Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Schoolhouse Rock Rocked: Featuring Bob Nastanovich of Pavement

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How Schoolhouse Rock Rocked: Featuring Bob Nastanovich of Pavement · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: dot com straight because knowledge is power. Hey, and welcome
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: there's Jerry and this is stuff you should Know. Chip
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: off the block of your favorite schoolhouse. Yeah that was
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: we just heard the theme song. If you're between the
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: ages of well, were you into it? Yes? Okay, so
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: you're what forty one? I'm forty, so probably younger than
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: you even a bit. Let's say if you're between, I
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: was definitely towards the tail end of it. Let's say
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: thirty eight to fifty years old. Actually, yeah, that's not true.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: So let's say it was up to yeah nine, Yeah,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: so iwhere in that rain fifty ish? All right, that's
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: what you agree on a little more. Maybe so that
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: fifteen year period you were lucky. Yeah, Like if you
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: just heard that theme song and like something inside your
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: body happened emotionally in your brain, then that means that
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: that you grew up in the seventies and eighties. Uh.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I think the heyday of Saturday Morning cartoons personally, uh,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: as a fan of schoolhouse rock, one of my favorite
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: favorite favorite things in the world. Yeah, it was pretty great.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I still love it. Yeah, Like I still listen to
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: this stuff semi regularly. Oh do you. Yeah, it's been
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: a little while. When I went back to UM to
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: research this, I listened to or watched a bunch of them,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: and they all just came flooding back. Yeah, and them.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: The writer of this article actually interviewed, didn't he Bob Doro?
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: It's it sounded that way unless he's a big fat
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: liar in his author's note. Well, I just remember when
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: this article went around, Like the first thing we do
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: when there's an article at how SUF works is there's
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: a UM email that goes around everyone where people kind
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: of suggest kind of questions you can answer and stuff
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: like that. Um. I don't think we ever really talked
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: about that, did we don't think nine years in that's
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a secret. Uh, And people say, hey, you should think
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: about this, you should do this, And I said, somebody
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: should try and interview Bob Doro. It's like he's ninety
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: three years old, and you know, you can still get
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: in touch with a guy, I think, and apparently this
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: dude did. And sadly, I think all we got was
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: like one quote. Yeah, well, he was on his way
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: to like a jazz gig in London when he caught him.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I bet you that was more in there than this.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I was all disappointed. Oh, you're saying I wanted like
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: more more select quotes from Mr Doro. You wanted like
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I called Mr Doe. He answered, hello, said Mr Doro.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: We should have interviewed him for this. I don't know
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: why we didn't. I don't either. Apparently it's easy to
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: get to uh and there's well, I'll get to that.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Never mind. Should we get in the way back machine? Yes,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: let's go back to the seventies, the greatest decade history
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: of humanity. Probably, I'm not joking. I'm a fan of sixties. Seventies,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: and eighties would be tough for me to decide. Sixties
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: were a little too hippie for me. I love the seventies,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: so I mean, I had loved the seventies, and not
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: even as a Golden age. There was a lot wrong
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: in the seventies. Nixon was president during the seventies. Okay,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: lots of stuff we're wrong in the seventies, but something
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: about that decade just hit all the boxes. I just
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: love it, and it reminds me my childhood, which is
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: great because you know, I had a good childhood. It
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: was fun. I a lot of We talked about that
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: in the Nostalgia episode on how nostalgi just the correct
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: path in life, even though John Hodgman doesn't think so.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: So early seventies, there's a gentleman named David McCall and
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: um he was. He co owned an ad agency called
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: McCaffrey and McCall and as the story goes, he was
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: on vacation with his family and he knew his son
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: was having some trouble in math um remembering specifically multiplication tables. Yeah,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: no matter how much he yelled at him every night,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: he couldn't get multiplication. But they're in the car and
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: this kid was singing, as the story goes, rolling Stones,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: rolling Stone song, and he was like, well you know that,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Why can't you remember the other stuff? I don't think
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: he was that gruff, but it did hit him. He
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: was like, you know, my son, remember, he has no
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: problem memorizing things, but there's something about these multiplication tables.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: So I wonder if there's something too. Uh sing song
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and turning learning into not only just music, because that's
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: not a new thing. People have been doing that forever,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: but popular sounding music, right, and like pairing them with
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: concepts to teach, right, to to make kids understand difficult concepts, right,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And it's it's so weird now, especially if in the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: post school house rock world that that, yeah, of course
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: people do that, Like that's a technique that you used
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: to teach kids, but apparently no one else is doing this.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: At the time that this was a pretty interesting idea
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: and it really it germinated in just the right guy's mind,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: because this guy McCall was, like you said, he was
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: a partner in this advertising firm and they basically specialized
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: in in doing the same thing but get you getting
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: you to buy something. He was, maybe we could do
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the same thing that we do to sell people stuff,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: but to basically sell education to kids, to teach kids
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: using the same techniques that we use in advertising. Yeah,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Like they would see a jingle for a product that
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: would get lodged in someone's head, and they would say,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: you know, why can't we do that same thing, Like
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: it would get lodged in a kid's head and they
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: would have learned something instead of bought something. Right, But
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: you could also buy stuff. If you learn enough stuff,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: you can buy even more stuff. Uh. So he went
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: to UM. One of these Uh I think he was
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a creative director or co creative director named George Newell
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: ran it by him. He said, great idea, get someone
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: on it, and he threw a cigarette at him, got
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: out of the office and commissioned a one of their writers.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: They had jingle writers on staff or at least working
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: with them, and they said, go write something. Uh. It
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: wasn't very good. Didn't you feel bad for this person?
