Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Albums Underrated, Overrated & Rated Just Right: Podcaster Rob Kassees On 'Dark Side of the Moon', 'Pet Sounds' & More [Episode 135]

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Albums Underrated, Overrated & Rated Just Right: Podcaster Rob Kassees On 'Dark Side of the Moon', 'Pet Sounds' & More [Episode 135] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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I'm a light, I know dialogue, How's a fountain? The conversation round.
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That's a guy there? Interesting? Interesting Caddy Man Back Now rock and
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Roll. Welcome back to book on Rock, the podcast for those about to
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read and rock. Subscribe and follow on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
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and TikTok where you get exclusive videos, weekly links to all the social media
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sites at booked on rock dot com. It's another edition of the Dialogue,
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a chill and chat with authors, fellow podcasters, listeners and more. My
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guest is Rob Cacis. Here's the host of a muscle listened podcast for classic
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rock fans called one thousand and one Album Complaints, a weekly album review show
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where musicians select, analyze, and laugh about an album from the book one
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thousand and one Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Rob gives his thoughts
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on classic albums like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon Because Black Album and
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The Beach Boys Pet Sounds do they live up to their legendary status. He
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also shares his favorite rock books, including ones by Bruce Springsteen and the Beastie
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Boys, along with a guilty pleasure read about Led Zeppelin. In an artistically
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inspiring book from David Byrne of Talking Heads, and there's one legendary artist who
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Rob thinks is overrated. You're about to find out which one and why.
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So let's get to it. Here is Rob Casise. Rob Casise, thanks
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for being on the podcast. How you doing it? Thanks so much for
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having me. I'm doing great. Before we get to your podcast one thousand
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and one album complaints, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are
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you from? I know you're checking in from Sacramento right now. Is that
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where you're originally from? And how did you get into music? Yeah?
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No, I'm originally from Wilmington, Delaware, on the East coast, just
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south of Philadelphia, almost the suburb of Philadelphia really, and I went to
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high school and college over there medical a lot of great people, and I
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grew up listening to my parents' records, just being a music appreciator, watching
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MTV in the relatively early days of MTV and initially buying anything MTV told me
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to buy. And then certain Nirvana came out at a seminal moment in my
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life, and you know, round fifteen, picked up a guitar stories like
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a lot of other people right and back in high school and college. At
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that point, everyone was learning an instrument, playing an instrument. People were
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a year or two ahead of me. So you learned just a ton from
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your friends, and you shared information, and you jammed together, and you
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played in bands and just really kept it going from there. Learned to sing,
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play a bit of piano these days, and ended up playing and being
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pretty serious about playing in bands in my twenties and playing a ton of gigs
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and taking it seriously, let's say, not making serious money. And as
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I've gotten older, you know, I've continued to appreciate music and playing music
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and talking about it. So the podcast really generated out of that, out
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of an interest during the pandemic to stay connected with old friends who were all
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musicians themselves, a bunch of guys who grew up with and went to school
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with and had played in various bands with. And this was an opportunity to
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recreate some of the bar conversations that we would we have already, which is
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just nitpicking what's on the jukebox, talking about the little anecdotes that we learned
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from VH one Behind the Music or similar programs, and talking about why some
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songs are good, why some songs aren't so good and just to recreate that
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and an excuse to talk to your friends. And also what we realized when
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we got started is that it's a it's been a really fun excuse to stay
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I don't want to stay current with music, but there is a tendency as
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one gets older to not listen to new music as often. So this has
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been a really cool excuse to force us some weeks. In any case,
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we cover a different album every week to listen to new music and kind of
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keep that, keep it flowing. I was just listening today to the latest
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episode on Frank Sinatra. The podcast is based on a book written by Robert
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Demury. Robert was actually on this podcast Last Fault to talk about his book
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Music Quake, The Most Disruptive Moments in Music. Your podcast is based on
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another book of his. Yeah, so he published a book I think it
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was first published, I want to say in the late nineties maybe early two
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thousands, called one thousand and one albums You Must Here Before You Die and
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Yes, a seminal book, a compendium of the most influential albums of music
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albums that have ever come out right, and he writes a little review of
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each one and talks about its relative importance in the musical canon. And I
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believe I could be mistaken, but I believe that book is what kicked off
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the sort of concept of the one thousand and one. So I see a
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lot of books one thousand and one places you must visit before you die and
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one thousand and one dishes you must try, that kind of stuff. I
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think although he was not able to trademark that terminology, I believe that's what
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kicked that off. So the book goes through chronologically from really the birth of
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what we would call an album, which is not the earliest part of recorded
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music. In fact, the Frank Sinatra episode that you just referenced is the
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first chronological album in his book, and it's partly because Frank Sinatra, on
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that record in the wee Small Hours, could be said to have created the
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modern album, meaning a collection of songs printed to a twelve inch record that
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were very purposely selected and sequenced to cover a theme. And so that wasn't
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you know, there was music going on before that that wasn't brought together and
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distributed that way. So talk about your co host. These are guys that
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are on the show regularly I believe you got more than a few guys on
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the show, right, Yeah, there's sort of three full timers and three
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part timers. But they're all old friends originally from the Delaware area. We
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all went to college together, or high school in college, or some combination
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therein and we've played in various bands together throughout our twenties and thirties. So
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a couple of the guys are gigging now over in Delaware with a band,
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and then I'm playing and recording with one of the other co hosts out here
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in California. And but you know, the rule was basically, and sometimes
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we have guests on the rules, we invite musicians on to talk about these
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classic albums from a musicians point of view. That's that's really what it is.
