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Transcript

TMP319 JOHNNY INDOVINA OF HUMAN DRAMA · Troubled Men Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: Listeners, welcome back to the Troubled Men podcast. I am Renee Komen, sitting once again in the heart of the Clempire Snake and Jake's Christmas Club Lounge with my co host, the original troubled man for troubled times and future mayor of New Orleans, Mr. Manny Chevrolet. Welcome, Manny.
• 0:33
  Speaker C: Hey, man, it's good to be back here. You know, we've been gone for a couple months and I. I feel back at home in the clown.
• 0:44
  Speaker B: Oh, okay. Have we been gone for a couple of months? We were here last week.
• 0:47
  Speaker C: Really?
• 0:50
  Speaker B: Seems like that.
• 0:51
  Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of things have been going on.
• 0:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've been a busy man. You have the. The campaign going on.
• 0:57
  Speaker C: Y. School starting again.
• 0:59
  Speaker B: Oh, is it okay?
• 1:01
  Speaker C: Yeah. And you know, just a few weeks until all the brats move back right.
• 1:05
  Speaker B: Over there at the big university.
• 1:07
  Speaker C: The big. The big T. Yeah, the big T. And so, you know.
• 1:13
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 1:14
  Speaker C: Just like this will be my last run from air. It's probably pretty much my last year or so on campus too.
• 1:19
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 1:20
  Speaker C: Yeah, I'm gonna be calling it quit soon, huh? Well, I won't quit this.
• 1:25
  Speaker B: Right. On the booze.
• 1:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26
  Speaker B: I need this. I hear you.
• 1:28
  Speaker C: It's the only thing that's keeping me going.
• 1:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's. It's. You wake up screaming every morning, then you realize, well, at some point you can have a drink. So it kind of gets you through it.
• 1:38
  Speaker C: Yeah. I don't know. It's crazy. Going nuts, right? You know? Anyway, a lot of things been going on. I. They keep. They keep. This Epstein Trump thing keeps going on and on and on.
• 1:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:52
  Speaker C: And I'm watching the news and my wife screams at the tv, who cares? She's at that point where she's just like, who cares? Nothing's gonna happen.
• 2:02
  Speaker A: Right?
• 2:02
  Speaker C: And I'm saying, well, maybe something will happen. Maybe. But what I did find, because I've watched a lot of news. I watch a lot of news. The cnn, the NBC, the cbs, the. I'll even watch the Fox every once in a while.
• 2:16
  Speaker B: Yeah. What about the. The Newsmax or some of those more alt.
• 2:20
  Speaker A: Right.
• 2:21
  Speaker B: You don't. Probably don't get those on your. You don't have cable anymore, so.
• 2:24
  Speaker C: No, I don't. I don't.
• 2:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't see those either. I just know they exist.
• 2:28
  Speaker C: I noticed, you know, they.
• 2:29
  Speaker A: They.
• 2:30
  Speaker C: All these networks were showing the files, you know, the. The transcripts and the CIA, our FBI transcripts, and. And they showed so much of them. And I'm thinking to myself, I've got to get One of those black highlighters.
• 2:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. To redact.
• 2:50
  Speaker C: Yeah, I gotta get one of those. A black highlighter.
• 2:55
  Speaker B: I think it's just called a marks a lot.
• 2:56
  Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know, but it, they seem cool to me.
• 3:00
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 3:01
  Speaker C: Black highlighters, you know, if you ever the nation has one, send me one, you know.
• 3:06
  Speaker B: Well, you know, I wonder if you could, could do that just as a gag. Like I know you have correspondence among you within your company. If you just had a, had a email that you'd send somebody and just, just randomly black out, black out all the verbs.
• 3:22
  Speaker C: How's that?
• 3:23
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 3:24
  Speaker C: Just the verbs. What I'm saying to you, send it to someone.
• 3:27
  Speaker B: Say, you know, this is, this is not top secret, but it is highly classified.
• 3:32
  Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's going on. The election's just beginning. I don't know if you saw this, but the front runner, Helena Moreno, I don't know if we talked about it. She's got over a million dollars in her war chest.
• 3:46
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 3:47
  Speaker C: All right. And this guy who's running next, Oliver Thomas, he's got four. 400, 000.
• 3:52
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 3:53
  Speaker C: That's it.
• 3:54
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:54
  Speaker C: And I got nothing.
• 3:57
  Speaker B: You got nothing. You got these drinks. Well, somebody sent you $10 in the mail a couple weeks ago.
• 4:04
  Speaker C: And I wrote, I wrote him back. He's a good guy.
• 4:06
  Speaker B: Right on Eddie V. Eddie V. Yeah.
• 4:09
  Speaker C: And I don't know what the V stands for.
• 4:11
  Speaker B: I do, but I don't think he wants us to say it on here.
• 4:13
  Speaker A: Oh, really?
• 4:14
  Speaker C: It's for eddie the virgin. 60 year old virgin.
• 4:18
  Speaker B: I'm not going to say it's not cuz I don't want to give it away. But. No, he's, he's, he's married with children.
• 4:23
  Speaker C: Oh, okay. So I don't. Good luck with that.
• 4:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's, he's a good guy.
• 4:27
  Speaker C: So anyway, you know, I like to read the quirky stories and stuff. I get a lot of that on the, on the, on the, the computer there. And I don't know, you know, we always talk about Florida. Florida, Florida's a crazy.
• 4:39
  Speaker B: Shows up a lot on the show.
• 4:41
  Speaker C: Florida and Arizona is the Florida of the west if you ask me.
• 4:45
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 4:45
  Speaker C: A lot of crazy going on there. But there was in Florida, this guy was working at a Chuck E. Cheese.
• 4:57
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 4:57
  Speaker C: Did you hear about this?
• 4:58
  Speaker B: No, I wasn't sure they still had those things.
• 5:00
  Speaker C: Yeah, they have Chuck E. Cheeses. Sure, they have one here. All right. Yeah. A lot of kids parties. I've been to a couple.
• 5:07
  Speaker B: Chuck. Yeah, I mean Back in the day, sure.
• 5:08
  Speaker C: Yeah. Well, the guy who worked there as Chucky in the costume.
• 5:15
  Speaker B: Oh, the animatronics.
• 5:17
  Speaker C: No, it's just a real costume.
• 5:19
  Speaker B: Oh, okay. I got you.
• 5:19
  Speaker C: He's in the. You know.
• 5:20
  Speaker A: All right.
• 5:21
  Speaker C: He in the middle of a Chuck E. Cheese party. The cops come in and arrest him. And they don't even bother to take his costume off. They just arrest him as Chuck E. Cheese.
• 5:32
  Speaker B: Wow, it's about time.
• 5:34
  Speaker C: And, well, apparently this guy who was playing Chuck E. Cheese got busted. He found some credit cards and he. And he charged a bunch of. On these cars and they traced them back to him. It was pretty easy for the cops. Yeah, but the pictures of the kids screaming while Chucky's being hanged, he's getting taken down. Yeah, right. Yeah. And they're. Hank. They don't take off his outfit or anything like that.
• 5:57
  Speaker B: And so the kids just think they're arresting Chuck E. Cheese.
• 6:00
  Speaker C: Yeah. What? Mommy. Mommy. Why is Chucky in handcuffs? You know, so that. That kind of was funny to me.
• 6:09
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 6:10
  Speaker C: You know, children crying is not funny to me.
• 6:13
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 6:14
  Speaker C: Anyways.
• 6:15
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 6:15
  Speaker C: In some ways it's very hilarious.
• 6:17
  Speaker B: I thought you were gonna say. Yeah. That you found that.
• 6:19
  Speaker C: Well, I like them screaming. Kids screaming is great. You know, and they were screaming in terror because, you know, I guess the party was over after Chucky got arrested.
• 6:28
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you know, they've seen these ice raids on tv, so they don't know what's. Who's next. Maybe they think it's. Starts with Chuck. Next it's mom and dad.
• 6:38
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's mom and dad, you know, but so that happened in Florida, which is. That's our Florida story of the week.
• 6:44
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 6:45
  Speaker C: You know, for this show. Because they're always in the news. Florida.
• 6:47
  Speaker B: They are always in the news. Well, let's see what else is going on? Well, you know, we've had a few losses again, It's. It seems like every. Every week we have more people that we know from our childhood. This one, he was mentioned just last couple of weeks ago. Professor Tom Lehrer, the humorist. I think he was also a Harvard, maybe mathematics or physics professor or something, but wrote all these songs that wound up on Dr. Demento poisoning, pigeons in the park, masochism, tango, all those sorts of. Sorts of.
• 7:24
  Speaker C: Did he write shaving cream?
• 7:26
  Speaker B: He didn't write that. But many other things along those lines that I think shaving. I think that might be like Monty Python related it or something.
• 7:35
  Speaker C: I don't know.
• 7:35
  Speaker A: It could be wrong in that I.
• 7:37
  Speaker C: Think Shaving cream was. Could have been just Dr. Demento himself doing it. I don't know.
• 7:41
  Speaker B: I'm not sure. But. But yeah, Professor Tom Larry, who's 97 years old, who knew that? And apparently sometime in the. I don't know, he wrote. Wrote these songs, had had very much success. And then he got to a point where he said, he just stopped. He said, no, I didn't. I didn't get writer's block. I just stopped. I was done.
• 8:02
  Speaker C: Kind of like me, you know, I used to listen to music, and now I don'.
• 8:06
  Speaker B: Well, he went back to teaching. He still had a teaching position at one of the big universities, Harvard.
• 8:12
  Speaker C: I don't know much about it, but salute to him.