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I did, But you know what, it could have died
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: there right, never would have a Schoolhouse Rock. But this
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: person went down in history is the contributor to Schoolhouse Rock.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Who who didn't it didn't make it? Yeah, or the
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: person who almost killed Schoolhouse Rock. I guess so. But
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: McCall was like, no, this idea is too good for
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: this Yeah, which is really, you know, a great thing
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and a lesson in persistence. So he went. Newell was
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: a jazz piano player and he went to his buddy
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: one Bob Doro, one of my heroes, who was was
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: a and is a great bebop jazz pianist and composer,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: and said, you can write a jingle too. Why don't
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: you try this out? And here's the one quote we
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: might as well read it from ninety three year old
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Mr Doro. I don't know how I looked out. Apparently
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: they tried other songwriters, but most of them wrote down
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: to kids. When I met McAuley said here's my idea.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I give it a try, but don't write down to
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the kids. And when he said that, I gotta chill.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I have a high opinion of children. And that was
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: sort of the key right there. They weren't uh songs
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: like written in a remedial way because it was children.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: It's a bitsy spider, give me a break. Oh that's
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: a classic. So um, but you're right. But so this
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: idea germinates in this right guy's head. He happens to
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: end up indirectly getting in touch with this guy who
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: has a high opinion of children, and he happens to
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: be a jazz composer. Things are starting to like happen.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: There's basically the hand of the Almighty at work here.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: That's right. Uh So Dora goes home. Um, he has
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: a daughter, gets out of textbooks, and the first thing
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: he comes up with to me one of the best man.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: It is far out. Three is a Magic number was
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: the very first Schoolhouse song written because the first thing
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: they wanted to tackle was math. Because of uh McCall's son. Yeah,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: this this composition that he came back with, three is
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: a magic number. Um, it's a I when I hear it,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: it's super cool. But I don't. I I'm really surprised
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: that everybody was like, this is, yes, figure something out
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: from this. Man. I loved it. It is, it's cool,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: but it just doesn't seem like the basis the keystone
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of Schoolhouse rock to me. I'm surprised. Well, it's one
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: of my favorites. That's great because it dealt with multiplication. Uh.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: And not only that, but uh, like you said, got
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: a little trippy with the symbolism faith, hope and charity,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: heart and mind and body. Uh, it was about and
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I wanted to do a podcast on three, the number three,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: because it's very special. It is very special. It is.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: We did one on zero, Why not three? Man, I
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: forgot about that. Remember, I think my brain melted a
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: bit there. One it's tough. Zero is tough. It is tough,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: um and not at all magic, right, not really? Um?
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: So regardless, if you would have been working there, you
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: would have been like and everyone else enjoy I did,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: You'd be like, I'm gonna go get a bagel. I'm
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: not gonna even work on this process cheese account. Um.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I did think of Madmen quite a bit when I
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: was researching this. It was sort of that same time
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: period or I guess towards No, Madman didn't make it
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: into the seventies. Yeah, I thought he did, because it
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: wasn't he supposed to be dB Cooper at the end,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: and that was yeah, early, I guess that was seventy one.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I think it did crack into the seventies, not like
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Boogie Nights did. That was all seventies. The No, that's right,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: it cracked into the eighties with that cheese that that
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: song you recorded. Well, no, I was, well, yeah, that
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: for sure. But I was thinking about when it when
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: the the Party, the New Year's e Party Girl nineteen
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: with Bill Macy. Yeah, man, what a great movie. That
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: was wonderful. Yeah, movies almost like twenty years old. I
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: believe it. We're old, Chuck, I know. But those those
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: pop culture references are the ones that really hit home
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: for me. What the ones from the seventies. Well, when
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: I think of like Boogie Nights, I was like, oh, yeah,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: that was just like a few years ago, right. And
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: then someone says it's celebrating its twentieth anniversary and I'm
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: like what, Or like when I see an athlete's son
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: or daughter. Yeah, it's weird to see that it is
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: playing the same sport. The rookies are now like the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: old coaches and managers in the sports now man bizarre. Uh.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So everyone's impressed at McCaffrey and McCall um. Then they
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: did a pretty smart thing. They went to um. McCall
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: was on the board of the Bank Street College of
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Education uh in New York there, and he took it
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: to them. It was just a song at this point
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: he said, what do you think is a learning tool? Uh?
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: They used it, played it for the students and they
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: were like, this is awesome. They're responding again, little job.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: He's just sitting there with his arms across the scowling.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I've never seen him so mad before. Uh. The students
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: liked it. The agency liked it, so they knew they
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: were onto something. They got their art director, Uh Tom
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: yo y o h e, oh you're going with Yo.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I'm going all out with yoh okay Tom YOHI and
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: UM said, put put some animation to this, draw out
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: some storyboards, because that was the beauty of Schoolhouse Rock
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: to me was Uh, it was a combination of everything.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just the song, like the songs are great, um,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: and we'll get more to the music here in a bit,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: but it was the combination of the visuals with the
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: song and the fact that you were learning something in
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: such a unique way. It was just like the perfect
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: storm of awesomeness. Yeah. The songs on their own would
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: have stood up on their own. Oh yeah. And initially
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: like they they planned to just release an album of
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: cool songs like this. Yeah, but it was when Yo
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: he started sitting there right like drawing some of this
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: stuff out. That's I mean. School was Rock is not
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: one or the other. It's the combination of those two things,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: and they play off each other. So well, I agreed. Uh,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: So they took UM. Now they have these storyboards. Uh.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: They take this to a guy named Radford Stone. He
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: was their account supervisor of the vp UM for ABC,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and they said, there's this young upstart at ABC for
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: their children's programming named Michael Eisner that if he's ever
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: going to go anywhere, but right now he's running the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: kid's shop over there. Um, and let's bring in because
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: this guy knows a lot about kids programming, Let's bring
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: in Chuck Jones to the meeting. Shout out to her
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: from Jessica, granddaughter of Mr Jones, and uh sat down
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: in a meeting, played the demo tape, showed him the
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: storyboard they helped. Turned to Chuck Jones, so what do
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: you think? And he said, buy it? By it that's
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: how Chuck Jones do that. He didn't and Michael Eisner
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: bought it and uh, before you knew it are own business.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: We're gonna take a break, I think we should. Josh
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: is gonna go collect himself and we'll be right back
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: you all right, all right, we're back. So strange. Um, So,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Schoolhouse Rock started on ABC Saturday morning. Is that what
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: they call an interstitial? Yeah, we had some of this, Yeah,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: it was. It was. It's programming between the programming that's
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: not commercial. When the creators of the program you're actually
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: watching weren't good enough to make twenty two full minutes,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: you round it out with interstitial program Yeah, exactly. Uh,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: this is January six and seven was the first weekend
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: in ninety three, so I was but two years old.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Well three, yeah you you were in the upper atmosphere
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: just playing my liar, coalescing, waiting to be born, flapping
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: my wings. Uh. And this was before like like you said,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: this is the original thing was. It was just gonna
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: be an album called Multiplication Rock um, until they realized
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: that the visuals were important they could put it on television.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: And the first four songs that first weekend were some
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: of the greatest, aside from threes, magic number four, legged Zoo, Elementary,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: my Dear, and my Hero zero great song uh zero
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: again yeah, not magical, but it is a cool number.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Such a funny little hero came along. They counted on
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: their fingers and so that when was that check three?