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It's nice that we have all known each other so long because we have
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an easy rapport and we have a lot of the same musical influences to draw
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on and reference to each other when we're talking about a new song that we're
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trying to break down, you know, to reference another song that we from
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the cannon that we might know. I think the challenge sometimes is having similar
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opinions, but we try to keep it fresh. And yeah, you alluded
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to you know what's going on in that book. It's a it's a great
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book overall, it's a big challenges you can imagine to compile one thousand and
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one of anything. So hats off to Robert Diamory for that. I will
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say that we do. And all the classics are in there, Abbey Roads
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in there, ZEP two is in there, etc. Pet Sounds, you
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know, all the things you would expect to be the most classic albums of
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all time Dark Side of the Moon, but there's a lot of obscure records
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in there too, and so's. It really is a nice mix. And
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you know, of course it's one critics opinion. This Robert Damery, the
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author of what yielded the most influence and what has sort of some of the
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most musical children. As you mentioned, it's all about the lineage, the
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artistic lineage of what did this, who did this influence after it, and
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what did this beget? That said, we try to do a mix of
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those well known records and those obscure records, take a random, fairly random
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approach, and we poke fun a lot of times at the lists. The
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premise of each individual show is that we break down an album and then we
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at the end all log of vote to say, did you really need to
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listen to this before you die? Does it belong on this list of must
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listens? And they don't all belong in our esteemed opinions? Well yeah,
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and that's one of the things about the podcast that I like. And you
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even told me, I think in one of the early emails, this is
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an honest podcast. It's not all everything is great. We love this,
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we love that, and there's nothing bad about it. This is an honest
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assessment of each album. Sure, And like I said, it's replicating the
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conversations that musicians I think all over the world are having with each other over
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a beer in that and listen, we talk some crap, we have some
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fun. We poke a lot of fun. I hope this comes across.
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It's all done with love. It's we like to poke fun at that.
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Even the things we love a lot, including things like led Zeppelin and Pink
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Floyd that you know, the Classics or the Beatles, right, there's some
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stuff to make fun of there, and it's all in the spirit of fun.
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Anyone who puts out an album, who makes an album, who sings
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and makes music, writes songs. It's extremely challenging, and we all know
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that from the musician's point of view. We've gigged to empty rooms and pact
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rooms. We've made records and released them independently and sold zero of them,
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and some have been slightly more successful. You know, we've toured, We've
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been through a lot of these experiences, so believe me, we know how
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challenging it is. And I have the utmost respect for anyone who puts themselves
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out there in that way. That said, records are funny. Decisions in
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the recording studio are funny. Songwriting decisions are funny, and we poke fun
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at those things. You know. You mentioned Pet Sounds, and I have
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become a bigger and bigger Beach Boys fan with each passing year. I don't
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know why. I wasn't a huge fan when I was in high school.
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I wasn't a huge fanily was in college and my thirties, and just suddenly
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over the last few years, I've just been getting into them. And the
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Pet Sounds album is just amazing. Have you done an episode on that album
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yet? We have not done Pet Sounds? What do you think about that
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album? Talk about that album and the song God Only Knows, which Paul
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McCartney said. I think he said it's the best song ever written. Yeah,
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and that's really saying something because he's one of the greatest songwriters ever to
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walk this era. Yeah. Absolutely, that's the high praise. Yeah,
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you know, it's been a minute since I listened to it, but I
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know I do know it well. I would say that it's a great example
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of a musician really using the studio as an instrument, which is something I've
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always personally been really fascinated by. Something The Beatles were really great at bands
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like Led Zeppelin. It's in other words, you go into recording studio and
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one version of the story is you just try to capture the sound of the
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live band. Hey we have a great live band. Just put the mics
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on, try to recreate the live show on a record, and that turns
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out great. Some of the time. It can be a little challenging on
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its own, but I think that folks like the Beach Boys and a record
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like Pet Sounds, and bands like the Beatles and Pink Floyd are in this
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other category of really wanting to use all the tricks of the studio to layer
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things extensively, to put effects on things. Things you really would be very,
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very challenging to create live, although now as I say that, with
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enough money and enough human beings on stage, you can usually create them.