• 8:14
  Speaker A: Right.
• 8:15
  Speaker B: Raise a glass, shout out to Professor Tom Lehrer. Also Hulk Hogan, who's not a guy I was a fan of, but a guy I was aware of now. Did you ever. You were, too. We're both too old to have gotten into, like, fake wrestling on TV when it was in its heyday of the 80s and 90s.
• 8:33
  Speaker C: Well, in the late 60s, early 70s, me and my older brother would watch the fake wrestling on the TV from the Olympic Auditorium in la.
• 8:42
  Speaker B: Well, yeah, like the regional. I was into that here, too.
• 8:45
  Speaker C: We had him, and we watched it, and we actually went to it a couple times. The only time when it got really big, like in the early 80s, a friend of mine, Adam Mora, from high school, we used to take acid and go watch the wrestling.
• 8:59
  Speaker A: Masses.
• 9:00
  Speaker C: Yeah, we would take a. Take some acid. And his dad was in the entertainment business, so we always got really great seats for anything. So we're always in the front row. And I remember seeing Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant.
• 9:13
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 9:14
  Speaker C: And all this stuff. And me and my friend Adam would just be laughing because it's a circus. We had no idea what was going on.
• 9:21
  Speaker A: Right.
• 9:21
  Speaker C: But sometimes we'd get freaked out.
• 9:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 9:24
  Speaker C: It got too close, you know, in some ways, you know.
• 9:26
  Speaker A: Right.
• 9:27
  Speaker C: And when you see someone get hit over the head with a folding chair.
• 9:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 9:30
  Speaker C: It's not like the Looney Tunes.
• 9:34
  Speaker B: You don't see the birds.
• 9:35
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 9:35
  Speaker B: Flying around there.
• 9:36
  Speaker C: You don't hear the head getting big and then going to regular size and stuff like that.
• 9:41
  Speaker B: It's more brutal.
• 9:42
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's a little bit more brutal. But these guys, you know, that's what they do.
• 9:45
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 9:45
  Speaker B: They're entertainers.
• 9:46
  Speaker C: Well, they're stuntmen.
• 9:47
  Speaker B: Give it all for the.
• 9:48
  Speaker A: For the people.
• 9:48
  Speaker C: They're stunt men. But, yeah, I used to get into it a little bit, but never was A fan of his, to be honest with you, I didn't understand, you know, cuz it's all fake.
• 9:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. I couldn't watch it as an adult. Now, I know some people do and they. They get into it as the, you know, the theater of it.
• 10:06
  Speaker C: Well, yeah, just like that whole. The people who are into those monster truck things. Sure never got into that. It's like, right. What the hell are they doing to that car?
• 10:15
  Speaker A: Right.
• 10:16
  Speaker B: Well, like again, if.
• 10:17
  Speaker C: Hey, that's my car. Wait a minute. I just parked it outside and now it's in the stadium.
• 10:22
  Speaker B: Now if you're 8 or 9 or 10, you know, that's. That's who that's for, I think. You know, the monster trucks and the. And the fake wrestling and the pedophiles. Well, sure, yeah.
• 10:32
  Speaker C: Eight or nine or ten years.
• 10:33
  Speaker A: Right, right, right.
• 10:34
  Speaker B: Well, now around here they had. They used to have events at the Gulf Coast Coliseum. They would always advertise and have them on channel 26.
• 10:42
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 10:42
  Speaker B: And have stars like Scandar Agbar, the Iron Chic or something.
• 10:49
  Speaker C: I remember, see, I remember being in la. We'd see. Locally, we'd see Freddy Blassy, those guys, those famous people like Blassy and Mil Mas, you know, the Mexican wrestler and you know, those kind of guys. And I remember who was the evil guy. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like a soap opera. Yeah. One day Blassie's a good guy, the next day he's the bad guy.
• 11:13
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 11:14
  Speaker C: You know, it's. It was so produced. But we used to love it. I mean, we did love it for. There was that period, and then I think around 75, 76, we discovered pot. Right. So it just kind of mellowed.
• 11:27
  Speaker A: And then.
• 11:27
  Speaker B: Girls.
• 11:28
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, girls. Yeah. And we wanted to wrestle them.
• 11:31
  Speaker A: Sure. It all made sense.
• 11:33
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 11:33
  Speaker B: Right, right, right, right.
• 11:35
  Speaker C: You're Plassy and I'm Mil Maskeras. Lay down. I'm gonna put you down for 100 count. Not a three count, 100 count.
• 11:45
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 11:46
  Speaker C: You know, good times.
• 11:47
  Speaker B: Sure, sure, sure.
• 11:49
  Speaker C: And that's when tube tops were big. Remember tube tops? Yeah.
• 11:54
  Speaker B: Oh, God, the tube tops with. Sometimes the girls would have. Well, the short shorts.
• 11:59
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 11:59
  Speaker B: But then also they had the tube tops with like overalls.
• 12:04
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the tube tops. And then they had the dolphin shorts. Those were popular in la. The dolphin shorts and the roller skates.
• 12:13
  Speaker A: Right.
• 12:14
  Speaker C: Tube tops.
• 12:15
  Speaker B: And then Olivia Newton John.
• 12:17
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I remember that.
• 12:20
  Speaker A: Well, we've taken a left.
• 12:22
  Speaker C: Yeah. Well, anyway. Yeah, I digress, as they say.
• 12:28
  Speaker A: Right, right, right.
• 12:28
  Speaker C: Right.
• 12:29
  Speaker B: Well, we had a. A development with the podcast that, you know, kind of intersects with the mayor's race. So we've talked about one of your opponents, Frank Scurlock, several times before. So I don't know if he. Word got back to him, but somehow he reached out and started following the Troubled Men podcast on Instagram.
• 12:53
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 12:54
  Speaker B: So he might be one of those people that searches for his name on Google and.
• 12:58
  Speaker C: Well, I've seen his. He's got signs all around the city.
• 13:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:02
  Speaker C: But they're really small. You can't even read them.
• 13:05
  Speaker B: Huh.
• 13:05
  Speaker C: You know, they're not like yard signs like we always get.
• 13:08
  Speaker A: Right.
• 13:08
  Speaker C: They're like these like 8 by 10 glossy signs. They're just really. And they're posted up against telephone poles and stuff. You can't even read them. And they say basically Scurlock means business.
• 13:19
  Speaker A: Right.
• 13:20
  Speaker C: And he's all about business and stuff.
• 13:21
  Speaker B: Funny business.
• 13:22
  Speaker C: Yeah, well, yeah, we know that. Well, we should get him on the show.
• 13:25
  Speaker B: I knew you're going to say that. So I didn't want to move, you know, too hastily, but I may actually. Yeah.
• 13:34
  Speaker C: Get him on the show, extend a. And we'll talk about that night in Laughter.
• 13:41
  Speaker B: Now, what if he.
• 13:41
  Speaker C: Because we only have like eight listeners, so it doesn't really matter.
• 13:44
  Speaker B: Right, right. It's not. Not gonna hurt his campaign. He's not gonna win anyway, so, you know, he may as well enjoy it.
• 13:49
  Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
• 13:51
  Speaker B: Well, some other news that. That we talked about in the podcast before that's kind of come back up, and I think our guest may have. Be able to weigh in on this, have an opinion. So you remember Jane's Addiction had their big fight during the tour, Gary and Dave.
• 14:08
  Speaker A: Right.
• 14:09
  Speaker B: Tour was canceled. And then which right off the bat, I said, well, geez, man, these guys have been in a band forever. Haven't they had a fight before? You know, why do you cancel the tour?
• 14:19
  Speaker C: Definitely have fights. There was that great documentary about James in the early 90s where Dave and. Who was the bass player?
• 14:27
  Speaker A: Eric.
• 14:28
  Speaker C: Eric. They got into it. I think there was a big fist during a sound check or something.
• 14:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 14:33
  Speaker B: But so now all the lawsuits are flying, and within the band, I'm sure people are probably suing them, perhaps, you know, promoters or somebody. But I think now the band is suing Perry for, you know, whatever.
• 14:48
  Speaker C: Well, what about the fans? They should sue, too, to get their money back.
• 14:52
  Speaker B: Well, some may be doing that, you know, so in the trickling down.
• 14:57
  Speaker C: Well, you know, there's a. I don't know if you Saw this after that happened. There's a very good friend of Dave Navarro who's the sound. The guitar tech.
• 15:06
  Speaker A: Right.
• 15:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, we talked about.
• 15:08
  Speaker C: Yeah, he's got his own podcast.
• 15:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:10
  Speaker C: And he. He was.
• 15:11
  Speaker B: Blow by blow. Yeah.
• 15:12
  Speaker C: He gave the. But he also gave the days leading up to this.
• 15:17
  Speaker B: Yes, we talked about that as well on the podcast. Right.
• 15:20
  Speaker C: I hope. I hope that, you know, the lawyers always win.
• 15:23
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 15:23
  Speaker C: So that's what's going to happen. The lawyers will win. And I don't know if. If Navaro needs the money. I don't know, but I think they're embarrassed. And Perry. Perry is, you know, he's a lot of work, that guy. Yeah. I remember being at his house in Venice once, and I just, you know, looking at he. All this great artwork, and he just kept following me. He's like, what are you looking at? What are you looking at? Enjoying this. Don't touch it. Don't touch it. You know, I was like, all right, man, fine. I mean, there's nothing but crackheads at the house, you know, so maybe that had a little bit to do with it. But. But he did have that really cool pool.
• 15:59
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 15:59
  Speaker C: He had that really cool pool. It's a pool that made, like, waves. Oh, yeah, yeah, it was really cool. I never was in it, though.