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And um, I think that first one had quite was
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: so it was up to third. There were thirteen episodes
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: that if it went from zero to twelve. Yeah, I
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: think what they settled on was, um almost like seasons,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: uh themed season, so that the first season was going
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: to be math related. Yeah. So um. Apparently Bob Darrow
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: had been off like coming up with songs, didn't realize
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: that they wanted a song for each number, and he
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: had started to combine several numbers in a different song,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: so he didn't get the memo. He didn't and he
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: finally did and um he uh. He was trying to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: figure out how to like break the songs apart, and
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: he came up with one called the four Legged Zoo.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Have you heard that one? Yeah? It's fine, so so
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: not one of my favorites, but I mean they're all great.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: It's just some standout a little more than others. So
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: what's your favorite of the multiple k rock Three is
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: a magic number? Okay? Yeah? And and that was something
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: else I noticed about this. There are um for each season.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: There were at least one standout song per per season
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: that just about everybody knows. And I would guess three
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: is the magic numbers. Probably that one, yeah, or maybe
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: my Hero zero. That was a big one. Yeah, that
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: was a hit, so much so that um Bob Doro
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: was up for Grammy in nine four for um, I
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I think the whole album, right, yeah, but the those
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: jerks at Sesame Street one, if you're gonna lose, lose
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the Sesame Street. Yeah, And Dora is like writing and
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: singing these initial first few songs. I think he's saying, yeah,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: all of them except two, and he hired two other
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: jazz musicians, Grady Tate and Blossom Deery, Grady Tate saying
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Naughty number nine and Blossom Deery saying figure eight. But
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: all the rest of them, the other eleven, Bob Durrow
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: sang and he wrote all of them. So yeah, they
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: really struck gold with that guy. Yeah, I mean he
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: was he was that initial genius behind this whole thing. Yeah,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: and this is another cool thing about Schoolhouse Rock that
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: I noticed, Um, the people involved stayed on for basically
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the whole run. In the initial run from seventy to
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: eighty five, Yeah, it seemed like a project that everyone
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: enjoyed working on, and that was highly collaborative, and it
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: just seemed like a good experience. I don't think there's
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: like the v H one special like the Dark Side
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: of the school House rockyears. You know. Uh, so they
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: move on to I don't know which one is my favorite,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Grammar Rock or History, Um, but they moved on to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Grammar Rock next yea seventy three to seventy four, And
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: we should say I don't think that these were, Um, Like,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I don't think there are breaks in the season. I
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: get the impression that from three till when they had
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: enough episodes, they were just running on like every Saturday
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: morning during cartoons. Yeah, I certainly don't remember like breaks,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: like it just seems like every week they were there. Um.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: So seventy three and seventy four you have Grammar Rock,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: which um debuted. Some people will probably say the biggest
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: of all time Conjunction Junction. Yeah, that's so, and everybody
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: knows it's a great, great song, uh song, as he's
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: sang many others, including my all time favorite, which I'll
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: get to later. Okay, but I know what it is.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I bet you don't. Um. He was MRF MERV Griffin's
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: trumpet player, Jack Sheldon, who just had this voice that's
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: just like it's the conjunction Junction. Yeah, it's unbelievable, very
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: unique guy. And he kind of looked like Will Ferrell
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: to me, like he should play him if they did
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: a movie about they should do a movie about the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: whole thing. If she asked me, Yeah, I think there's
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: no controversy or conflict. It's just two hours of everybody
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: getting along doing great stuff. He wants to see that, right, Um,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: so Jack Sheldon came along, uh sank in junction junction
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and did you go back and listen to that? Like
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: for this, listen to a lot of these, So that
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: is a sophisticated song. If you listen to like that,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: we remember our poetry episode. If you listen to like
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the meter and the um, the rhyming pattern, the rhyme scheme,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: and the slant rhymes they use, like for something that's
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: made for kids, it is not just rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, ryme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: You know, like it's a sophisticated song. Um. And it's
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: pretty pretty cool. Yeah, I think that's I mean, I
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: think that's why it worked. That was a secret is
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: um it's I guess it's that not not talking down
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: to kids. Yeah, And like the music was was good,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Like if you listen to um, I mean those are
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: a little sing songy, but like some of them were
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: like pop music at the time, like the Verb song
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: some one of the funkiest songs I've ever heard. Verb
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: That's What's happening, And especially that one, like I read
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: I read this great blog post by this African American
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: guy that was talking about how verb was like meant
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: so much to him because at the time, you know,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: they didn't have a lot of like cartoons and stuff
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: that but addressed the black community at all. And so
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you get this cartoon. It's got
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: the super funky music and this kid that looked like
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: him having this great adventure uh in the city, and
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: uh it just kind of it's pretty pretty neat thing,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I think. Yeah that was season two, was Grammar, right, Yes,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: So apparently in that same season, lady named Lynn Aaron's
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: um was a She was a copy copy department secretary. Yeah,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: this is where it reminded me of Madman, and she's
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: like basically took Peggy's journey from like secretary to superstar.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I've never seen mad Yeah it's good. I'm rewatching it
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: right now. Really, yeah, it's that good. Yeah. So, um,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Lynn was she was a secretary at the advertising agency.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And apparently she was playing her guitar on lunch break.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Another reason the seventies were great exactly, And um, who
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: was it that Founder Newell, the creative director guy. Yeah,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: like in the movie, he's just walking down the hall
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: and here's this beautiful music and stops. It's like, what
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: in the world's going on in there? Right? And it
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: was Lynn Errands, And so they took her and put
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: her on I guess part time on the project um
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: and they, I guess eventually made her a full time songwriter,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. That was her gig. Fifteen of
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the songs, including some of the biggest ones. Now and
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: as a person plays her thing great song in Her Planet,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Janet interjections to good one a Victim of Gravity about
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Isaac Newton in Her Planet Janet, sounds like Rocky Horror
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: if you go back and listen to it, kind of
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: does it bears a real resemblance to it? Or Rocky
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Horror sounded like inter Planet Janet. I went and looked.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Rocket Horror was three years before In A Planet Janet
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: the movie or the play the movie? Okay, so the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: play was even before that? Was it a play first? Uh?