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So PET sounds is that I think it's a studio project that uses a lot
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of the interesting technology and tricks of the studio. And two, the other
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thing that jumps out to me is that it's a very songwriting wise, like
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you mentioned, very vulnerable, very I think the songwriting on that record kind
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of spands a lifetime from almost like teenage level puppy love. Wouldn't it be
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nice to more nuanced and frankly realistic portrayals of love like God only knows,
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which you always hear people play at their weddings, And I'm like, you
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know, he says, the second line is I may not earn The first
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line is I may not always love you. It's kind of a bummer sentiment.
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Yeah, I think he was falling out of love with the woman he
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was with at the time. Yeah, But it's also realistic, and that's
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why I think people respond to it. It's a real human it's the reality
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of the human condition. Some album's on the list that it cause good debate.
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I'm sure like Metallica's Black Album, you talk to the older fans and
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they're not a fan of that album. You talk to the newer fans and
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they do love the Black Album. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm
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of the right age where I had that cassette tape. It was one of
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the early cassette tapes I bought. I really enjoyed the heck out of it.
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I think that Metallica fans were upset because it's a departure from this early
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sound of Metallica, which was much faster, much thrashier, just making it
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rock as hard as possible one hundred percent of the time. To me,
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that is still an excellent album, but it definitely trends towards pop music.
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I don't have a problem with pop music. I should say, are there
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any legendary albums or artists that you feel are overrated? I think plenty of
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things are in fact overrated, but I guess the one that comes to mind
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is Prince. I'm not the biggest Prince fan. It's not that I don't
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think he's good. I do think he's good, but I think he's put
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up on a bit of a pedestal, a bit too much, and I
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think he's an example of a guy. And there are a few other artists
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like this whose quantity of work there's a vast quantity and they're very prolific.
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The quantity gets in the way of the quality, in my opinions. You
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have really great material from a guy like Prince on a record like Purple Rain,
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his most famous record, and then you have I think some deep filler
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material which is skippable. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I mean,
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I don't know if I'm a fan of anything that Prince put out from
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like mid nineties forward, and he put out a lot of music. But
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then again, there are fans out there, and I'm sure many of them
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who love the music he put out during that period. It's just, you
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know, to each his own. Yeah, Well, that's that's the deal
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with music appreciation, is that it's one hundred percent subjective. We're all biased,
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and whether it's about what was on the radio when we were first listening
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to music and fallen in love with it, or or just exposure generally because
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our parents listen to it, our friends listen to it, our older brothers
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listen to it, you come with a bias, and I have noticed anyway
14:33
that that that bias doesn't shift too much through life. What I've tried to
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do is continue to be open to hearing new things and to diving into new
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genres and to me, you know, this is another part I like about
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the podcast is that we learn a lot from it because we try every week.
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We're doing one album a week, and we sort of trade off who
14:54
is in charge of the research to divide and conquer the work. But every
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week we're researching quite quite extensively. My point was more that for me to
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learn about the context behind something, to learn about the artist's story and what
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the mindset they were in, and how much money and time they had to
15:13
make a certain record, or what positioning they were in in their career.
15:18
All that stuff, and the little anecdotes of how they made things in the
15:20
studio, and we talk a lot about that, Oh, this is how
15:24
this was recorded, this is through this amp, and oh and this example
15:28
they put the microphone across on the other side of the room. You know.
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The great example is the Whole Lot of Love. It's the classic Jimmy
15:33
Page guitar sound, but you can hear it right at the beginning of led
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Zeppelin Two Whole Lot of Love, where he pioneered a technique with two microphones
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on the guitar amp, one right up against it and one across the room,
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and so every time he hits that guitar, you hear it. Right
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at the beginning A Whole Lot of Love. You get this what feels like
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an echo effect, but it's really just the second microphone catching the guitar.
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Sound point is learning about the stuff helps me appreciate it more, and I
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enjoy that aspect a lot. That's a that's an entry point for me to
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learn about something, and then I appreciate it's easier to appreciate see where people
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are coming from. Yeah, I love all that stuff. Actually, Bob
16:11
Rock was just on Chris Jericho's podcast, and Jericho asked him how did he
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get that snare drum sound out of Lars, and Bob Rock's talking about it's
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depended on the location of the room, the angles of the microphones. All
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that stuff just comes into play. And that stuff's fascinating. Oh yeah,
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and it's recording science. It's such a deep rabbit hole on its own outside
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of even musical theory or songwriting. It's entire books of course can be written
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on that, and we don't claim to be experts on it, but we
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spend a lot of time in the studio and a lot of time experimenting with
16:47
home recording, so we have some ideas about it. But yeah, it's
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just an insanely creative enterprise where Yeah, like you said, you can put
16:55
the drums in the hallway, or you can be in a big gymnasium kind
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of setting with lots of room around you, or you can be in a
17:02
tiny little box with a lot of padding. And then it's where you placed
17:06
the microphone. Oh, it's right above the snare, like literally right next
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to the drumhead, or it's kind of above the whole kit, or it's
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you know, it could be so many things. Episode fifty of your podcast
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is on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and I always say that
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is like the greatest album of all time. I mean it just what do
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you think? Is it overrated? Underrated or rated just right? I think
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it's yeah, it's perhaps rated perfectly, but I would agree I think it's
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the best album, complete album experience that one could ask for. I just
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went and saw Roger Waters. He did like a simulcast thing in a theater.
