean from bad brains, you know, which is an all African-American band who really knew how to play. And they were kind of, they already had done some jazz fusion time.

They heard the Ramones and other stuff and they started writing songs that were punk rock and just destroying DC. They decided to move to New York and they just influenced every 18-year-old kid who wanted to be a punk rocker. I talked to the bass player player, Bert Kuros, who played with a lot of the DC hardcore bands. So what was that vocabulary that you guys had where it was like do do do do do do do do do do do do do do.

It was like that kind of like skank groove. And then it would go into like the hyper speed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, with the hyperpoka beat. Yeah. And he was like, it was us trying to play like the bad brains. We were just looking at them, looking at their hands,

and copying them and seeing like what would happen. And that exchange is insanely beautiful when you think about it. Yeah. In the context of like rock and roll history. Yeah. beautifully beautiful when you think about it. The context of like rock and rock and roll history. That this whole primarily white suburban male culture is taking information from this like just incredibly inspired African-American.

And also hip hop too a little bit after later. Yeah, that was coming in too. Well, I mean, so like throughout all the records, I mean, they're all different, but like what made the difference for, you know, Daydream Nation, goo, dirty, that run? Oh, well, certainly after Daydream Nations, the last record we do, that record's transitional where it's like we're stepping away from being on an independent label and

going into like corporate record territory. So Paul Smith. So was the expectation different in your mind? I was hoping that by us making a double album, it would be regarded with the same critical fervor that Husker, Dewey's, Zenor,cade had, and the Minutemen's Double Knuckles on the Dime had. Yeah. Because they were double albums in a culture that was not about expansiveness.

It was like quick, sharp shocks. And then the albums were just like, you know, there would be like 10 songs on each side. So for these guys to make double albums where they could stretch out and black flag growing their hair out and wanting to make a double album called Everything Went Black, which was like all this furious music they had around. They had this idea of doing a record after Damage where it was all about side two where

they could actually stretch out, you know, long jams because they were like listening to heavy metal like Dio and they were listening to Grateful Dead as well as to their punk rock brothers. As I kind of like interest, it was a definitely interesting transitional period there. And we were not a hardcore band. Even though I kind of adored it and I kind of tried to employ it into a lot of what Sonic Uth is doing, there was always resistance, I think, from the rest of the band. Like you were not going to become a hardcore band. Well, there's stuff on, there think, from the rest of the band. Like, you're not going to become a hardcore band.

Well, there's stuff on, there's stuff on goo that's pretty hard. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I had a sort of like temperate, but I knew that we couldn't, you know, go out there and pretend that we were, you know, like some kind of like new minor threat to all band. Yeah. Because we were older. Yeah.

And we had this art rock legacy and so it's like, forget about it. We had a sound. Yeah. And I also knew that it was a bit thing. Like I didn't really, a lot of punk rock and hardcore was, there was like this disparity between like always in punk rock, this is really sort of street tough kind of thing

where it was anti-intellectualism going on. Only because it just felt as if it was in a front to the genuine real deal, just like three chords in the truth kind of thing. Well, so you're saying the guy like Ramon's, Heartbreakers, Dead Boys, that stuff. It was just like, yo, yo Vinny, like plug it in there, like, you know, there, there, there, there. Right. And also you talked about the sexuality of it was pretty straight and pretty traditional.

Well, a lot of the sexuality was boys who had yet to sort of lose their virginity, so they were all kind of like piling on top of each other in like big piles on stage, which is just like, yeah. And then dope killed a lot of them, too. Dope killed it, and then when they all got laid, hardcore dissipates after everybody gets laid.

I mean, it's just like, it becomes Fogazi. It becomes family music. So like with that run, how big of a difference did Butch Vig make? Oh, well, Butch Vig came to us because he did Nevermind. And before Nevermind really started charting, we knew he had done that record. The only reason that Nirvana used him is because he did some hardcore records that they liked. I was really into some of those early Midwestern hardcore seven inches that Butch had engineered, particularly Mecht Mensch, which was the very first thing he ever did. And so, never mind sounded so good.