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Meat Loaf was even in the play, oh yeah, before
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the movie, right, and not a play I guess, musical
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: which play with songs and dancing. Uh So. The next
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: one to come along was America Rock or History Rock,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: which kind of vised for the best to me with
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Grammar Rock, and that one tied into the bi centennial.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah that was a big deal, which you don't remember,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: but I remember being a little kid, being five years old,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and uh, it took over the country for you know,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: that entire year. Yeah, I know there was like a
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: resurgence and colonial emblems and stuff like that. You know
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: that if you ever walked past like a very very
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: old person's house today, you might see like a flag
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: holder that's a black metal eagle holding like some arrows
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: maybe or that is from still there, like a resurgence
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: and Betsy Ross and colonial like knick knacks and stuff.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: I wasn't I was just born, but it was there
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: was a it created like a high water mark that
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I was able to see even you know, four or
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: five six years later. So, uh, History Rock or America
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Rock um featured some of the best songs Mother Necessity
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Shot heard around the world. Uh and No More Kings,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: which is maybe my second all time favorite. Yeah, and
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: that's the one that um. There was an album that
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: came out in called Schoolhouse Rocks Rocks, Schoolhouse Rock Rocks,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: where they got contemporary artists to cover these songs and
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: did you ever listen to that. I listened to the
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Pavement win to day. So I emailed Bob Nistanovich today
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: from Pavement because, as I said in the previous episode,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: I tricked him into being my email friend. Um, and
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I said, hey, dude, I would love to hear if
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: you have any thoughts on them, more kings, how you
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: guys were approached, if there any stories, what it meant
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: to you, what it didn't mean, whatever, let me know. No, no, no,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: He emailed back. Uh. And then I said, I'll call
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: you on my way to work, called him the way
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: to work. Crickets. Yeah, I got his voicemail, and then
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: as I was coming in the studio, he called him
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: left the voicemail saying he was in his minivan rocking
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: out and he didn't hear the phone ring, which is
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: very funny to me. But um, I told him I'd
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: like to hear what he has to say, because he
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: said he has a tale to tell about that experience. Man,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have to record it after this. Well yeah,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: or if it could be like a listener mail, Yeah,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: like if I can get him on tape, then we'll
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: tag it at the end. If not, if it ends
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: up being an email version or something. I'll just maybe
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: recount it in my own dumb words, or you could
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: ask him if we could read the email and make
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: a listener mail. Oh for real, like a real listener mail.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: All right, it's not about it so anyway, uh So,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: listen up for the end for Bob Nistanovitch story about
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: No More Kings, because if you listen to that CD,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: it's like the lemon Heads and uh ween, it's the
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: super ninety c D Mob Moby and they're all most
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: of them are pretty straight ahead, and so you get
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: to the Pavement song and it's just all pavement. Like
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Malcolm has changed his words. He there's like laser guns
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: at the end, and it's just wonderfully pavement, like quintessentially pavement.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Like leave it to them to just kind of throw
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: it all out the window and do their own thing.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I liked a lot um three ring Government. I didn't
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: really know that one that was good, and apparently they
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: um So it basically talks about the different branches of
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: the government but puts in the context of a three
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: ring circuit us and it's um really, I mean, aside
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: from the fact that it compares to the government to
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: a three ring circus. It's not at all offensive. Apparently
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: they said on that one for years and didn't release
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: it until nine nine because they were worried about offending
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the government, which is a strange thing to worry about
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: through today's lens. Yeah, but even still, I mean, this
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: is like post water Gate. It's not like everybody was like,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: oh right, you know, we we couldn't possibly call the
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: government a three ring circus. Yeah, that's true. That is weird.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: It seems like that would have been a good time
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: to do it. Yeah. But the most famous song, um
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: from that year by far was Sheldon's on just a Bill?
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Is that your favorite? No? Okay? Um? That was composed
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: not by Mr Doro but by a man named Dave Frishburg.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: And Um, I mean that one was just a mega hit,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: straight to number one on the Billboard charts. It's it's like,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: as far as Schoolhouse Rocks goes, that's the that's the
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: that's the cultural icon, that signifies the whole thing. I
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: think close close second would be conjunction junction. Maybe they're tired,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I just feel like I'm I'm
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: just a bill is the most readily recognizable. One. Yeah,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: and it's just amazing when you look back, though, like
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the learning that was going on and the teaching that
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: was happening these kids us, we were learning how a
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: bill becomes a law right in the in the best
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: way possible, like better than any well, not any teacher.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: They were great teachers back then, let's say, like any
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: dump teacher that's boring their kids. But it definitely struck
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: a chord with me, you know, And that's how I
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: remember a lot of this stuff. And apparently two adults
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: were also noticing Schoolhouse Rock at the time. Supposedly there
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: were plenty of orders. This is before video, because before
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: they were widely available, I guess in the home. I'm
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: trying to think of how they would have played them
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: if they didn't have video cassettes. But anyway, apparently lobbyists
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: and legislators would get in touch with ABC and be like,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: you gotta get me a copy of that I'm a
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Bill thing and give me a beta MAX because I
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: want to show it to my staff to train them
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: on this kind of stuff. Well, I think they asked
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: for cassettes, at least the very least, so they could
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: play in the music. I see, maybe that's what they meant.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Probably okay, an eight track. Um. And then there was
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Science Rock was the year after that. That was seventy
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: and seventy nine, which is pretty good. InterPlaNet Janet, Victor's
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: so weird? What InterPlaNet Janet? Yeah, it's a good one.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: And then the telegraph Line song, which um, I think
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: that was written by this Arns too, I think, And
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: that one was really like, I mean it was you
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: literally learned about the erb A system and how the
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: body communicates uh to the brain by listening to that song.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: And that's the one that they wanted to play for
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: med students and they did amazing some of them. All right,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: well let's take another break, and um jeez, we'll we'll
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: cover the the sad last season of Schoolhouse Rock after this,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: so chuck. Schoolhouse Rock for the first four seasons was
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: the epitome of creativity. Even their process was creative, Like
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the songwriters would I guess they would say, this season
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: our theme is, you know, it's going to be science,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: are gonna be grammar or whatever, So go go forth
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: and figure this out. The songwriters would come up with
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: songs and they'd pitch them to the creative team. And
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: so there was this process of creativity and it started
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: with the creatives. That's the key here, That's what made
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: it just so legitimate and so wonderfully creative this whole time.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: It started with the creatives, right, yeah, and they would
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: pretty cool. They would get them vetted by that Bank
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Street School of Education, so they would get to make
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: sure everything was like, you know, it was right yeah,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: and then ABC, oh, let me say it. And then
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: they'd say, oh, I guess it's fine, and then they'd
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: start the storyboard it once they had the lyrics set
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: in stone, right. That was the first four seasons. The
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: fifth season they said, died, Creativity Die, and they reversed
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the process and they said, hey, songwriters, here are your
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: assignments now where we we think kids should know more
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: about computers. So we're gonna just screw this whole thing up. Okay, yeah,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: this is the part I don't get it, says the
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: ABC program exact Squire Rushnell commissioned this because that was
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: the idea that children were afraid of computers. I can't
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I don't remember anything, but they're being like excitement about computers.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I don't remember any kids being like I don't want
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: to go near that. Yeah, I remember kids being like,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: oh that's cool, let me sit down, And usually it
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: was the parents that were afraid of computers. Well, I
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: think here unless the problem. Yeah, with season five, so
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: we should say season five two. If you notice we
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: jumped quite a bit from nineteen seventy nine and nine
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: eighty five. Schoolhouse Rock was running all those years on
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Saturday mornings. They just weren't any new ones. They were
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the same ones that they were rerunning. The Class five
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Squire Rushtional says, give me give me four episodes or six?