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Last week. He was playing a show in Europe and I went to
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the local movie theater to watch it, and yeah, it's it's just terrific.
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Everything they did on that talk about mastery of studio trickery. But to
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me, so on that episode we kind of dropped the guys of even rated
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the album or voting on whether it was. We started at the beginning saying,
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we all agree this is an absolute must listen. This is why a
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book like one thousand and one Albums You Must Hear Before You Die was written
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in the first place. It's because of pieces of art like this, which
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are complete cycles. All the songs blend together, everything was poured over,
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and it's just very dare I say perfect? Meticulous? Certainly meticulous, certainly
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meticulous. Exactly. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, you've
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got an episode on an album by Steven Seagal called Songs from the Crystal Take
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what's the story behind this? This isn't in Robert's book, is it.
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If you look closely, you'll see that that was released on April first,
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a couple of years back, Okay, now I get okay. Yeah,
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Dimerie goes astray occasionally for sure, but maybe not that far astray. That
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one came about. We had a lot of fun with that one. But
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it came about because one of the things we do, and I suspect other
19:00
musicians and guys and bands like to do this. You know, you spend
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a lot of time in the car on the road and you have to play
19:06
music for each other, put on a mix or whatever, what have you.
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What we realized is that we love listening. We love hate listening to
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music to bad music as much as we love the great stuff. They both
19:18
spur conversations on a road trip, and so this really came about with us.
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I was on a road trip with my bandmate Tom, who's one of
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the co hosts on the show, and we went through a whole cycle of
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what is the worst thing I could put on the radio for the driver to
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listen to so that we could we could laugh about it. And we took
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went through a bunch of different genres, but at some point we got into
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purely celebrity albums and Steven Seagals was really exceptional. I mean, it's at
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some point it crosses from bad back into good. I think, well,
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I know he plays blues music. Is it all blues blues rock? Actually
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it's a mix, and that's the funniest thing about it, because it's about
19:56
half milktoast blues. It's fine. You know. He had literally has a
20:03
song called music on there, which is an insane title for a song.
20:07
But then it's half like reggaeton where he's doing a Jamaican accent. It's bizarre.
20:12
Wow. To be clear, I do think it's worth listening too,
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not maybe for the not for the same reason dark Side, not for the
20:19
same reasons. Floyd Right, some of the bands that you followed growing up,
20:23
you said you're a child of the nineties. Well, actually, it's
20:26
funny I said that because I think even when I was young, I was
20:30
really into my parents music in the seventies. So my mother was a huge
20:33
Bob Dylan fan. He was one of my early loves the Beatles. Of
20:36
course, my dad was a big Beatles fan, so I got into seventies
20:40
music pretty early. And another one my kind of my personal band. The
20:47
first show I ever went to was a band called They Might Be Giants,
20:49
sort of a nerd rock Oh, yeah, man, they might be giants.
20:52
Yeah, I was really into them in the nineties. And yeah,
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my parents took me when I was fourteen to an all ages club in Philadelphia
20:59
to them, and it was it was very exciting, and I've seen them
21:02
a few times since then, of course. But you know, in terms
21:04
of stuff that was going on in the nineties, I liked it because it
21:07
was a rock revival. You had guitar solos. Of course. I had
21:10
Nirvana's never Mind, I had Metallica's Black Album. I liked Wheezer, you
21:15
know, bands like that. But I've always been a little bit backward looking.
21:18
And then I think by high school I got into David Bowie and that
21:21
was a big David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, both guys were kind of big
21:25
influences on me in terms of the aesthetic of what it meant to have a
21:30
show and to be Indian to put on a visual production, and Bruce Springsteen
21:34
more on the on the songwriting side. I grew up ten minutes from the
21:38
New Jersey border, so Springsteen's kind of big birdhouse and your soul. They
21:42
might be giants. Props to that song great too, Oh heck, yeah,
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you know I actually I discovered that band by watching cartoons. I don't
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know if you're the right age, you have to be the right age for
21:52
this, but they they played Istan Bull that they might be Giant song on
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an episode of Tiny Tunes, which was a popular kids cartoon at the time,
22:02
and I was like, what is this? This is so cool.