Did, right? And we was coming out of speakers everywhere. I mean, yeah, but even before that, we had a cassette of it, and it's just like, oh, this sounds really good. And it was like Butch Vig. I was like, yeah, that makes sense. He's good. You know, smart studios in Madison, Wisconsin, and whatever.

And they went there and, you know, well, they actually did it in LA with Butch. But they, I remember thinking like, oh yeah, let's use Butch. I mean, it was only because he made that record sound good. And that record was like, became, as you know, supernova. And then he did goo and dirty. He did goo and dirty.

And so when we sent him cassettes of what we were working on for the songs on goo and they were just all over the place for rehearsal stuff. And he was like, oh my God, you know, how am I going to, this is going to be like herding cats to get this like these songs together. Right. All the tunings were weird. But he was challenged by it and we met him. And I brought in my first, I brought in my seven inch of the Mecht Mensch seven inch that

he did, the first record that he ever did. Cause it's a, it's a genius hardcore, Midwestern hardcore record. And I said, I want it to sound like this. He was like, Oh my God, what are you doing with that? You know, we only made like a hundred copies of that. And I didn't even think it would got out of Madison. It's like, how did you get that? I was like, I have my ways.

Yeah. And I said, this is such a good record. And we're playing it. And he was just like laughing to himself. He's like, well, you know, we did that like in one afternoon. I was like, fine. You know, this is like, if we could do it one afternoon, I'm happy. I hate being in studios. But he was great.

He was really methodical. He made sure that we were always in tune to the tunings that we were tuned to. Okay, yeah. You know, that was very important to him. He was just like that. And he was diligent, like sitting in front of me and like one more micro turn. Oh, there it is. You know, and after Good years. Yeah, really good years. And after each take, he would do that. And the thing is, He would do that. And the thing is, it was that goo was mixed by the same mix engineer who did Nevermite as well.

And so we just basically copied that record. But what is your relationship with those guys? With Nirvana? Oh, well, they had, they were a sub-pop band. We're friendly with Bruce Pavett a sub pop really on and you know Bruce would ever visiting us in New York he was talking about wanting to sort of Start a label that that Put out records by different regions across the USA and he had already done a fanzine and a cassette mixtape label and

Called sub pop. Yeah, we kind of we knew him because he kind of presented us in Seattle at some gig. And he was just on the scene as part of the university. Yeah. And then he went back home to Seattle and he decided like, well, I'll just sort of focus on Seattle before I do this other idea of like going across the USA and like, you know, having like this series of records to his and, you know,

and it just became this thing where it's like Soundgarden, Mudhoney, you know, and all these bands that were just like getting some kind of cool attention. But yeah, it really wasn't until a bleach came out. And then Nirvana got into a van and came out to play Maxwell's and Hoboken. And Suzanne Sasek, who was our, she was a woman who toured with us and first like did merch, you know, and then she did lights for us. And she did illustration on the first Nirvana seven inch

label and she said, oh, this is band Bruce has put out called Nirvana and they're playing it in Maxwell's. We should go. Yeah. We should, yeah, support Bruce. Yeah, we'll go. Yeah. I bet they're pretty good. If they're, she goes, they're not as good as Mud Honey, but I think they're, I think they're pretty good. Oh, that's interesting. That's, I remember always remember her saying that. They're not as good.

She loved Mud Honey and Mud Honey or Stooges band. Yeah. So Mud Honey had put out a Touch Me I'm Sick. Great. And I remembered that record. it was brown vinyl seven inches. Suzanne had put like 80 copies in the front of the pure platters record store. Yeah. And, oh, Bogan. I love my done.

Yeah. And so we went thinking like, oh, we're going to see some band that maybe is not as good as Mudhoney. Right. And they were, they were opening up for Tad. Oh yeah. Sub-Hop band. Sure.

And they were great. Yeah. You know, they smashed all their equipment at the end and I was just like talking to them afterwards like, do you have another gig? They're like, oh yeah, we have to play the pyramid club tomorrow in New York City. And I was like, well, you might want to get some new guitars. I mean, you guys just smashed all your shit up. I couldn't figure it out because they didn't have any money.