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Is it four or six? On computers? Yeah, and we're
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: gonna call the season a Scooter Computer and Mr Chips
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: what do you think of that? So it's what like,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: uh computer with a bag of chips. It's like, no,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Mr Chips is a computer? Well, what's Scooter computer? It's
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: just a kid. And they said, well, what about the
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Goodbye Mr Chips? That great book? And no one's ever
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: read that? What's a book? So, uh, it was a
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: little confusing disdain for him. It's a little weird. I know,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I feel bad if that's not really how it went down,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: but it sounds kind of like that classic story, you know,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: like an executive takes over the creative and it just
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: goes downhill. It's usually how it happens, UM, And I
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: do feel a little bit bad because you know, the
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: originals were still involved. They got Mr Doro back on board,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: and uh, I think they did the best they could.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: But I think one of the issues is UM, all
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: the other seasons, you know, math and science and history,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: it's all civics. It's all baked in like that stuff.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: It's classic and didn't change when you're writing songs about uh,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: data processing and basic computer language a couple of years later, like, no,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: it's not relevant anymore, you know. So it's sort of
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: that's why no one's ever heard of it. Plus again
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: they were like, so wait, Scooter computers the boy or
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: the computer he's hanging out with, right, And why is
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: the computer on roller skates? Yeah, just stuff like that,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: you know. It was it was an undignified into something
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: really great. And so they pulled the plug on the
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: whole thing. In They said, Hey, this Mary lou Retten lady.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: We like her. She's got gumption, she's got apple pie
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: coming out of her ears. Um, we love her, and
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: we want to put her on TV, so they put
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: her interstitials on ABC Fun Fit. I'll bet that was
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: the same time when Reagan made Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is like
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: fitnesses are that? Bet totally remember that the Presidential fitness Test, right? Yeah? Man?
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: I failed that so many times. Yeah, I think I
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: was always sick that day. It's like I gotta climb
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: a rope. Still to this day, I've never climbed a
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: rope in my life. I made it this far. You know,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be chased by a tiger on the way something.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, that's how you're gonna meet your
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: demise one day, just gonna be in like a burning
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: building and a rope's just gonna fall from the ceiling
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: like a cartoon. Good. Uh. In the late eighties, UM,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: there was a student at Yukon Go Huskies that said,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I want to bring Schoolhouse Rock back. They started a petition.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: I could not find this person's name for the life
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: of me, but ABC said, you know what people want
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: this um, and I guess it took him a little
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: while to get around to it, but nine they brought
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: it back, rerunning UM all those classic tunes and cartoons
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: and added some new stuff by Bob Doro in the Gang. Yeah,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: they brought back the originals and this this season was
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: called UM Money Rock and they did a substantial number
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: of new episodes, but again written and performed by all
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: the original people. But a good starting or twenty years
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: later um and they had things like UM seven fifty
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: once a Week, which is about maintaining your budget, Tyrannosaurs
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Debt which is about the national debt, UM and plenty
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: of others. Remember the Tale of Mr Morton. That was
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: another Lindon Errand's offering. What was that one about? I
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: can't remember exactly. I didn't go back and rewatch it,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: but I remember he's like, they'll sell his money on
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Scratch Office or something. I don't think so. Um. But
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: you know, again, the reason why this was that it
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: works so well, It's because these were men and women
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: who were used to selling products for a living and
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: it was just sort of a natural, uh, a natural
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: thing for them to do as an ad agency. It
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: seems weird at first when you're like an ad agency
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: came up with Schoolhouse Rock, it kind of makes perfect
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: sense when you think about it. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: they they were selling this these ideas to children in
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: ways that were comprehensible the children, that were approachable by children. Um,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: and they just kind of took the kids point of
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: views and packaged it for them. I think it's a
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: good way to put it. Yeah, So besides the Schoolhouse
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Rock Rocks c D, which I still have. Actually, yeah,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: that nineties thing created a bit of a resurgence of it.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: The resurgence in popularity for sure. Boy that Blind Melon
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Three's matchic number. It was great. Yeah hear that one?