• 16:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 16:07
  Speaker C: I didn't have a bathing suit at the time. Yeah. Anyway, so we'll see what happens. I'm sure we'll be updated on. On that whole.
• 16:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we'll keep.
• 16:18
  Speaker B: Keep the troubled nation apprised of this.
• 16:21
  Speaker C: Yeah, we'll see. But it's too bad because I always thought that band was a really good band, you know, and, you know, bands need to. Bands break up. You know, bands have trouble.
• 16:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 16:32
  Speaker C: You know, I mean, never ends in the music industry.
• 16:35
  Speaker B: Sure, sure.
• 16:36
  Speaker C: You know, it's just like the movie industry or any industry.
• 16:39
  Speaker B: It's people, you know, porn industry.
• 16:42
  Speaker A: Ego and drugs.
• 16:43
  Speaker C: Yeah, ego. Ego. Well, drugs, like Keith Richards always says, drugs is the occupational hazard of the music business. That's what Keith said. And he was. He would know.
• 16:55
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 16:55
  Speaker A: You know, artists should never lose touch.
• 16:58
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 16:58
  Speaker A: How fortunate they are when people actually listen and people actually buy a ticket and show up and no drug, no anything should. Should come above that. And your responsibility to your bandmates.
• 17:11
  Speaker C: Well, you're in a band, you've been in bands. But don't you think. I mean, I would. I grew up. I mean, I was in the movie industry for years and then also the music industry for a little bit. But the problem. I Have with both of those jobs is just. There's just so much waiting. Especially like in the movie, you're waiting in your trailer. You know, what are they doing? Why, why do I have to be here at 8 o' clock and then they don't use me till 3 o' clock in the afternoon? What the hell are they doing? And then like with the music, I just remember, you know, I'm not a musician, but I was in a band and it was like we'd go into the studio and it's just like, what is taking so long? You know, they check this.
• 17:54
  Speaker B: Everything takes longer than you think it's going to.
• 17:57
  Speaker C: I'm a man with little patience. Like, can't we just do this?
• 18:01
  Speaker A: Sure. I've hollered at many engineers while they're sound checking the drum sound.
• 18:06
  Speaker C: Right.
• 18:07
  Speaker A: At a concert where the Cheniere drum really doesn't matter. And I'll bring it up.
• 18:13
  Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, it's just like, what, why does it take? So I think, I think you have a lot of time on your hand, so why not pop a pill?
• 18:21
  Speaker B: Well, yeah.
• 18:22
  Speaker C: Or snort a line while you're waiting.
• 18:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. You need to be able to maybe develop a habit. Like not a drug habit, but like a good habit, like water coloring, you know?
• 18:33
  Speaker C: Is that what you do, Ray? I don't think so, Mark.
• 18:37
  Speaker B: Sandman actually did turn me on. He goes, yeah. He goes. He goes, yeah. You know, I have a little set of water collars. When I get to a sound check and I'm waiting around, I pull them out and just entertain myself. I did it for a little while. That was, you know, it was fine anyway, not carrying those around anymore. But I still have them. Have a few, few fun little things.
• 18:56
  Speaker C: I want too much time.
• 18:58
  Speaker A: Right, right, right.
• 19:00
  Speaker C: Time kills.
• 19:02
  Speaker B: Well, you have anything else there?
• 19:03
  Speaker C: No. Let's get our guests.
• 19:04
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 19:05
  Speaker C: He's excited.
• 19:05
  Speaker A: I got nothing.
• 19:06
  Speaker C: All right, all right.
• 19:08
  Speaker B: Well, we have a terrific guest here tonight. Once again, our scheduled guest canceled out two, two weeks in a row.
• 19:15
  Speaker C: Him.
• 19:16
  Speaker A: So I don't know.
• 19:17
  Speaker C: I don't know who he is.
• 19:18
  Speaker B: We're not going to mention his name.
• 19:19
  Speaker C: But I don't know who he is.
• 19:21
  Speaker B: Once again, we have a hero coming in. Who we were just in contact. He's a terrific singer, songwriter, multi instrumentalist, guitar player, producer. His band, Human Drama has released over a dozen albums since forming in around 1985. And that group grew up out of a first generation New Orleans punk new wave band called the Models. Started in the early 80s. He lived in LA for many years. Starting in the mid-80s until recently moving back to New Orleans. Also has a terrific book, My Bag of Secrets. Contains lyrics from many of his songs, as well as the anecdotes throughout his career. And we're going to get into all that and much more. But without further ado, the great Mr. Johnny and Davina. Welcome.
• 20:09
  Speaker A: Thank you guys for having me. Appreciate it.
• 20:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, man, it's an honor.
• 20:12
  Speaker A: Indovina and Davina. It's a great. Almost Italian.
• 20:15
  Speaker C: Almost Italian.
• 20:18
  Speaker B: It's a great name.
• 20:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. Not many of us left, actually, but all that that are left I am related to.
• 20:25
  Speaker B: Right.
• 20:26
  Speaker C: Okay, well, that's good to know. You know, I was talking to a former guest just yesterday in, at the noac in the sauna, our friend Steve pike. And you talk about there's not that many people left in your.
• 20:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:40
  Speaker C: But his wife, they're going to Poland where she's from, and she decided to do one of those. Yeah. DNA things where they find out your lineage and stuff like that. And all you have to do now apparently is I said, well, how does that work? You just spit in a tube.
• 20:59
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah. It's been like that for a bunch of years.
• 21:00
  Speaker C: Really? I did not know this and, but apparently. But Steve didn't elaborate on it, so I was like, well, you spit in a tube and they know your name already, or do you have to give your name and your age and your sex? Or they just, you just spit and they find out where you're from and who you are, you know?
• 21:17
  Speaker B: Well, they don't know your name, but just by spitting in it, they can tell you a whole bunch of who your relatives names are because those people have registered.
• 21:25
  Speaker C: Are you. I'm not interested in that whatsoever. I have no. I, I don't want to know any of that.
• 21:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, I, I, I did it. And I, I don't know.
• 21:33
  Speaker C: You were disappointed.
• 21:34
  Speaker B: Well, yeah, that, that I wasn't. Well, I don't want to get into my generic disappointments. No, no.
• 21:41
  Speaker C: Yeah. But okay, so go ahead. So you're.
• 21:45
  Speaker A: My sister did it. Just as I'm with you on this, my sister did it. She said she was gonna get it for me for my birthday or for Christmas, but I said, well, what are you. And she read off and I go, well, I'm done. I don't. Get me something else.
• 21:58
  Speaker C: Yeah, see, that's really not true.
• 22:01
  Speaker B: You would think.
• 22:01
  Speaker A: And she told me, Right. It's not true. Which makes me think.
• 22:08
  Speaker B: Oh, you can curse.
• 22:09
  Speaker A: That's why I think it's bullshit.
• 22:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, sorry.
• 22:11
  Speaker A: Man, if I. What. I'm from a different.
• 22:14
  Speaker B: Well, no, no, here's how that works. It's like, say you have a sibling that has blonde hair and you have brown hair. So the genes that carry those different hair colors also carry other genes along with them.
• 22:28
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 22:29
  Speaker B: And so just the way. Because, like, you got some of that from one parent, some of that from another parent, so you could have certain genes that your sister doesn't have because, you know, not that your parents didn't have them, but you see what I'm saying?
• 22:44
  Speaker A: Because.
• 22:44
  Speaker B: Because they're kind of riding on. She said, yeah, yeah, it's that. That going back to that Punnett Square, the. The Gregor Mendel with the.
• 22:52
  Speaker A: I think she just get my hundred bucks.
• 22:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:55
  Speaker C: Now, what have you put, like, a loogie in this test?
• 22:58
  Speaker B: I think it's cool.
• 22:58
  Speaker A: I think that's.
• 22:59
  Speaker B: That's as long as it. Because it just has to have cells. Has to have some of your cells.
• 23:05
  Speaker C: Yeah. See, I. I like. I agree. I. I would never want to do this.
• 23:08
  Speaker B: Well, let's get back to our guest, Mr. Johnny Hindovina. Now, Johnny, I know you tell us where you grew up. Were you born in New Orleans proper?
• 23:20
  Speaker A: I was born in New Orleans proper, but quickly moved down to the Chalmette St Bernard area. My dad had gotten housing down there because he was in the army. And they had these nice little tracks that they were starting to build. Gave all the guys a nice break. And so we got a house. I think our house notifier member was $72 or something like that, and he went to work at a factory that was located in St. Bernard.
• 23:48
  Speaker C: That's your dad, your mom, you and your sister.
• 23:50
  Speaker A: And my sister. Four of us.
• 23:51
  Speaker C: Just the four of us.
• 23:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, just the four of us. That's. I'm running out of family. Right? Yeah. So I grew up in just beautiful little Chalmette, Louisiana, and wouldn't trade it for anything nice.
• 24:01
  Speaker B: Now, Chalmette. So for people that don't know, it's like they've heard of the Ninth Ward. So this is like, if you get to the Lower Ninth Ward and you keep going down, it's past Araby and. But they had like, the. The St. Bernard Civic center down there.
• 24:16
  Speaker A: Where there were many great concerts when.
• 24:19
  Speaker B: I was growing up, so many great shows that you. You have memories of going to a lot of rock and roll shows.
• 24:24
  Speaker A: Peter Gabriel doing the whole Lamb Lies down on Broadway.
• 24:27
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 24:27
  Speaker A: Unbelievable. Just 400 people in the whole place, and they just did it top to bottom.