22:03
They made like a little music video for it, and this is when I
22:07
was twelve or something, and then I sought out the cassette tape and yeah,
22:11
never looked back. See that brings up a good point now that that
22:15
is so important for band, especially now, to continue on with their legacy,
22:18
to get their music out anyway they can. That's like with Metallica and
22:22
Stranger Things. What was the song that they played, Master of Puppets?
22:26
Yes, Master of Puppets. That stuff is so important. You gotta get
22:30
your music out there and you'll have a whole new generation of fans just by
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putting it out there for them to hear. It's it's so different now than
22:38
it was back in the day. It's not just radio and MTV. I
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think, especially back then, it was challenging, right because when I've literally
22:45
first started listening to music, as I alluded to. I just turned on
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MTV, you know, when I was eight or nine, and whatever they
22:51
were playing was what I liked, you know, Motley Crue. And then
22:53
over time, yeah, I started listening to classic rock radio in the car
22:57
with my dad, and you know, you learn things through there. But
23:00
for the most part, you're just you're just listening to what you're being told
23:03
to listen to, more or less, and there's nothing wrong with that.
23:04
By the way, There's some great music. Great stuff came on MTV.
23:07
A lot of those music videos made a big imprint on me in a good
23:11
way. But something like they might be giants, they were never going to
23:15
be on MTV. They were you know, that was never going to come
23:18
through, or to be on the radio or like Beavis and butthead actually introduced
23:22
me to a lot of weird bands too, because they would sort of review
23:25
videos on their show, but it would always be the weird stuff, and
23:27
so yeah, I was always drawn to weird. I think I can say
23:30
that confidently. What was the first album you ever bought? So it was
23:33
Motley Cruez Doctor Feel Good because I was watching MTV and I still have a
23:38
soft spot for Motley Crue and specifically for that record. You know, it
23:41
definitely rocks. I kind of moved on from that style of music a bit,
23:45
but but yeah, it was great because I was just tuning in and
23:49
starting to care about music right as the culture turn. It was right at
23:53
the cusp of when I first tuned in MTV. It was all Motley Crue,
23:59
Poison hair metal from the eighties, and then smells like teen Spirit and
24:04
Jeremy came on. One band that I love and I think is really underrated
24:10
Blind Melone. Oh yeah, well that that first record is really great.
24:12
Oh yeah, and the second album, Soup is outstanding. Have you ever
24:17
heard that one? I must have heard tracks from it, but I can't
24:18
say I know the record super well. It doesn't have any hit singles on
24:22
it, but start to finish, it's just an amazing record. You gotta
24:26
hear it. Well, Actually, let's talk about it for a second,
24:27
because sometimes I feel like the lack of hits on a record it can kind
24:32
of help me not be distracted. You know, sometimes when something's been drilled
24:34
into your brain so much via a hit, being a hit song and being
24:38
so ubiquitous on the radio throughout your life, it's it doesn't mean it's bad,
24:44
but it just it holds a different spot in your brain coming back to
24:48
stuff. I've noticed this with the album, some of the albums we've covered
24:52
and in my later listening. Yeah, that can be helpful to me.
24:55
So I in other words, I'm excited. I'm excited to listen to the
24:57
Blind Melon record partially what you said, because there's nothing to just distract me.
25:03
I can just kind of listen to it as a complete album and take
25:07
it in. If there was a time machine and you can go back to
25:11
any concert in music history, what would it be? Man? That is
25:15
That's a tough one. I have an answer for you. So since we've
25:18
already talked about Pinky Pink, Floyd is high on the list, but I'll
25:22
skip over them and go to another favorite band and a specific era. I
25:26
don't have a venue for you, but I would have loved to see Talking
25:30
Heads on the Stop Making Sense tour, because that's that's a big That's a
25:33
big one for me. Yes, that's a good pick. You're a big
25:36
Talking Hits fan. Huge. How about David Byrne solo? Yes, I
25:40
know. I'll say the majority of David Bird's solo work yes, he was
25:44
another guy. I discovered them when I was in high school, and he
25:48
was just a huge influence on me as of the concept of what an artist
25:53
could and should be, you know, visually, and the fact that he's
25:57
just got his hands and so many other kinds of art forms simultaneously. And
26:03
then the fact that Talking Heads the band matured and changed their sound I think
26:07
numerous times. All that and he was one of the early concerts I saw
26:11
as well. The book Do podcast will return after this podcast. Turning musician
26:18
Rob casises with us. He's the host of the one thousand and one Album
26:22
Complaints podcast, a series of rock book related questions. So let's get into
26:26
it. Books on rock that you've read that you want to talk about.