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Did you like them? I think Soup, their second album,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: is one of the great underrated records of the nineties.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: I don't recall that one man, It was think I
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: only heard their first album, but they that was the too.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: They I think they made like the pop charts right
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: out of the gate and just kind of were unfairly
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: labeled as a pop group even though they really weren't.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: They were because a lot more to them. No rain
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: song and the catchy video with the whole girl and everything. Yeah,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Soup was good, man, you just checked that out. Well,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: it's very good, very sad what happened to him? Hey
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: O deed and they didn't find him for a while, right,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I don't remember that part, but maybe I think I
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: think no nobody missed him for a little while or
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: something like that, but a waste um in though there
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: was another resurgent. I guess I was before the CD
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: uh when they took it to the stage with Schoolhouse
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Rock Live, which kind of started out as most great
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: theater like this in a in a sort of a
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: basement black box theater in Chicago, and it just grew
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: from there to eventually an off Broadway run. Yeah, not
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: just that. It started in the basement theater of a
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: vegetarian restaurant in Chicago. Just to add that extra little
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: dose to it. Yeah, why not made it on to
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Off Broadway. Yeah, it ran for four solid years and
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: then they had a touring version. Um. I remember wanting
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: to see it, but and I think I was living
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: in New Jersey at the time. I should have gone
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: and seen it. I think I had no money at
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: the time. I think it still might you still might
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: be able to catch it. There's a group called the
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Theater Bomb Theater Bam Chicago, Theater Bam Chicago, and they're
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: still doing shows. They're still touring. As far as I know,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I need to do my U Free to Be You
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: and Me live show. That's one of my dreams. I
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: talked about that before. There isn't that Rosy Greer one? Yeah,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: but did he do the whole album or just that
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: one song? Just the one? It was conceived by Marlo Thomas.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: That's pretty great. But um yeah, that was another like
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: that one hits me square in the face, still from childhood,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: right in the bread best right in the breadbasket. Uh
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: ninety seven they had a twenty fifth anniversary UH package
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: of VHS tapes. So think about this, like it goes
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: up the air in n then all of a sudden
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: ninety ninety seven, there's like schoolhouse Rock everywhere. It will
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: never die, no, And I think like this was one
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: of the first instances because dude, admittedly Generation and X
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: is extremely nostalgic as far as generations, Yeah, very nostalgic.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I would propose that Schoolhouse Rock was the thing that
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: kicked it off as far as gen X nostalgia goes. Well,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: it definitely was something that was so drilled into our consciousness.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: It gets a touchstone, right, But I mean, the surgeonce
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: of it, I think is the is the first example
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: of just how nostalgic as a generation generation exists for sure,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: that's that's mine. You got Sharknado. I'm predicting that that
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: will be rooted out by historians and years to come.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Dig that one out of the vault. Uh. Maybe at
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: the place of your death, like a plaque next to
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: that rope that you couldn't climb will be a memorial,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: will be like rope Jeez, you already forgot. Uh. Kennedy
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Center had a sing along for the fourtieth anniversary, two
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: thousand people in attendance. UM. Pretty amazing. I would have
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: done anything to have gone to that. UM. And then
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: it's been parodied and homaged over the years and everything
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: from The Simpsons to Saturday Night Live. Did you see
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Conspiracy Rock? Conspiracy Theory Dude? That was a TV fun
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: house bit, right, yeah, by Robert Smigel. It's one of
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: the all time great man. He nails nails the conspiracy theory,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Nail's Schoolhouse Rock. But it's all about how these major
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: corporations like GE and Westinghouse own the media they owned
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: like ABC, NBC, all these um media outlets, and how
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: they can use it to shape opinion and squash UM opinions.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: That disagree with them or their products, and um choose
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: what to report on. It is so good. Go watch
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: it right now. It's on YouTube. Um. But apparently there's
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: a bit of a conspiracy theory around it as well,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: because it aired on the actual Saturday Live episode. But
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: then when they reran it and I think released that
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: episode on DVD, it wasn't there. They they edited it out,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: and um, supposedly it was just because Lauren Michaels didn't
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: think it was funny. There's just no way that that's
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: all it was. It was so I'm thinking, no, it
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: was such a smack in the face too NBC and
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: like all the other ones that, yeah, well, and they
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: just had one a couple of years ago on that
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: it wasn't homage. I'm just a bill that was pretty
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: great too. Yeah, this was better. You gotta see it, man. Yeah,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling I have and I just don't
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: know it. He nailed it. I'll let you know all
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: text you and say I have seen it, and you'll say,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: who's this. I don't have your number. So I actually
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: ran across a little bit as great as Schoolhouse Rock is.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Actually ran across criticism of it. What yeah, boy, are
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: you gonna should just leave the room. Maybe I'm about
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: to get angry. You might want to, all right. So
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: they were teaching very broad concepts to kids in ways
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: that kids could understand, and when you're when you're coming,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: when you're coming at them with multiplication or grammar whatever.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: But apparently especially with the History Rocks or America Rock Season,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: depending on what you want to call it, that's where
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the criticism tends to come out. So there's one called
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: elbow Room. Did you remember that one? Got that got
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: to get you some elbow Room where it's about there's
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: so many white settlers that we just got to spread westward. Okay,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: I'll see where this is going. Not a single Native
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: American is shown in this westward westward spread. They actually
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: mentioned that it's God's will manifest destiny. So the whole
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: thing kind of I don't want to say it came
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: under fire because it's not like everybody's like, oh yeah,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: elbow Room forget Schoolhouse Rock. Very few people are. But
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: there's criticism of Schoolhouse Rock and that it really kind
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: of fed American children. This the the popular line on things,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: and it was just exactly the kind of stuff where
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: when you grow up you're like, wow, I was really misled.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: This was first explained to me as a child. Ye.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: So well, we talked about that a lot too, about
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: how schools, especially in like the seventies and eighties, uh,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: whitewashed a lot of stuff. So this was part of that.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: I can see that. I mean it was and I'm
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: not justifying it, but it was definitely of the times
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: for sure, you know, which is why you know, I
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: think that they that these creatives were like, we can't
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: say this to kids, you know. I think that there's
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: definitely been more of an awakening in recent years. But
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: I was right, yeah, and this is another name for
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: what they were talking about, Like forced removal was turned
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: into get you gotta gives some elbow roof. You know though,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: I want to know, um chuck, because I'm not in
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: school and I don't have a child in school. I
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: don't have a child at all. I have a four
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: legged child. But are they still misleading kids like they
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: did when we were young? Do we just assume now
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: that we know the deal that they don't do that
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: any longer or are they still doing it? So any