• 24:33
  Speaker B: I Think. I think, like, Lou Reed did the whole Rock and Roll animal show.
• 24:37
  Speaker A: Reed. November 8, 1974. Six.
• 24:43
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 24:43
  Speaker A: Something like that.
• 24:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, it was.
• 24:44
  Speaker A: It was.
• 24:45
  Speaker B: It was the. Wasn't it the Rock and Roll Animal Tour where they had Hunter and.
• 24:50
  Speaker A: And Wagner playing Sally Can't Dance tour.
• 24:52
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 24:53
  Speaker A: But they had the same band you're talking about. Yeah. Man, what a great Fleetwood Mac With. With. With the two guys, the original guys in it. Bob.
• 25:04
  Speaker B: Peter Green and.
• 25:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, Peter Green and Bob Welch. Right. And then a week later, Lou Reed and I saw them both at St. Bernard Center. My first two concerts.
• 25:13
  Speaker C: How old were you?
• 25:15
  Speaker A: Oh, gee, if it was 74, I would have been sick. 13, 14. I think it might have been more like 75, 76.
• 25:26
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 25:26
  Speaker A: I think something like that.
• 25:27
  Speaker C: Now, did they play New Orleans or just Chalmette?
• 25:30
  Speaker A: They played down in St. Bernard. Yeah, Chalmette. It's in Chalmette. Those particular tours.
• 25:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. They didn't play, like, in the city.
• 25:37
  Speaker A: They didn't hit Municipal Auditorium after that.
• 25:41
  Speaker C: It was a pay to play or something?
• 25:43
  Speaker B: No, no, that was just. I mean, that was the venue. And people from New Orleans would go there. It's not a long way. I mean.
• 25:49
  Speaker A: And New Orleans was always a stopover town. It was always thought of that, which I just thought was ridiculous. So they had to do that stopover between wherever and Houston or something. And Municipal Auditorium wasn't open. It was a Tuesday. St. Bernard Civic.
• 26:06
  Speaker C: Yep.
• 26:07
  Speaker A: I think that's how it happened. Same thing with Queen, New York Dolls, and who else is on that bill I'm forgetting?
• 26:14
  Speaker C: Wow.
• 26:15
  Speaker A: Cool.
• 26:17
  Speaker B: That sounds. Sounds plausible.
• 26:20
  Speaker A: Anyway, so.
• 26:21
  Speaker B: So you went to elementary school, high school down there?
• 26:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. Catholic school. Then to Nick Nicholas P. Trist.
• 26:28
  Speaker B: Would you go to, like, Holy Cross or something?
• 26:30
  Speaker A: No, Shelmet.
• 26:31
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 26:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, sorry. No, sorry. Yeah. Devry Community College came looking.
• 26:39
  Speaker B: Oh, okay. They're scouting you. All right. Right on. Well, they can.
• 26:42
  Speaker C: That's a good school.
• 26:43
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Devry.
• 26:44
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 26:45
  Speaker A: There you go. You learn a trade?
• 26:46
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 26:47
  Speaker A: You do refrigeration? Yeah, yeah. It's.
• 26:49
  Speaker B: AI is not going to be able to replace.
• 26:51
  Speaker A: They can't replace me. No.
• 26:54
  Speaker B: So what kind of bands were you hearing or going to see, like, New Orleans bands in those early years? You remember any?
• 27:02
  Speaker A: It took a little while to get into the New Orleans thing. I was a little bit older by the time that I found the Nevilles and found the meters or Dr. John and Fats Domino.
• 27:13
  Speaker B: But I mean, like, New Orleans rock bands. Were there any. Was that even Happening.
• 27:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, we had great cover bands in those days. We had Vince Vance and the Valiant, and we had Top Cats with the original topcats. That were unbelievable. But it was just things like that, going to see cover bands until I think I got in my first band, fell ass backwards into it. Never had any intention of doing this. Just never. But it was after that. Well, who was that? They were called Eclipse. No, I'm sorry. Yeah, Eclipse.
• 27:46
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 27:46
  Speaker A: Their singer got mononucleosis, and I happened to be going there to pick up a friend, and he said, johnny knows some David Bowie songs and was big into Bowie already, me and one other guy in the city. So they said, can you sing Suffragette City? And I was like, well, I know it, I know it. I'll imitate Bowie. And they had me sing a few songs at the next weekend's thing. So that's how I got into a band.
• 28:10
  Speaker B: Cool, man.
• 28:11
  Speaker A: I was brokenhearted over a girl that had dumped me and I had nothing to do. And so I was going to pick him up after rehearsal, and that's how I got into bands.
• 28:21
  Speaker B: And what kind of places would y' all play? CYO dances. Yeah.
• 28:26
  Speaker A: I don't. Some of the guys might not even have been old enough to do bars, although I think they might have just been 18 in those days. I don't know. But, yeah, it was mostly school dances outside of a record store, on a flat bed, where you'd go play in little. What, Ball of a. Buras. You go play in Buras.
• 28:44
  Speaker B: Buras or Sulfur. Yeah, right.
• 28:46
  Speaker A: Or West. We go. You go to wherever they would let you play. But. Right. It was a good start. It was fun.
• 28:52
  Speaker C: So there's. At that time, there's really no rock or punk bands in New Orleans at all. We had cover bands.
• 28:59
  Speaker A: The COVID bands were where we went when we were young. Star Mink. Zebra was just starting. I didn't have any, you know, thought about going to Zebra.
• 29:09
  Speaker B: Now, at that time, Zebra was one of about four Zeppelin cover bands where they had like 2.4K. And I can't remember who the other.
• 29:16
  Speaker A: Ones were way before 2.4K. Yeah. Yeah. And I know the other one that. That you're thinking those.
• 29:22
  Speaker B: Those guys would work like four nights a week, man, just playing nothing but Zeppelin. It's crazy.
• 29:27
  Speaker A: Play the Lakefront. Then you go play Mother's Mantle in Baton Rouge. And you come and you play one of the places in Fat City. Oh, one of the places in Fat City. You just bounce around, right?
• 29:37
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 29:38
  Speaker B: So. So you stumble into being in this band now does that light a fire under you to think, oh, this is cool.
• 29:46
  Speaker A: I loved it. I loved it. Just loved it. I could do it. I wasn't nervous a moment in my life.
• 29:52
  Speaker B: Were you already playing guitar at that time?
• 29:54
  Speaker A: Not at all. Not at all. I was into Bowie and Lou Reed and finding all the branches that led to, you know, Nico and the Velvet Underground and God knows who else. So I was really into discovering music and reading Roxine magazine and then falling in love with The New York CBGB's, the Mink DeVilles and things like that, you know, Talking Heads and Suicide and. And then I just. I just loved it. It was a passion of mine. Just a passion.
• 30:27
  Speaker C: And how did your parents feel?
• 30:30
  Speaker A: I had a pretty good job at the phone company back in those days, and that led to a pension and a career.
• 30:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, the phone company. Everybody in my family, before my father all worked for the phone company, and you go get hired, and they had the union. It was a monopoly. You don't leave, and it's a great gig.
• 30:50
  Speaker A: So my mother had that concern, you know, are you leaving to go play in a band? And this was after I had done some cover bands and got into the band that would become the models, and that's when I left the phone company in 79, I think it was. Yeah.
• 31:08
  Speaker C: And what did you do with the phone company?
• 31:10
  Speaker A: I was a draftsman. So I would lay out where all the cables and all of the boxes.
• 31:16
  Speaker B: And that's an especially good job because you're not crawling in the hole, not in the mud.
• 31:20
  Speaker A: I wasn't in the field, as they call it. Right, right.
• 31:23
  Speaker B: You're sitting in an office, drawing with.
• 31:24
  Speaker A: A graph paper, a great drafting job, and. And for those days, I was making what I. Good money for those days.
• 31:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:32
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't recall what it was, but it was a good job. Right. But now, I had no doubts, man. I had no doubts. Never. Never.
• 31:40
  Speaker B: About leaving it and going to play music.
• 31:41
  Speaker A: No. You don't need anything to fall back on.
• 31:43
  Speaker B: Right. Because then you'll just fall back.
• 31:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I've said it to so many people that have asked me about, like, how did I do it? And never. I never had anything to fall back on because I would have. Absolutely everybody will.
• 31:59
  Speaker B: That's key. Yeah. You got to give yourself no options. Yeah.
• 32:02
  Speaker A: And that was what I did. And the survival thing really kicks in. The art becomes more important than the being in the band, and that justifies the old. As long as you can sleep with yourself at night, you're okay. What am I doing kind of has justified me being here on the planet. I'm talking about, am I making things better? And that's how I kept going with that belief. And, you know, may I say something? I'm talking too much.
• 32:35
  Speaker B: But no, not at all. No, we want you to talk.
• 32:38
  Speaker A: I usually get a lot of questions about, like, what were my goals? You know, what was it that attracted you?
• 32:46
  Speaker C: What.
• 32:47
  Speaker A: What did you want? And I remember the only thing I wanted, the only thing that I said I wanted was if I looked over at my record collection, I would go through Lou Reed. Lou Reed, Lou Reed, Lou Reed. T. Rex. T. Rex. Bowie. Bowie. Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen. New York Dolls. New York Dolls. I wanted somebody someday to have that big collection where music's so important and go dab dah humble pie. Human drama there. But, you know, I just wanted to. To be in there.
• 33:16
  Speaker C: Yeah, I understand that totally. Yeah.
• 33:19
  Speaker A: Right.
• 33:19
  Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:21
  Speaker A: Nice.
• 33:21
  Speaker B: Well, that's. I think that's a very lofty and. And worthwhile way to look at it.