Nobody had any money. It's just like, so you don't want to break your equipment on tour, but they were just like caution to the wind. Did you see yourself in them? There was something they were doing. They were really primal. There was something going on with that sense of energy and there was something going on. There was one song, I think it was Drain, Drain You or whatever. We're, Kurt is moving up on the neck with the guitar, like in these, and I think I write about this in the book where he's going from like, he's going from fret to fret like, and I was just like, I love that.

I love, I love that sequence because it's really simple, but it's really effective. And in some ways, it's what I really loved about even more sort of sophisticated art rock, be it television or Glen Broncker. Sure, it's like these kind of moves that kind of have this effect. And he was doing it in a way that was in this kind of, this punk sound that was like late 80s kind of punk sound.

So it was like, there was all this other stuff going on. The fact that they had, their music was so direct. And it wasn't flowery at all. And there was something about that I really liked because it still wasn't just like garage rock or something like that. Sure. Sure. But it had that, I don't know, it had. It had elements of it. And I was just, I was really attracted to it. And they looked fantastic. You know, the fact that Chris was as tall as I was, and he didn't care. And he was just like, yeah. Like I always was very kind of self, you know, a bit self conscious on stage.

Oh yeah, he's just lurching around. I still am self conscious on stage. If I go out on the stage just too small or whatever, I feel like I'm going to fall over, you know? It's like I have to wear the right shoes, otherwise I'm just gonna, I feel really dorky and gawky. But he was just like, you know, just flailing around and Kurt wasn't so tall, you know? So he was like banging to Kurt who's like up to his chest and Kurt would just like turn around and just like viciously push him back. I get the fuck out of my way. I'm pumping into him. They're like these kids, these buddies in the backyard.

It was really great. It was really cool. But I didn't think anything of it worse. I go, this is going to be God's gift to our rock and roll or anything, but I did like it. But as you move through the 80s, you're a known quantity now and you're a big band. In the 80s, in the late 80s, well, we could sort of do well. We weren't like blowing out like big theaters or anything.

I mean, like a band like the Pixies was way better, bigger than us. I mean, they would go out and they were a band that started around the same time as us. You like them? Yeah, I like the Pixies, but I think they were way more accessible as a band across the board. But you guys...

There was a bit of a college rock kind of aesthetic. Yeah. And a lot of that college rock thing was about... There was a certain kind of smart accessibility in a way. I think we were always a little possibly too challenging for a luck the casual listener. A little arty. I guess arty farty, you can say that.

But you didn't ever have a discussion with Lee or Kim and go like, we gotta make some hooks. Well, let's straighten out the edges a little bit. Never. In fact, if anything, it was like, maybe our next album should be done with chainsaws and pianos. Like let's really fuck with it. How did you delegate who did what song? Was it Kim Do writing? You did

writing and the song writing was, it would go through phases. I always thought the most successful song writing is when we would just get together and start playing in the now and things would happen and be like, what was that? What was that? What was that? Like just do that again. And then with the recording technology would be even a cassette deck. It's like, oh, go back to that point.

And it's like, oh, let's work off that riff or whatever. Oh, great. And so that to me was, I liked, I would tend to sort of sit at home and come up with riff ideas that were sort of self-skeletal song ideas and bring them in and show the band and both Lee and Kim would create their own parts. I would never dictate like, okay, you have to play that, you have to play that. That wouldn't happen so much.

So it would turn whatever I brought in into something a group oriented more. So, and as far as lyrics, it was always like, we would always primarily do all the music instrumentally, and as we would get set to record, it's like, well, we got to sing and do lyrics. That was usually the case. And it's like, and we would choose a lot of the times in the studio as we were laying down the tracks, like, I'll sing this one, you sing that one.

Yeah. We would sort of, you sing that one. Yeah. You know, we would sort of, you know, hand them out a little bit. And at first it was basically just me and Kim. And then Lee started bringing in more fully formed songs pretty early on. Yeah. You know, it wasn't like, it didn't take that long. But so there would always be sort of like, you know, the one Lee song on the record.

Yeah. The Westworth song traded off to the Kim and I, and then he would become, there would be two Lee songs. And it was like that. So, like, in closing, did you text your wife? I turned my phone off so it wouldn't like, I was just probably sitting out there in the car wondering.