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: history teachers out there that are like fifth six seventh grade,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: because that's what I remember really being just overtly lied to.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: And then as we got a little past that, they
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: started to be like, well, maybe the Native Americans didn't
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: really want to leave, and then it just got a
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: little more legitimate. So I want to know, teachers out
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: there let us know. I bet the answer will get
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: is that we've come a long way, and it probably
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: depends on your district. Oh yeah, and maybe even your teacher. Yeah,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: I can see that. Um. I bet there's not like
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: a one sweeping answer for that one, but there's definitely
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: been progress, you know, I would guess, yeah, who would
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: let us know? As Tyler Murphy let us know. Well,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I know what he's doing. He's doing all the right things.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's up on the desk opening minds. Uh
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: so you're ready for my favorite? Uh rufus Xavier Sasaparilla.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: What was that one about? Oh yeah, I have a
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: hard time expressing how much joy this song brings me. Still, Yeah,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: I listened to it a lot. If I'm ever down,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: that's the song that's pretty great. It's amazing, it's the
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: word play is unbelievable, and it's another Sheldon song. Uh
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: like how it's it's very fast. How he like every Uh.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: I looked up to see if people did it live
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: and stuff, and everyone always slows it down because nobody
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: can fast. Well, it's just very complex, and the whole
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: idea of the song is is the complexity of all
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: these nouns that you can replace with pronouns. I got
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: a friend named Rufus Xavier Sasaparilla, and you know, they
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: go to the zoo and there's an art vark and
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: and armadillo and all these big words. He's like, I
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: could say that, or could say he did this and
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: we did that, and she said this. Uh yeah, it's
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: a word that takes the place of a noun like kangaroo.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Can we play it? You know what? We wouldn't because
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: of law. They should make an actually want about copyright infringement.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: It was started out as a bill. Yeah, so we
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: probably can't play enough of it to do with justice.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: So I just say, go and listen to that song
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: in full, because it's delightful. All right, I'll do that. Man,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: they go to the zoo, there's animals. I'll pile on
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: a bus. They Yeah, this girl in Rufus Xavier Sasparilla.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: They yeah, exactly, it's a place now. Uh you got
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: anything else? No, but there there probably will be a
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: tag on this one with Mr Nastanovich or or with
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: me just recounting his tail of No More Kings. So, uh,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Schoolhouse ROCKO read
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: this article on how Stuff works dot com. And since
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I said that, it may be time for listener and
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: mail with Bob nistan Bits, all right, So uh now,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: as promised or as hope fully promised, we have via
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: telephone in the studio Mr Bob Nastanovich, who um is
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: actually a member of two of my favorite bands of
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: all time, both Pavement and Silver Jews, And um, it's
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: a real treat to have you here, Bob. We did
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: a show on Schoolhouse Rock and talked kind of at
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: length about pavements efforts toward that. Uh. I guess late nineties,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: uh c D and got in touch with you and
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: you said you had a couple of stories to tell.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: It was a we were in Memphis, we were supposed
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: to be making a Silver Jews record, and um, the
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: singer of Silver Juice, David Berman, decided he did not
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: want to make the record. And he went home and
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: we'd already booked a week of studio time Silver Juice
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: had and UM. Then subsequently we were Stephen and my
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: health and Steve West were unceremoniously fired from Silver Juice. UM.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: That's beside the point. We were kind of like at
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: all the studio time that David was supposed to pay
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: for it, so to bail him out, Pavement sort of
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: took that and made a record so Stephen, Stephen thankfully
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: had three songs and we made a specific trimmy p
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: But I guess most significantly in in regards to this project,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: Jackie Ferry and dear friend of ours, was supervising the
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Schoolhouse Rock not Blation and Um. She gave us our
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: choice of songs, and it was fairly obvious to us
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: that no More King's you know um had a lot
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: of appeal. It's always our favorite one kids Boston Tea
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: party being UM kind of we were able to use
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the vocal style links of Steve West to our advantage,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: I believe, for the first time in band history, and
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: it all turned up to be. We were very pleased
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: with it, were very pleased with all of it. But
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: and I think that it's an outstanding compilation and it's
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: one of those things in pavements time that I feel
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: like we actually did a good job on. Now, what
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: what did Steve West do for that one? He played
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: drums and then um all the deep voice rambling in
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: the background, mostly him. He's got an incredible voice, speaking voice.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: He's one of the people that you can hear from
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty feet away and with a win,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: we've got a beautiful deep voice. So um we he's
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: doing all like the ranting and raving. Um, it was
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: all pretty jubilant. We had a good times. Only time
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: the three of us ever recorded together as Pavement, and
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: but um, I feel like we made a good choice
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: and we just loved that song. And it was one
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: take over, yeah, one take on the instrumental and just
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: um some vocal dubbing. Probably took eight minutes wow. And
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: it was just the three of you, oh yeah, yeah,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: just the three of us real, the only ones there
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: because we thought it was gonna be Silver Jooes and
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: that that was in Silver Jooes. So Camberg and I
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Bold we're at home and I don't even know if
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: they were contacted. We made that specific trim ep that
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: song Give It a Day during the same session, and
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: a couple other songs are on the B side of
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: that thing. But um, now the school House Rock was
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the kind of thing pop mind like, well, we have
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: anything to do, and seems like I got this one song.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: He's like, well, you have to do this thing for Jackie.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: We have to do someings jack We probably sort of
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: planning on doing it anyways. But Jackie at the time
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: was a BJ at MTV. Then she later became our
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: um so she was she was the nanny for Courtney
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: and Kurt, for Francis Bean Cobain, and then she was
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: a tour manager for Pavement. In fact, she has she's
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: been battling cancer for over a decade. Um but um.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: One interesting artifact that she owns is the actual Cardigan
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Cardigan's um button up cardigan sweater that Kurt Cobain wore
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: it in the famous MTV Unplugged performance. So yeah, she's
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: quite a character, but it was it was her project,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: and you know, she was a good friend, and um,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: we want to do the best we could for her.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: I didn't really care about anything else. We didn't even
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: realize We didn't know whether there was a good tiny
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: thing like a limit edation of like whatever. But yeah,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: funnily enough, my wife that was the first Payment song
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: she ever heard because her sister, Yeah, her sister bought
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: the school Loss rock thing when her sister was like fourteen,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: and but what my wife went would have been about ten,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: and she heard that is the first time she ever
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: heard Payment. That's pretty funny. It We were talking a
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: little bit about, um, just your take and kind of
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: just the different takes of all the artists on that
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: compilation and a lot of more pretty straightforward, and um,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: I think I really like the Pavement one the most
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: because it was it was kind of the perfect mix
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: of very straightforward at times and then just totally pavement
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: pavementized at times. Yeah. Very Um, we don't I mean
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: we'd be straightforward. I don't think we're kind of good