• 33:26
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 33:27
  Speaker B: Well, so you get into. To the. The band, the models. Now, how does that happen? Just. Was that from a cover band that you're starting to see other bands? Like. Like, you know, Brad Orgeron had the. What, The Backstabbers.
• 33:41
  Speaker A: The Backstabbers and the contenders. That's right.
• 33:44
  Speaker B: But, like, were those guys that you saw were already doing that or those total contemporaries of yours?
• 33:50
  Speaker A: I was in the COVID band. And those guys that he just mentioned, including the people that became the models. Right. They were cool. I didn't want to sing Foreigner or Queen or knocking them down in the. That's actually a cool song.
• 34:06
  Speaker B: Right.
• 34:07
  Speaker A: What I meant to say was tie your mother down. I didn't want to sing that anymore. And these guys were cool. Their girlfriends were gorgeous.
• 34:15
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
• 34:15
  Speaker A: I wanted to go hang with them. So when they said all of our bands broke up, you know, maybe we'll start something new. So I. We started the idea of writing material and just doing an album. So, yeah, I got to play with the cool guys. And luckily I passed the test. There was a competition and still don't know who voted for me and who didn't.
• 34:37
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 34:37
  Speaker A: You find out wondering. That's their ass.
• 34:39
  Speaker B: You were tall. You were tall. You have a. Have a good set of hair.
• 34:43
  Speaker A: Okay, Those two things are correct. I was tall and I had.
• 34:46
  Speaker B: I had thick hair.
• 34:48
  Speaker C: And you. You got the girls after.
• 34:50
  Speaker A: No, No, I did not.
• 34:51
  Speaker C: Girls.
• 34:52
  Speaker A: No, I did not. But I was. I showed up. I worked really hard, and I think I Went from real bad to okay to you're getting there. Sucked again. Pretty good. I was learning.
• 35:05
  Speaker B: Sure, sure, sure.
• 35:06
  Speaker C: So the Normals. How long do the Normals last?
• 35:09
  Speaker B: Well, he was in the model.
• 35:11
  Speaker A: The models went from the late 79. First show was in March of 80 at the showboat in Fat City.
• 35:19
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 35:19
  Speaker A: And then we stayed all the way to 1985 and where we became in the city as far as attendance went.
• 35:28
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 35:29
  Speaker A: Second only to the Cold. The Colds were just number one, man. And they were so good. And we were right behind them. Had a little bit of a different crowd. Some of the same crowd, you know.
• 35:40
  Speaker B: You guys were playing besides the showboat. Playing like Jimmy's all the time.
• 35:44
  Speaker A: Jimmy's Jags, Old Man Rivers again. We go to Mother's Mantle. And then we got pretty darn big as far as attendance. Bigger in Houston and Dallas than we were here. So we started setting our goals on going to New York and. Which we did a few times and showcasing. And then someone said, LA is the place to be. And, boy, were they right.
• 36:06
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 36:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, they were right, man.
• 36:08
  Speaker B: So you pack it all in and did the whole band moves to, bought.
• 36:13
  Speaker A: A van, flew out there, got jobs. The van came with a couple extra band members in it. And three months later, their wives were there. Everybody was working and we were. And we had a gig, you know.
• 36:25
  Speaker B: So tell us about that. You arrive, it's like the sunset scene, Sunset Strip scene in full bloom. Or give us the late.
• 36:33
  Speaker A: There was. There was the real rock and roll where, say, Van Halen would have been discovered at. And I'll remember some. Some of the bars at some point, but it's like the Troubadour, right?
• 36:46
  Speaker B: Palomino.
• 36:47
  Speaker A: I'm so sorry.
• 36:48
  Speaker C: That's where the rock and roll.
• 36:49
  Speaker A: That's it. Well, we were part of, like a pop crowd that played Madame Wongs. Madam Wong's at West and East.
• 37:00
  Speaker C: Right.
• 37:00
  Speaker A: West, to me, was the place because you.
• 37:03
  Speaker C: Madamong's west was good because the kids on the west side, they didn't want to go all the way downtown to the original Madam Wong.
• 37:10
  Speaker A: Nasty.
• 37:11
  Speaker C: It was a nasty place. But that's where punk rock was, really.
• 37:14
  Speaker A: That's right. Yeah.
• 37:15
  Speaker C: But Madamong's west was great. I saw. It was the saddest thing ever. I saw Ja Wobble, who was the bass player for Public Image, who announced that he was touring as a solo thing. And it was supposed to be at the Hollywood Palladium, a big place. Jaw Wobble, I mean, from Public Image. And ticket sales weren't as great. Then it went from the Hollywood Palladium to the Whiskey a Go Go. Ticket sales weren't that great and I went to Madam Wong's West. Poor guy. I just felt so. But I went to the show. It was a great show.
• 37:52
  Speaker A: There you go.
• 37:53
  Speaker C: Fabulous show right there on Wilshire Boulevard. You know, it was a great gig, it was a great place.
• 37:58
  Speaker A: That was a really good time for us to land in la. It was just phenomenal how quick we moved up from a Tuesday night at 8 o' clock to, you know, the Thursday, you know, then we go upstairs to the big boys room, we. And then we're headlining the bit. And it didn't take that long. We were real serious, man. We work really hard.
• 38:19
  Speaker B: So then y' all morph into being human drama.
• 38:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. Australian band the Models were on mtv, so we had. We had to lose the name, which I was so happy about.
• 38:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, it was so happy. It was a positive move.
• 38:32
  Speaker C: And you're so. There was a. An Aussie band and they were.
• 38:35
  Speaker A: The Models.
• 38:35
  Speaker C: They were bigger.
• 38:36
  Speaker A: Oh, they had MTV videos and we were clowning around at Madam to change the name. Yeah. So we had to change now the.
• 38:44
  Speaker B: The human drama always had, or correct me if I'm wrong, sort of goth as the word Gothic rock edge to it. I don't know that we did okay.
• 38:58
  Speaker A: But those. That audience came toward us. Ah, interesting. And I mean, we were playing the same bill as Guns N Roses, Lions and Ghosts, the Chili Peppers, Francis X and the Bushmen. There was no real gothic thing going on, but half the crowd was dressed in black with white face and listening. So they gravitated toward us and then to a degree toward Jane's Addiction. I don't know if you guys know Community fk, but wow, what a band. Lions and Ghosts, Phenomenal band that just didn't make it. They might have been the best out of my early days there.
• 39:37
  Speaker B: It was the emotionalism of your music that, that, that drew the. That that crowd in.
• 39:42
  Speaker A: I always focused on, you know, not just throwing any words together, making it make sense so that, so that when somebody listens to it.
• 39:52
  Speaker C: Well, I'm from LA and I was always a lounge singer kind of guy, but I always loved goth girls. I just thought, man, those chicks are beautiful, just so hot, you know, with that death white skin, you know. I just loved it, man.
• 40:07
  Speaker B: Cadaver vibe.
• 40:08
  Speaker C: Yeah, I dug it, man. I just, just dug it. And I dated a few of them. Yeah. Yeah, they were strippers, but any. Some of them Goth strippers. Yeah, Goth strippers.
• 40:19
  Speaker A: Man, Sure.
• 40:19
  Speaker B: I could see that.
• 40:20
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 40:21
  Speaker B: I could picture that.
• 40:22
  Speaker C: Best thing about, you know, if you're a junkie data stripper, because she comes home with cash every night.
• 40:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'll remember that from my 70s. I'll see what I can do. I'm gonna. I'm gonna keep it up here.
• 40:35
  Speaker C: Keep it up, man. I'm telling you, keep that in your mind, man.
• 40:39
  Speaker B: So you guys are having great success as human drama and have record company interests.
• 40:44
  Speaker A: As soon as Guns N Roses got the deal with. I think it was Geffen at the time. Yeah, Geffen, because James was Warner's. Then the A and R people came looking for the next guns. One of the next. They always want the next. And then Jane's got their deal with Warner's. We were demoing at the same time as Jane's Addiction for Warner Brothers. They got chosen. We didn't rightfully so. They were way more advanced than us. And then RCA scooped us up, you know. Yeah, they came. They came and looking excellent. Yeah, we made some bad demos for a lot of money for a lot of big labels. Yeah.
• 41:26
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 41:27
  Speaker A: And somebody at rca. In fact, it was Paul Atkinson who used to be in the band. There's no one told me about her. The Zombies. Yeah, he was the guitar player on the Zombies. He loved us. He signed us. Nice. Yeah.
• 41:43
  Speaker B: You must have been on the top of the world.
• 41:44
  Speaker A: Top of the world, my friend.
• 41:46
  Speaker B: Calling your parents.
• 41:47
  Speaker A: Top of the world.
• 41:48
  Speaker B: Got a deal with rca.
• 41:49
  Speaker A: Top of the world.
• 41:50
  Speaker C: The phone company to off.
• 41:52
  Speaker A: I'm not going back. I never did call and tell him I'm not going back. I did that day because I could tell him. What. You know me, I. I remember the money that was involved. And I'm not. I won't say it, because I think by now we all know what that money is for and that it's not real money. But I remember how guilty I felt at how hard my dad worked, the.
• 42:15
  Speaker B: Sums that they were throwing around.
• 42:17
  Speaker A: And he. And he wouldn't have made that in his life. 15 years. Right. You know, honestly.
• 42:23
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 42:23
  Speaker A: And. Okay, well, you know, we need to have it to make records, so. So here we go. But still, my focus was only on that one thing. Those albums, stack them up, start getting them going.