26:30
So you gave me your list ahead of time, and you started with Bruce
26:33
Springsteen's Born to Run. Nobody tells a story like Bruce. This is what
26:37
he writes in the forward quote DNA natural ability, study of craft, development
26:42
of and devotion to an esthetic philosophy, naked desire for fame, love,
26:49
admiration, attention women, sex, and oh yeah, a buck. Then
26:56
if you want to take it all the way out to the end of the
26:57
night, a furious fire in the hole that just don't quit burning. These
27:03
are some of the elements that will come in handy should you come face to
27:07
face with eighty thousand or eighty screaming rock and roll fans who are waiting for
27:11
you to do your magic trick, waiting for you to pull something out of
27:15
your hat, out of thin air, out of this world, something that
27:18
before the faithful were gathered here today was just a song fueled rumor. I'm
27:22
here to provide proof of life to that ever elusive, never completely believable us.
27:29
That is my magic trick, and like all good magic tricks, it
27:33
begins with a setup. Wow, what a writer. Your thoughts on this
27:37
book, any favorite parts that stand out for you? Listen, I've read.
27:40
I love reading. I'm a voracious reader. I have been since I
27:42
was a kid, and I love reading about music and the creative process.
27:47
So I've read a lot of music memoirs and biographies in my life, and
27:52
now with the podcast, you know, that's another reason to read more of
27:56
those. But I would say this is truly one of the best written pieces.
28:00
And I've admired Bruce Springsteen for a very long time as a songwriter,
28:04
I think he's just amazing as a performer. He's well known, I think,
28:10
and I've modeled. I remember reading the liner notes of the greatest hits
28:15
I got on CD when I was fifteen of his that talked about, well,
28:21
I knew I wasn't going to be the best guitar player in the world,
28:22
so I thought I'd better figure out how to sing and write songs too,
28:26
And I think I literally took that and made it into my musical career.
28:30
I was like, yeah, I should do that too. That sounds
28:32
that sounds about right. So I've always kind of based my idea of what
28:36
a great performer was on him. And what was nice about this is because
28:42
he is such a great songwriter, storyteller in the songs. It's very possible
28:47
to be disappointed when someone actually puts words to paper as prose that they're not.
28:52
They don't always fulfill how great the songs are as prose writers. But
28:57
I just think in this case, and even that word you just read,
29:00
he's so he's so articulate about you know, not only his life, but
29:07
about the creative process, about the drive, the motivation, everything that was
29:11
really just alluded to in that in that forward that what is causing you to
29:18
want to get up on stage and in front of either a packed house or
29:22
nobody, which you know Bruce has played to both. So to me,
29:26
it was just very insightful writing about a person I already loved, and you
29:32
don't always get that. You don't always get this aspect of story and really
29:37
good writing and deep insight into how creativity works. Do you have a favorite
29:42
Springsteen album? I have to go with the first one. I mean,
29:45
he has so many great ones, but Greetings from Asouri Park to me,
29:49
is just really meaningful to me personally. I just it wasn't the first one
29:53
I discovered. You know, those are probably the ones with the bigger hits
29:56
on him. This one has spirit in the Night on it and blinded by
30:00
the Light. But the songwriting is different. I think in the early part
30:04
of his career, it's more I think it's him doing his version of Bob
30:10
Dylan. It's more freewheeling. It's his own thing. It's not it doesn't
30:14
feel like a Dylan clone. But I really like and responded to that version
30:18
of songwriting when I was young. So song's like it's hard to be a
30:22
saint in the City or lost in the flood, you know. To me,
30:26
I just I think I wore that CD out, if that's possible.
30:30
The Tunnel of Love has always been my favorite. The Tunnel loves great.
30:33
He's put out some great material for a very long time. Even some of
30:37
the more recent records are pretty darn good. One book you brought up that
30:41
I really need to read is The Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond and Adam
30:45
Horovitz. I'm a huge Beasties fan, and as you said in your email,
30:48
this gives a holistic overview of a time and place in music, all
30:52
scene and making you feel like you lived inside of it. And he highlights
30:56
from this book, Well, I think it's great for any of course,
31:00
anyone who looks to Beastie Boys, but more particularly it kind of talked about
31:03
the early days of hip hop in New York City from the perspective of fans,
31:07
which the best boys were. They were teenagers, young teenagers, sneaking
31:11
into hip hop clubs, early hip hop clubs in Manhattan at age fourteen and
31:15
just soaking it in and trying to meet people and figure it out, you
31:18
know, long before they even wanted to get into music. So for that
31:22
reason, it was really it was really interesting. It's much more approachable.
31:26
It's written kind of as a series of essays, so maybe it's even easier
31:30
to take it piece by piece as opposed to reading it continuously. But and
31:36
I'll actually listened the audiobook on this one, which had the Beastie Boys plus
31:41
some other celebrities reading these pieces, So I thought that was just really cool.