I turned it off because I have a meds alarm that goes off. I didn't want to go. How was your health, all right? I'm okay. I had some weird heart arrhythmia situation that was getting more pronounced the last couple of years. They fixed it? They did.

They did a thing called cardioversion. Yeah. It was like zapping. Yeah. So it wasn't invasive and it worked. You know, like it either works or it doesn't, but it worked. That's good. So I was able to sort of get on the airplane and at least go see my daughter. Well, where are you living?

I'm living in London. That's good. Evan, I've been living there 11 years, 12 years ago. You like it? Do I like London? Yeah. Yeah, there's no guns. Yeah, I know.

Number one. And it's its own world of, it has, it's good and bad. I mean, it's like anywhere. Yeah. Deep history. I always quote like that, there's that Nick Cave movie where he's asking, why do you live in Brighton, you know, which is south of London?

He's like, you know, you got to drop the anchor somewhere. And I was just like, that's it. I mean, and it's a lot of it's sort of just like where you live and how you situate your life is like, there's a lot of it's sort of just like Where you live and how you situate your life is like there's a lot of happenstance there And a lot of it's just like you have to sort of just sort of trust the faiths on that one. Yeah, like, you know Where you live and what those decisions are and then especially like if you're kind of in a Relationship that kind of like, you know that kind of joint decision making. And it's just like, it's really, at this point in my life, it's, I find it just to be interesting. Sure. Yeah. So yeah, I live in London. We live like in like, like the burbs outside of

London in a way. And then we spent a lot of time in South Miami because again, I have got that place roots there. Yeah. You kept the house? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so we kind of hang there Oh quite a bit that's where I wrote the book and it kind of it's like You know cat power she was down. I just saw yeah, she was down there I think she's playing here tomorrow night or something or oh Wednesday night. She's playing somewhere like yeah, like What's that hotel the oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's like the theater. Yeah, I think that's where she's playing big place I think she's doing her Dylan thing. Yeah, right exactly which I saw that in London. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the theater. Yeah, I think it's like the theater in the theater. I think that's where she's playing. It's a big place. I think she's doing her Dylan thing. Yeah, right, exactly.

Which I saw that in London. Oh, okay. Good. Because nothing we're seeing. When you look at bands like over the last couple of decades, who do you see as the direct legacy of you? Of Sonneke? Oh, my God.

Like pavement, would you say pavement? Pavement was interesting because they definitely were young guys who were at the clubs when we were going out in our vans and playing. So like when swans and Sonic youth would go out and like, you know, go up and down the east coast or go out to the Midwestern back, people like Steve Malekness, you know, or David Berman, you know, from Silverjuice, these guys would be in the audience. They were a bit younger and they were either in college or whatever and they were at the gig. So there is that kind of contingent of people who were really into what was going on with

like Sonic Youth and Who Scrooge Do and Butthole Surfers and the Mid Puppets. And that was our coterie. That was like going all through the 80s. That was the scene. And so there was like the died in the wall kind of hardcore scene, which was really sort of dominant in some ways in like the underground music profile of USA. So you had your minor threat, everything coming out of Black Flag and Dead Candidates. All across the USA, that was like a very busy B of a scene,

10 bands every night, you know, kind of thing. And then you had bands like Butthole Surfers, Meepoved Sonic Youth, Swann, that were somewhat associated to that, but a little older and a little more outsider. You know, we were kind of, but at the same time a little more outsider. Yeah. Right. But at the same time, kind of accepted by some of those bands. Certainly later when a lot of those bands grew up and they started kind of acknowledging us like, oh, wait a second, you know, because they're burnt on the same old like, ah, ah,

ah, ah. Meat puppets are hard to classify. I love them. Oh, extremely hard to classify. They're just the meat puppets, you know. And so. Same with that whole servers. Oh my God. I mean, by whole servers live, like in like 87, 88, yeah, when they would come out with like the two screens showing

whatever movies they were showing, the, the nude dancer, yeah, just that band, everybody tripping on LSD. There's just like, what tripping on LSD. There's just like what is going on? And they would play these like long, like blown out sort of Texas garage rock kind of based tunes with like crazy lyrics, gibby, just like, huge. He's as tall as I am, but he's broader and bigger.