• 42:35
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 42:35
  Speaker C: But also at that time, in order to make records and to get them heard, you have to make videos because people are watching TV more than they're listening to the radio in many ways.
• 42:47
  Speaker A: Yep. And. And we did. We did need that, by the way. And we also needed tour support, which Will lead me to the bad side of the RCA record story. And even my bad side. The bad side of the story with RCA does have something really good attached to it. And that was when I found out that they weren't. They had said all the right things. They had put the dollars there. But they couldn't give us tour support because Starship was going out on the road.
• 43:19
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because they built a city.
• 43:21
  Speaker A: They built the city.
• 43:22
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 43:23
  Speaker A: They released my first single to college radio and we were so far away from R.E.M.
• 43:28
  Speaker B: Right.
• 43:29
  Speaker A: And I. I pleaded with them. Ho, ho, no. They say we could hit college with this. And then we're gonna go. We'll. We'll go to the next single for commercial radio, which was a song called Death of an angel that I was pushing for. I had a feeling about it, you know. But after College didn't hit.
• 43:47
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 43:48
  Speaker A: And I was already booked to do a video, they decided to pull my video support and not go.
• 43:56
  Speaker C: So you were the spokesperson for the band?
• 43:57
  Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.
• 43:58
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 43:59
  Speaker A: But you.
• 43:59
  Speaker C: Did you guys have an agent? Manager?
• 44:01
  Speaker A: We had a manager at the time.
• 44:02
  Speaker C: Okay, why. Why isn't he doing his job?
• 44:05
  Speaker A: It was a she. And. And she did try. Okay, she did try. But, man, you just didn't get the time to make your three albums and see what you became. You had to hit quick. People, you know, they had to keep their tracks.
• 44:20
  Speaker C: That was the 80s, man.
• 44:21
  Speaker A: There you go.
• 44:22
  Speaker C: That was the 80s.
• 44:23
  Speaker A: A lot of good bands did one record, right?
• 44:25
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 44:26
  Speaker A: And I insisted when I got a call from, it was no longer Paul Atkinson. He had gone to mca. And so they wanted my next batch of demos for album number two. We did an EP and a full length for rca. And I said, wait a minute, what do you mean? I go, no, we have you under contract for seven albums. And I went, well, that's. That's beautiful. So absolutely, I will get you. And I swear I said it like this. So I will start. I got my demo. I'll get you that demo whenever. Whenever you want it. But we're going to adjust the contract so that when you say something, it has to be done or I get immediately out of the contract because no tour support. You told people at your convention the year we got signed, Ladies and gentlemen, the president said, nice guy. Bob Buziak, God bless him, said, we signed the best live band we've ever seen. He said that. I didn't tell him one more. He said it. Could we get tour support?
• 45:29
  Speaker C: No.
• 45:33
  Speaker A: It made no sense to me. I'm very logical and I'M okay with understanding. Okay, well, look, you gave us a half a million bucks already. Okay, that's good, but just let me go. And he said, oh, we can't let you go. We got you. We got the contract. I go, well, and I appreciate it, so just redo a couple of things. Yeah, just sign that. We get 300 grand and tour support for the whole length of it until we. Johnny, we can't. We can't do that. I said, well, Bob, please let me go. Right? And I remember there was a silence and then there was a. Okay, I'll call Jeanette, Johnny. I'll call Jeanette. I appreciate you talking to me, so that. That saved my ass.
• 46:15
  Speaker B: Okay, well, speaking of letting you go, this is a good time to take a little break, Manny, because we got.
• 46:22
  Speaker C: To take a break. We're halfway through, through the show. It's been exciting. And we'll be right back, buddy. We'll be right back.
• 46:29
  Speaker D: I'm not going to look for answers I'm not going to search anymore.
• 46:40
  Speaker A: For.
• 46:41
  Speaker D: Meaning In a random life Like I would before on a sidewalk down in New Orleans. The radio matters none. Just watch the years ride off of me Find the child that I once was who believed and trusted all and questioned none. I have wandered far from home from who I am and from what I know in circumstantial blatant life a journey.
• 47:35
  Speaker A: Fl.
• 47:38
  Speaker D: The human guy.
• 47:45
  Speaker B: And we're back. Back with Mr. Manny Chevrolet.
• 47:47
  Speaker C: That's me.
• 47:48
  Speaker B: I am Renee Komen. Back with our guest, Mr. Johnny Indovina.
• 47:52
  Speaker A: Thanks again for having me, guys.
• 47:53
  Speaker B: And Johnny, I know you're new to the podcast, but as our devoted listeners already know, this is a listener supported operation. And to that end, we have a PayPal link and a Venmo link in the show notes of every show, as well as in the Facebook page that we use to promote this operation. And our listeners will, Will. Will pitch in, they'll buy us cocktails, help to defray our operating costs. You see, we use a lot of notebooks and pen and ink, so, you know, we're keeping us in composition books.
• 48:26
  Speaker A: Are we going to mention some of the people who won?
• 48:29
  Speaker B: As a matter of fact, if that.
• 48:31
  Speaker A: Was and where he was going, I was going to get him there.
• 48:33
  Speaker B: Okay, so. But this week we have give a shout out to Michael Pemberton, who used that Venmo link to. To buy us cocktails tonight. So thank you very much, Michael.
• 48:45
  Speaker C: Thank you, Mike.
• 48:46
  Speaker B: Also, we always say, follow us on social media, Instagram, Facebook, and also we have the Patreon page. We have a handful of patrons that are supporting us week in and week out. And, and we do love you.
• 48:59
  Speaker C: And if you want to promote or help support my run for mayor, you can always send a donation to the.
• 49:08
  Speaker B: Snake and Jake's to the bar, 7612 Oak Street, Oak Street, 70118, New Orleans, Louisiana. And yeah, or you can, you can, if you, if you want to, send it to one of the Venmo links and put a special note that this is for Manny's campaign. I will, I will forward to.
• 49:24
  Speaker C: Yeah, and I will, I will promise you a bumper sticker.
• 49:28
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 49:28
  Speaker C: And so get out there.
• 49:30
  Speaker B: One of our oldest, oldest listeners walking in the bar right now. Didn't even know we were here.
• 49:35
  Speaker C: Oh, you see, it's.
• 49:37
  Speaker B: Sometimes I'm in the, in the, walking in the park, you know, my. I'll go with my friend Scott Ploche, like two old men walking in, in, in Audubon park just to get out and do something. And somebody will be running by and they'll go, bubble Bed podcast. And he's like, wow, do you know that guy? He's like, no. So, you know, we're getting a bit of market penetration, as they say. Manny, also, what else? Yeah, subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to it. Rate, review and subscribe. Give us five stars. Helps us a lot. Cost you nothing. And, you know, you can find all my dates on the Renee Coleman Facebook page or, you know, iguanas.com and I'll be going out there. I'll be all over the road in a little bit. I think that's about enough of that. Back to our guest, Mr. Johnny Indovena. So, so Johnny, you're there. You're getting a sour taste in your mouth over the, the, the major label, the RCA deal. Now, you must have been thrilled being on RCA because Bowie was on our scene America, right?
• 50:41
  Speaker A: Thrilled. You have no idea how much that meant to me. Right.
• 50:45
  Speaker B: But then it doesn't, doesn't work out.
• 50:48
  Speaker C: Didn'T pan out, didn't treat you like Bowie, right?
• 50:51
  Speaker A: No, because Bowie got a few albums before he had go gold, right? I mean, it's like, isn't it like a great story how long it took Ziggy Stardust to actually.
• 51:00
  Speaker C: And he got tour support.
• 51:01
  Speaker A: I'm sure he got to play well.
• 51:04
  Speaker B: So, so, so you. But human drama is not going to let that get in your way. You guys are still, you know, reaching your, the pinnacle of your, your power.
• 51:15
  Speaker A: There, ready to do the next album.
• 51:17
  Speaker B: So, so You. You moved to an independent. I did too.
• 51:20
  Speaker A: So we went to a label that wanted us before RCA came to the table, but they were a smaller label, Jane's Addiction's first label, Triple X. Yes.
• 51:30
  Speaker B: Great label.
• 51:31
  Speaker A: Have.
• 51:31
  Speaker B: Have several records of mine on xx. Yeah, yeah.
• 51:36
  Speaker A: We held out. They're such nice guys. But we knew we would probably needed a little bit more to make our album. We didn't. So I went crawling back and I said, hey Peter, what do you got off rca? But what do you think? Because love to have you. Let's do a single first and then a full album. And I didn't even ask what. You know, what the numbers. Yeah, yeah. What a great guy. Still friends to this nice. One of my greatest supporters. And.
• 52:08
  Speaker B: And you guys were on that label for a long time.
• 52:10
  Speaker A: For a few albums. And the only time we went off of them and we came back, but we went off because they didn't. We had a record ready and they didn't have an open slot. So I said hey Peter, can we throw this one onto Project Records? And that did really well. And then we. We went right back to XXX and did a live album. So great people. Yeah.
• 52:33
  Speaker B: Best thing now all that time you're still playing in la, you guys going out and touring around the country. Now I know at some point you guys start playing Mexico or at least.
• 52:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 52:43
  Speaker B: At least you somehow you develop a huge fan base in Mexico. How do you.
• 52:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That, that's an odd one.
• 52:50
  Speaker C: The goth Mexican. Mexicans.
• 52:53
  Speaker A: Just. Just the kids that like music.
• 52:56
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:58
  Speaker A: But let me go. Let me go back to yeah, yeah. The way we had to make the Triple X album.