31:47
Yeah, I just really feel like it made you feel like you lived
31:48
in that time. And as a music fan somebody who appreciates anything that came
31:55
out of that era or anything that was even influenced by that era, you're
31:57
always sort of wondering what what it would have been like to be there.
32:02
I just thought they did a good job of that. I should say too,
32:06
I can't say I'm a Beastie Boys super fan. I definitely like them
32:08
a lot, and I like pretty much all the output they've had. But
32:14
I've always they've always seemed these very down to earth. Maybe it's because they're
32:17
condastan more in age to me, and they seem just like a down to
32:21
earth group of guys who are having fun with their friends. They just remind
32:25
me of me and my friends maybe everyone feels that way. Oh yeah,
32:29
I agree, and they're just there were everyday dudes. And what I love
32:31
about the book the pictures really take you back to that time in place New
32:36
York City. Early eighties hip hop is just a rumor, as it's said
32:39
in the book, and you just get that image of guy with a mill
32:43
crate and final records inside of it. It's like, what's that guy doing,
32:45
Man, he's a DJ at the club down the street, spinning records.
32:50
You know. It's it's an important time and place in music history.
32:54
And boy, how far it's come since then? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
32:58
And the other thing I think about Beasts was they did, especially as
33:01
time went on, they got into some of their studio process and talked about
33:07
how so. For instance, one of the reasons I think they're a great
33:10
band worth diving into is because they were will They changed their artistic style consistently,
33:19
which I think is really I think it's really hard to do that,
33:21
especially if you hit it big. So they hit it big with licensed ill
33:24
kind of a frat boy rock or it's wrap over led Zeppelin riffs effectively,
33:30
and they had a lot of success. They even were opened from Madonna on
33:35
tour, which some of those stories were really fun in the book, and
33:37
then they completely changed it up and did Paul's Boutique. Yeah, just mind
33:42
blowing, mind blowing, so weird. So and of course you need the
33:46
context to I think appreciate. I think Paul's Britique does sound good without context,
33:51
but it's so much better if you have the understanding of where the technology
33:54
was had and what they had to do to create that at that time.
34:00
And this sound collage approach with very limited digital technology if any, you're literally
34:05
splicing magnetic tape together with scotch tape in many cases. Right. But anyway,
34:12
but one of the things I took from it and I've used in my
34:15
own thinking since then, is that on the third record, they liked using
34:21
samples a lot on Paul's Boutique, but when they got to check your head,
34:25
they had built their own little rehearsal space slash studio in LA and they
34:30
said, hey, instead of crate diving for more samples, let's just jam
34:36
as a band, a whole bunch, and then let's sample ourselves and pretend
34:39
it's stuff from old seventies records. I thought that was a really cool idea,
34:44
and you could have fooled me because you listen to check your head,
34:46
and it does sound like they're pulling stuff out of the crate from the olden
34:51
days. Then there is the Led Zeppelin book Camera of the Gods by Stephen
34:54
Davis, who traveled with the band at the start of their nineteen seventy five
35:00
We're in the US, originally published back in nineteen eighty five. Boy,
35:02
where to begin with the stories? Right? Do you have a favorite from
35:05
this book? Of course is the Shark story. Sure, there's the Shark
35:08
one. Just the level again, I'm not sure kids today can appreciate just
35:14
the pure level of debauchery that was going on, where they would just roll
35:17
into a hotel, take over an entire floor, have guys they hire just
35:22
to go down into the lobby. The lobby would be filled with young ladies
35:28
looking to hang out with the fellows from Zeppelin, and they'd send dudes down
35:32
there just to interview them, basically to come up to their hotel rooms.
35:36
Crazy orgies, crazy drugs, it's it's it's it's just completely no, and
35:42
then wrecking the hotel rooms. Obviously, listen, I don't condone any of
35:45
this behavior, but it is This is a great example of like a trashy
35:50
rock paperback, great beach read. It's it's just insane to think about what
35:57
it was like. And so I've actually read a lot about led Zeppeon.
36:01
I like them as a band, But to me, it's interesting that,
36:05
you know, something I learned a little bit later I was Now now that
36:07
I'm forty, I try to put it into context of how old were these
36:12
guys when these things were happening. And so I think what I didn't realize
36:15
until recently was Plant and Bonham were like twenty when the band started, and
36:21
Page and John Paul Jones were a little bit older, I mean significantly older
36:27
at a time when six years age difference makes a difference to you. And
36:30
then they basically formed the band, played a couple shows together, made led
36:36
Zeppeon one, and immediately went on tour and started and just hit major fame
36:40
instantaneously, and recorded that second album during that tour, that first tour,
36:46
It's not Yeah, and they pretty much just didn't stop touring and recording almost
36:51
for the next five years, and you know, it took its toll.