And he's just like a pro wrestler almost, just laughing and having the best time. You know, they were having the best time Like all these lights going off just wanting to create this spectacle and they did and there was like it's really a little heart To like even explain like how amazing the butthole surfers were when they would come to town. Yes, every Everybody who was into that scene would be at that gig. Yeah, would just be, they would just like, like, is this legal? I mean, I remember them starting fires on stage.

You can't, yeah, that's over with. You can't do that anymore. Yeah. Well, it was great talking to you, man. Yeah, I know. I, you know where to find me, man. If you ever want to like, you know, talk more, I'm around. Yeah, in London?

In London, in Miami. I go to, I'm in New York and Connecticut. I'm kind of New England. I'm kind of a, I'm kind of a bit of an Eastern Seaboard guy. Do you ever do London? I mean, do you ever come? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Do you know, uh, Stuart Lee? Yep. He's a good, he's a, he's a good mate of mine.

He's great. I interviewed him, uh, uh, years ago when I was in London. I love him. He's great. Real smart guy. We used to, we were neighbors for, when I was in London. I love him. He's great. Real smart guy. We were neighbors for many years in London and then we moved, but he just did the Sonic Life interview with me in London for the event there. Oh yeah?

Yeah. Yeah, he's great. He's a good dude. He's a one of a kind dude. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smart guy. I can't, his thing where he does his kind of repetition pieces. Yeah. Yeah.

Just thinking about it. So I go to see him once in a while, like, you know, at least once or twice a year. Oh, that's good. Because he does like it. He goes as a residency at this one theater. Oh, that's cool. Say hi to him for me. Oh, I will. Yeah. All right. All right. Cool. All right. Cool, man. Thank you. Well, yeah, sure. All right, cool. All right, cool, man. Thank you. There you go. Pretty fun.

Pretty exciting. Sonic Life, a memoir, is available now wherever books are sold. Hang out for a minute, people. You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishi Keshe Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking song exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed

by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece. Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca. Calgary is an opportunity-rich city, home to innovators, dreamers, disruptors, and problem solvers. The city's visionaries are turning heads around the globe across all sectors each and every day. They embody Calgary's DNA. A city that's innovative, inclusive and creative, and they're helping put Calgary and our innovation ecosystem on the map as a place where people come to solve some of the world's greatest challenges.

Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look at CalgaryEconomicDevelopment.com. Okay, look, on Thursday Todd Glass is back on the show. He's been on a few times, but his most notable episode was back in 2012. I think we should be clear that you are coming out here. Yes, yes. Okay. And here's the, I wrote down nothing on this piece of paper except one thing, and then

I thought, after this, just let it take its course. Well, I mean, I mean, this is, I can't imagine what it must be like, because I've known you for probably 20 years, 25 years. You are a beloved comic and in the community and everybody knows you. But I got to be honest, I never even thought about that. Well, here's the reason. And once I get this out of the way, because I, and then I'll have an honest, you know, like I'll go back and forth. You've got the easy one. There's a little, little agenda I get this out of the way, and then I'll have an honest, you know, like I'll go back and forth.

You've got things you want me to say. There's a little agenda. It's literally two minutes, you know. Okay, we have a time. You want your peers to sort of respect you. In other words, in my head, it's just the way I think they go, yeah, Todd did it on the Mark Maron show. I know there's a shitload of people.

As a comic, I don't like to be delusional. So if anybody went, oh, Todd went on the Mark Maron show to say, we knew it. I know that there are people that were pretty fucking positive I was. They've been my friends for 20 years. I'm not with women. I'm not. And then there were other people, maybe not as sure. Some people don't give a shit. I get it. Yeah. So it's not like I'm saying it in some way like I got something. I did not deliver it. If somebody out there tomorrow, I don't know why I bother to be when Todd said on the Mark Maron show, like we didn't know. Yeah, I fucking know that I know that but I've not been honest about it. So even if you know, yeah

I can't reference it right. I can't say it. I can't you know on stage maybe reference it It's not gonna become my act right now I'm just saying what a lot of people already knew now. I'm being honest about that's episode 245 with Todd Glass and you can hear that episode ad-free with a full Marin subscription. Just go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF plus.

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