• 53:03
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 53:04
  Speaker A: We did the single, did one video. The. This video cost me $79. A fellow who was our roadie had a camera and there was a station called Night Flight on at that time.
• 53:15
  Speaker C: Sure. Yeah.
• 53:17
  Speaker A: And I'll Be Darn Far Video didn't immediately hit on Night Flight. So the single is nuts. What's going on? Our budget for the whole album was $5,000.
• 53:31
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 53:31
  Speaker A: We went from $350,000 for the first album to five. I had bumped into a fellow named Harry Maslin, who I got introduced to, became a huge fan. And I said one day, hey, Harry, how would you feel about mixing our second album? And he goes, let me hear it. Heard it, mixed the whole thing. Harry Maslin, who did Young American Station to Station. Right, right. For Bowie, he mixed it. We became great friends and completed it for the $5,000. And the world inside flew out The Door. We had no idea, but we were on again. Night Flight. We did six videos for it.
• 54:15
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 54:16
  Speaker A: I got one of the bigger. We Come. One of the bigger video guys in the world. Tarim, who did REM's losing my religion. After RCA pulled the plug on my video, Tarsim had now had representation. Just a college kid at UCLA when I found him. So now he's. Now he's huge. He throws a guy at us. Johnny, thank you. Here's. This is. I can't do it. My protege is going to do it.
• 54:42
  Speaker B: Right.
• 54:42
  Speaker A: And he did it all, paid for the whole thing. And that video got to like, number 11 in the nation, you know, on Underground. So that really broke us. Meanwhile, we're touring with my little band, Three girls, three guys. All the original members, other than myself, had kind of left after the RCA thing. I get it. They all eventually came back, but they left.
• 55:05
  Speaker B: And now in the band, you're carrying a few string players.
• 55:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. One of the greatest cellists in the world played. Jerry Sichek, happened to be in Human Drama for a couple of years.
• 55:16
  Speaker B: It's very cool to have that kind of unreal kind of stage show, you know.
• 55:21
  Speaker A: So sometimes we'd be at rehearsal and these other bands in the facility would come, try to talk to our girlfriends while we were on break, you know, and. And then when they saw that they were actually the flautists, the violinist and the cellists, they kind of, you know, heads down and walk away.
• 55:37
  Speaker B: Right, right, right.
• 55:38
  Speaker A: Their band meant nothing to these girls. That's the one. We did really well for that album then. I was so excited about how I was going. We did an album and I called it Pinups. Like Bowie's Pinups did the same cover. And that one, I remember getting the call from xxx. A guy named Jeff called. He goes, johnny, we already sold out the first pressing.
• 55:58
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 55:58
  Speaker A: I was like, my God. He goes, yeah, we're going second press.
• 56:01
  Speaker B: For a covers record. For a covers record.
• 56:04
  Speaker A: For a covers record.
• 56:05
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 56:06
  Speaker A: We were still hot off of that. So, long story short, we kind of started building it in the United States. We had no idea that Mexico knew of us. But I got offered a show that Christian Death couldn't do, Talking about Golf by their manager who liked our band and said, sure, we'll take it. Paid a thousand dollars. So we thought, we're gonna go down there and break new territory. We're already a tight set. Tight set. Segue, Segue. Come on, guys. This is new territory. Maybe we can come back one day. First on, they knew every word. I was like, what the fuck? What is going on? Like how it turns out? Rca, Latin America, much better. Yeah.
• 56:47
  Speaker B: They were pushing the record. Yeah, much better.
• 56:50
  Speaker A: We just didn't know.
• 56:51
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 56:51
  Speaker A: Nobody told us. Right. So we were.
• 56:53
  Speaker B: There was no Internet. There was no way to know.
• 56:56
  Speaker C: Well, the thing is though, mtv, the music video is the thing that like that song killed the radio star but made superstars and people saw you on tv, man. It's a cool video. It's a cool song. I'm to going. Going to go buy this.
• 57:14
  Speaker A: It turns out we were getting played on Sony TV during commercial breaks and movies and that's how the. The kids already knew us.
• 57:22
  Speaker B: Nice.
• 57:23
  Speaker A: So our second trip down to Mexico and that was 94, 95. We headlined one of the bigger festivals that Mexico City had had at that time. And. And that was it. But does some word from.
• 57:36
  Speaker C: There were a lot of bands I thought that were. They'd write a song or they get a song together and they'd think about the video first as opposed to the music.
• 57:51
  Speaker A: I don't know that.
• 57:52
  Speaker C: Oh, I. I thought there was a lot of bands that was like, how's this going to be a video?
• 57:58
  Speaker A: Interesting. You know, I don't. Yeah, I don't know.
• 58:01
  Speaker C: Honestly, I. I really think there was lots of bands all over the world. Probably it was like, well, we're going to do this, but it's got to be this on the video and stuff. As opposed to music being first.
• 58:12
  Speaker A: Possibly so. Yeah, you know, possibly so. So luckily Mexico came to the table and really kept us Alive probably another 15 years more than we would have been had they not been there.
• 58:26
  Speaker B: Now at some point I'm going to kind of shift around here, leave the timeline. But you and I have actually met before. I don't know if you may not recall this, but you have no reason to. But I got hired by Damien Youth to play on this Anne Rice Halloween party. Me, Carlo Nuccio Setley was on the band and we, you know, I kind of knew of Damian, but I really fell in love with him, playing with him and his songs. And Carlo and I wound up doing a demo, recording it over at Buzzy Beano Studio or. And we're thrilled. I think we recorded A Girl from Outer Space. Right. What a great song. Then I went and saw him at the Circle Bar, small performance. And you were there before. I don't know if you can't remember if you're performing with him or if you were just there watching him and that. I Think I met you there at that. And this wonderful little circle ages ago. But, you know, I love Damien and, you know, I know you do, too. And I. And Damien is another one of those guys from the Bowie. Like, Bowie created legions of artists, you know, like, he just seems like he opened the door for so many people.
• 59:41
  Speaker A: Absolutely. I had a chance. I had a meeting with a few major labels in Mexico to do a subsidiary label. It didn't work out, but the thing that I showed them is I wanted it to be like, kind of underground talent, you know, which could be really cool in Mexico. I sold it as. And it was his song that I played. He would have been, as I told right there. This is the guy that I would first go with and listen to this, and they would be blown away. But it never happened. Right, Right.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker B: And what a. What a tremendous artist. So prolific, man. That guy made so many records in his bedroom that sound better than major label releases.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker A: They sound. They might not be sonically better, but they're appropriate for the words he's saying. And it's perfect.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker B: They move you. They're moving just right.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker A: The mood perfect. Yeah, I agree. There ain't too many people better on the planet. To me. I've said it to him. I mean it. And I have a thousand recordings of his at home that I would stack up to win the argument. Right, Right.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker B: So I just had to bring that.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker A: Up because I'm glad that we met. I'm glad that you remember.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker A: Appreciate that, brother.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker B: And then really, I think the very next time I saw you was a few months ago. We had. I talked about this on the podcast. We had the second Red Rockers reunion and the Backstabbers slash contenders. And because we'd had Brad Orgeron come on with Damien Youth on the podcast, you go. And so I go in to see that and. And I see you up there singing, fronting the band, like, who is this guy, man? And then I realized, oh, wow, they.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker A: Asked me to sing the old cover song. Was sweet.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker B: No, What a great night, man.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker A: It was nice.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker C: Loved it.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker B: So fun to be with all those people. And, you know, our. Our patron here, Dave Clements, was hanging out that night. Darren Hill. I wound up here at the. After that show with Darren Hill and. And Dave and this guy, Jonathan Pritas, a recent guest of ours, who was playing, like, utility guitar with the Red Rockers that night.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker A: Oh, that's right. Yes, the second guitar player. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Third guitar player.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker B: Third guitar player.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker A: Right, right. He was great.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. No, he's Great. He plays in a band, the Walrus. He's a huge Beatles fan. You know, it's.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker B: Back to you. So. So you're still in la, but. But at some point, the, as you're saying, human drama kind of runs its course. I suppose you, you, you wind up being a solo artist.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker A: Just wanted to break, Break myself out of writing within the parameters of what I thought human drama needed to be, which is a stupid thing, but I did break out of it and I learned from the three albums I did that are not human drama. Sound of the Blue Heart, I did two, and then I did a solo album. And then it made total sense to get the band back together and have some fun.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker B: And you guys have gone back as a, as a, in a reunion sort of thing, a reformed thing, and played in Mexico City a number of times or fewer.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, we did a couple of big ones where we did like three albums in one night. Wow. At a beautiful place called the Metropolitan. We did. Last year, we did five shows in five days at a club. And that was, that was wonderful. So we get, we still get to do it from time to time.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker B: That's a, that's a big undertaking for a band that hasn't played regularly and in a whole bunch of years to do whole records and a new set every night.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker A: It really took its toll. And some of the guys said, we can't do that again. And when I know I said yes, I said yes. Maybe too soon, but hey, we did it, you know?