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: enough to do things straightforward. Like like I think it's
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: like you think of like a band like Nickel Creek
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: covering our songs been on a stranger they can and
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: they kind of American at it or whatever. But like
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: in order to do like straight things, you've gotta be
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: you gotta be good or else you're gonna come of
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: humiliate yourself, like for example, like are am doing like
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Pylon is crazy? They could do that pretty straight because
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: they have that sound they just you know, but I
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: think that like I've heard a lot of cover songs
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: where it's like a great song and like a somebody
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: with a great voice, you know, usually like a female
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: will we'll sing it pretty straight. And just the fact
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: that it's a somebody with a gorgeous voice, you know,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: preferring a classic, it sort of works. But now we're
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: none of us are none of us are good enough
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: to do that. We had we had to devise our
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: own take on it. You know. Well, I thought it
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: totally worked. Was the Schoolhouse Rock? Um? I mean, was
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: that something that you guys were into or was there
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: much decision I mean, besides the fact that it was
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: your friend asking was it something that you thought was
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: kind of cool or did you feel like you should
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: do it? Yeah, it was a great idea. At the time,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: we thought it was a great idea. And at that
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: point in our lives, Um, I'm guessing it was like
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: somewhere in there we've forgotten you know, you like that
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: point where you know that we hadn't seen or heard
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: any of that. The only one that I can really
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: remember off the top of my head at the time
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: was the conjunction Junction. You know, yeah, of course, what's
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: your function? But like you know, those are the some
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: of the first songs when we were little kids, like
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: under ten years old that got stuck in our head.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I just thought it was I mean, if anything,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: the only negative I thought it might be a little
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: bit childish and corny. Um. But you know, then as
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: it came together, um, it just seemed like a very
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: worthwhile project to me. And you know, she was pretty
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: earnest Jackie, and and I'm happy it all worked out.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: I kind of I think it's actually become like sort
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: of a one of the more significant things that Payment
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: ever did, sort of outside the realm of Pavement. Um,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: I'll still being Pavement, Like you know, I don't I
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: don't even know. I'm the kind of person in regards
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: to that band that would find out about things to last.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: So because I lived in Louisville and I was always
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: at the race track, and and you know, people would say, hey,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: you know what, you're gonna be making a new album
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: like two months. I wouldn't know anything about it or
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: like you know, you're going on tour, you're starting in London,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: I would like you know, I just wouldn't even know.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: And like so anything that rolled through the door there
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: like request to do stuff, I never knew about him,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: you know, unless we're gonna knew him, you know, so
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: you can see where I was on the pavement A
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: payment totem pole. Well man, I always call you pavor
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: payment secret weapon. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: was something about your addition to the band that really
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: just sort of mixed everything up, whether it was you know,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: the percussive elements are just you coming in uh with
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: your your unique take on backing vocals. Yeah, no, I um,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: I think I presented the element really not entirely knowing
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: what I was doing, and that was true. And the
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: funny thing about it is like even at this point
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: in my life and people who are completely unaware of pavement,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: mostly from this industry, the horse racing industry, like heard
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: I was was in a band or even a successful band,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: They can't even they just didn't make any sense to them.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: And then they'll also, um, you know, and they'll have
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: to like look it up on Google or whatever to
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: realize that, yeah, we were actually like a band that
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: made records and stuff. And then um, and then the
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: funny thing is it's always asked me that, you know,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: if it's musico types or something. I'm like, one thing
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: I'm really sort of unaware of in the human race.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: I have no feel for people that like kind of
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: collect musical gear and take music really really seriously, like
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: playing music really seriously and like jam and like or
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: just really like have this incredibly dry approach to like
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: like gear heads, like really really serious and like people
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: ask me to jam and I don't. I mean my
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: idea of I don't. I don't jam. I mean I
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: can't imagine jamming, Like what does that even mean? Like, um,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: really awkward, Like it's always awkward, Like people asked me
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: to do something, and then I'll be like, oh, man,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: like uh, you know, like I gotta figure out a
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: way to get out of this, you know, because like
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: a my skills like they're not gonna really not gonna
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: believe them in a band. Went like once I show
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: up with like whatever, I have two drums or whatever
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: and start hitting and they're gonna be like, there's no
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: way this guy was in a band like this is
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: a fake you know, so very strange, very strange. Well
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: you just gotta say no, man, I'm the secret weapon,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: and the secret weapon doesn't Yeah, like this like the
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: spice and like some sort of bowl of burgoo or something.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: I don't even know. It was just like the whole
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: experience was pretty magical. Um, it still doesn't really make
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: that much sense to me, you know, I just I
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: really enjoyed it, for sure. But in regards to that
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: that specific project, that's something that went like really smoothly,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: like it never got to the point. I mean it
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: was literally like Stephen I'm sure probably worked on it
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: that morning or something. But when when they press record
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: on that lost Rock thing, that thing was a humbling
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: or it was in and out the door, Doug Easy.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: It's like that's good, you know, like, yeah, that's probably
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: a good approach for something like that because you don't
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: want to overthink it and then it becomes a thing
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: and it's stressful. Perhaps, so I think that approach to
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: just get in there and like knock it out was
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: probably the way to go. It certainly worked out in
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: this case. Yeah, And it's a song that has no
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: history within the context of the band. You know, it's
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: not like something that we've been working on or something
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: have been sitting there or something that have been played
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: live or you know. I mean I think that we
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: had to you know, pavement ize it and give it
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: a bit of an original spin because that's the only
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: way that we can really do it. I mean, like,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: you know, like we were talking about with a straight thing,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: you know, you can't. You gotta have significance. Um. Yeah,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: not that, like you know, Steven and Steve West aren't talented.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna like those guys are great, but like,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: in fact, the fact that they're able to like throw, improvise, um,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: something like that's pretty cool. So I remember being really
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: really happy that Steve West, who had never really been used,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: um in payment outside of just playing drums, um, that
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: he was but he sort of fit fantastically on that recording.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: So I sort of loved that about no Marketings. I
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: love hearing him in there. All right, Well, thanks Bob.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: I appreciate your telling us these stories, and um, I'm
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: gonna think of about a hundred more reasons to have
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: you on in the future. Yeah, anytime, all right, man,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: thanks a lot for more on this, and thousands of
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: other topics because it how stuff works. Dot com