• 1:03:27
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker B: Now today I watched almost the whole thing of this terrific movie that, that, that you're involved in that's really about you. Seven Days in Mexico.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker B: It's a great documentary, as I'll put the. It's. It's available on Amazon Prime Video. It's really well made film, man. It's, you know, it's. It's a personal film. It's a documentary about you revisiting your time there, kind of looking back over.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker A: Your career, starting over kind. It was my idea. I don't know if it comes off that way. It was kind of like I was hating music. I was hating the procedure. Banging my head up against, against the wall. You just get tired of fighting through it, you know, it took too many punches, kind of. So I broke it down and just went to play my guitar. Don't want no money don't want no promotion Want to play it wherever I feel like it. Show up at a club which is what I did. Yeah, I just, I, I just changed the Game kind of. No. As soon as you say I don't want no money for nothing, you get to kind of do anything you want. And it really works for the movie.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker B: Now did it work for you personally? Did that, did it, did it accomplish the. Cuz I, I, I got that from it too. It's like this is a, a fella trying to, to rekindle his love of playing music.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker A: You hear me about two days in, I think, when I'm cussing at myself because I couldn't get that do a show out of me, even though there might have been four people in the whole place, I couldn't get the do a show. What's going first, what's coming second. I had to break myself from that old habit. Hey, I've shown up, there are eyes. I've got to be the guy from Human Drama or what. Yeah. And that's not what I went there to do. I went there to play whatever I felt like for as long as I felt like it. And so I had to break myself of that habit of showing up and it's a concert, even though I was the one that said there's no definite time I'm showing up. I might not show up, but this ain't a concert. You can't advertise, you know, this is. Or it kills. I won't be there.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker B: You had to break that in yourself, that impulse.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker A: I had to break it in myself because I couldn't get out of that do your show, man. Oh, do you show, man. But I got it. And by the last night, it's just, couldn't have been better, couldn't have been more beautiful.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker B: Terrific, terrific film. And I'll put the, put the link to that in the show notes so everybody can check that out. At some point you, you decide, well, I've had my fill of la. I'm going back to New Orleans, which all New Orleans should do. And so, you know, went to high school here. A lot of people that I, that I went to graduated from high school with, you know, went to college, other places and they went to other cities to live and they had their whole lives there in these other cities. Now as we're getting older, we're in the back nine, as I like to say, you know, it's the down slope of our lives. They're all coming back. And I started referring to New Orleans as the elephants graveyard because, you know, the way elephants always, they have great memories and they remember where they were born and as they continue feel they're getting in that down slope, they return to those places.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker A: Maybe I'm doing that. Maybe I'm almost out.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker B: Well, no, it doesn't mean that we're dying tomorrow. It just means that, you know, we're in that season of.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker B: You know, and it makes sense, though. I mean, like, where else would you be?
• 1:06:59
  Speaker A: I went back to family, you know, that's, that's why I. This is where my sister is.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker A: That's what I did. I missed my mother and father. His life. They were sweet enough to never make me feel guilty about it. So I was bound and determined to not just die.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker C: You got that phone company pension.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker A: There you go. I got my stock AT T. Stock.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker B: Oh, dang. It'd be worth a fortune.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker A: I don't know.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker C: I, I, I, I, I, I just, I would love to get out of this city. That's the thing.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker A: I've heard people say that.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker C: Yeah, I, I can't stand.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker B: But Manny married a New Orleans girl, so.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker A: So I could never leave nowhere.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker C: Big time.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker A: So back home and happy to be back.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker B: Nice. And we're happy to have you.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker A: Thank you very much for remembering.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker B: And, and you're start doing some playing here in New Orleans. I know you have a show coming up that's, that's going to happen before this show comes out.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker A: That's right.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker B: At the great Nolan.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker B: Uh, gallery, uh, we had, uh, Anthony Del Rosario, the proprietor of NOLA Gallery. He does great work. We had him on the show. He's. I'm a huge fan of his. He's a young kid. Well, when I say he's a young kid, he's in his 40s now.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker A: There you go. Very young for us.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker B: I remember when he was in his 20s. That's not the only show you're doing. You're, you're pulling other shows. In fact, I ran into Jimmy Anselmo. Came to the Iguanas gig at the Carousel a couple of weeks ago, and I saw that Jimmy's is reopening and they're actually having like a kind of a reopening show. They're gonna have a lot of groups from the, the old days.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker A: And there's definitely, definitely gonna be a couple. A couple. And that is of the 14th of August. Jimmy. It's gonna be Jimmy's night. And he's bringing in Linny Zenith and pop and myself acoustically. And I might have a guest or two to play with me and do a couple of things. People that were playing Jimmies, and that's all I know of so far. But there could be more by tomorrow.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker B: Should be a great night.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker A: Yeah. Really looking forward.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker B: I'll definitely be there. I love those things like the Red Rockers reunion, where people that don't go out all the time like we used to, but they'll show up for something.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker A: Like that now, and you get to like a reunion.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker B: It really is.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker C: You know, it's Lenny Zenith. That's a hell of a kid.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, man. Man, he's not from here. He's. We. We had Lenny on the podcast one time remotely. It was. It could. It could have gone better, but, you know. So what. What are we talking? What are we doing here now?
• 1:09:38
  Speaker A: What are we doing here?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker B: I don't know. Just.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker C: We're drinking. We're drinking, having a talk.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker B: You.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker C: You. We. Back earlier. We asked, but I don't think you answered. When did you pick up the guitar and start playing? I don't think.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker B: Good question.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker A: At. Around 19. I got a guitar.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker C: Yeah. Because you were going to gigs and you wanted to be a performer.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker A: I didn't kind of start playing.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker A: But I had it. And then after I got chosen as the singer and the models, I was singing the songs that these guys had from their other bands, you know, their. Their originals, it was called. Right. So I sang them. And then it was about a. Not even a year down the line, I realized that our set list was only growing from 11 to 13 songs because we added Sorrow by Bowie and he's a By. By Cheap Trick. And I realized we're.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker B: We need more songs.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker A: Yeah. So that's when I. Without telling the guys, I kind of focused a little bit more on writing stuff really horrible, really embarrassingly bad.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker C: So you just. You learn your chords?
• 1:10:48
  Speaker A: I learned. I got a Beetle Book and I learned what an A minor was through an E minor. There you go. And those are the only two I've ever used.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker B: A capo.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker A: You can play capo. It's different. So. Yeah. And I still. So I did it out of necessity. I told the guys that they for a while would continue to bring in music and I would write words to it. But then by 1983, it was all stuff that I had written. We had grown to that. And I looked at it as I wasn't being bossy. No one was bringing anything in. And I tried to do it. And every. Everybody in. In the band. And to this day, they give me the great respect of not questioning and knowing that I was the guy that was what was important to me.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker B: Best song wins.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker A: That's.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker B: That's how it's got to be, man. Best song wins.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker A: Sometimes that isn't the way it is, but it should be.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker B: That's. That's how it needs to be, man.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, so. Yeah, so that's. That's when. That's when I started out of Necessity. Absolutely.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker C: So you didn't tell anybody you just got a guitar on your own?
• 1:11:56
  Speaker A: I put some words together and over a couple of chords, and I listened to more, like, Beetle stuff. I like those structures. I. I knew I couldn't write, like Genesis, Trespass.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker C: When you showed up at rehearsal.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker A: Hey, I got the.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker C: I got this. And one of the band members going, where the. You learn to play guitar?
• 1:12:15
  Speaker A: They were that cold.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker C: They.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker A: They went. You know, because it. It had a little melody to it. It had a chorus, it had a bridge.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker B: They weren't writing in that kind of sophisticated way, structurally.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker A: Okay, what are the chords? Let's play it. And we were rehearsing by the end of the night. It's a song. And we, too, recorded our first thing of Buzzy Beanos.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker B: Buzzy Beano mano. Shout out to him.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, Good old Buzzy. Yeah.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker B: Well, God, Johnny, this has been a fantastic show, man.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker A: Thank you. Be just being back home and then already being here talking with you guys.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker C: So where. You're back in New Orleans.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker A: Where New Orleans. I am not. I am in Mandeville because that's where my sister lives.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker C: Oh, okay.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker A: So I'm in Louisiana. And when I tell people I've moved, I don't say, I moved to New Orleans. I moved to Louisiana.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker C: Okay, good.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker A: Sure. I don't like the line.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker B: Close enough. No, but. No, I got that. Well, you know, it's like, people come on the show and they say, yeah, I grew up in New Orleans. Of course, you know the question I ask, where'd you go to hog. Yeah, but, you know, somebody says they grew up in Slidell, I don't say, oh, well, you. No, that's cool, man.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker B: Close enough, man. All right, well. Well, Johnny. Thank you so much.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker A: Thank you both.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker B: Been a blast.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker A: Appreciate it. As always.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker B: On the Troubleman podcast, we like to say trouble never ends.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker C: But, Johnny, you know, the struggle continues constantly. Good night.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker B: Vote Manny Chevrolet for mayor. Good night.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker D: Sometimes we can be so blind but how does pain so bad not bleed? You push, you push Sometimes you don't. You don't expect to fall.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker C: But it's.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker D: The violent turning of the golden rule A lifetime of hell for every minute of heaven I know your heart is breaking here in the waiting hour and I know it can never heal in the waiting hour. So cross your fingers or your heart your idle wish come at no more. The mirror you hate reveals all in this world that you control. So empty out your bag of tricks. Cause in this limbo they don't exist.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker C: Just.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker D: Just like your vanity, your hopes, your prayers, your dreams. Now did you feel the thunder when you realized your very own hands reached in and tore your heart out? I know your heart is breaking in the waiting hour. And I know it can never heal. Herein the way to waiting ever. I know your heart is breaking. I know your heart is breaking. And I know how it feels the first time in the waiting hour. Sad heart is breaking. I know your heart is breaking. I know your heart is breaking. I know your heart is breaking. In the waiting hour.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker A: I.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker D: Discovered.