36:53
Also, there's a human element to it. Some of the guys got it
36:58
worse than others. Obviously, I'm eventually died, but before that page was
37:01
a major heroin addict. It's amazing he's still alive, to be honest,
37:06
like to hear some of the stories about this guy. Oh yeah, Well,
37:08
and of course the guys in Zeppelin, they're not fans of the book.
37:10
They say it's not accurate. If you're looking for the definitive biography of
37:15
led Zeppelin, there are other books, but of course the standout stories that
37:20
they sold their soul to the devil and they pleasured a groupie with pieces of
37:23
a shark. And this is while they were staying at Seattle's Edgewater in in
37:28
July of nineteen sixty nine. Members of the band Vanilla Fudge and their entourage
37:32
used a fish caught from the local bay. Guys say that never happened.
37:37
Yeah. Another book you recommend is by Mark Polazadi, who wrote a thirty
37:44
three and a third book on Bob Dylan's Highway sixty one Revisited. And I
37:49
was fortunate enough to have one author from the thirty three and a third series
37:52
on the podcast. That was I think about a month or two ago,
37:57
and that was on Tom Petty's Southern Acts Sense. Michael Washburn is the author
38:02
and he was on and actually have one coming up soon. Kimberly Mack just
38:07
wrote a book on living Colors. Times up. You have one that you
38:12
want to recommend, and it's on Dylan's Highway sixty one revisited. Tell me
38:15
about this one. Yeah, so it's been a while since I read this
38:17
one. I've read a bunch of those these books, And for those who
38:20
don't know, it's a yeah thirty three and thirds, a series where different
38:23
authors write about a certain album that had a big influence on them. There's
38:29
no real codified format for the book, which I think is one of the
38:34
challenges of it. They're a lot of fun, but they go in a
38:36
lot of different directions, meaning some are lightly fictionalized novellas about the making of
38:40
a record. Some are critical deep dives into the musical landscape at that time.
38:50
And this one one of the reasons I really liked it. It's a
38:52
record I love Bob Dylan record, I love Highway six two one visited.
38:57
It's the one that has like a rolling stone on it in Desolation Row.
39:00
It was really an accounting, almost like a Studio notebook, talking about how
39:05
they made the record and how just how records were made back then, and
39:10
how Bob Dylan, although he's a hero of mine, is kind of a
39:15
grumpy guy who didn't really like to do vocal takes and didn't want the band
39:20
rehearst too much. So you can hear mistakes on the record. You can
39:23
hear the band like miss of change in Tombstone Blues, and they just left
39:27
it in there. It's it's kind of bizarre. And they talked about how
39:30
when Bob Dylan, he hated the idea of a doing separate vocal takes and
39:34
be doing too many takes of the song, but also he did not want
39:37
while performing to keep his mouth next to the microphone. He couldn't be bothered
39:43
to like stand in one spot, So they solved that by just setting up
39:46
a ring of microphones around him so that he could move around but they could
39:51
still catch his vocal. It's to me, the little details like that are
39:54
just real, real fun. Yeah, yeah, I love that stuff.
39:58
The minutia. Going back to the talking Heads. One more book you recommend,
40:01
and that is David Byrne's book How Music Works from twenty and twelve,
40:06
He explores how profoundly music is shaped by its time and place. This is
40:09
one of the great minds in rock history. You know, as we talked
40:13
about your thoughts on this book, you say it's a great source of creative
40:15
ideas and inspiration. Yeah, I really do think of this list, I
40:21
would say this is the one I really think any musician, anyone really cares
40:24
about music should read, because I think what David Byrne does. I already
40:30
said I'm a big fan of his He's a hero of mine. But this
40:32
is a great example of how interesting and creative he is because he takes that
40:37
title how Music Works, and on a chapter by chapter basis, he looks
40:42
at what that question could mean from a lot of different angles, some meaning.
40:46
He has pieces about how the music business works. You know, there's
40:51
a long chapter about how the music business works financials. He gets into numbers,
40:53
well, how to artists make money on touring and royalties and how did
40:58
it work in talking heads, But then he also is more discursive and talks
41:02
about how I think the byeline you just read referenced something that really stuck with
41:08
me, which is he talked about how the places in which music is played
41:12
and performed, the literal architecture shapes what it sounds like. And so the
41:17
examples of that would be in the early days of symphonic music of classical music,
41:23
before they had figured out how to build a symphony hall with all these
41:28
subtle acoustic aspects, you couldn't hear stuff in the farthest away seats, so
41:37
the composers of that day the music itself was more bombastic. There was less
41:43
room for nuance because you couldn't hear things that were nuanced, so it had
41:45
to be big and big hits, right, so they could reach the back
41:49
seats when they started to dial in how a symphony hall currently works, which
41:53
is you can hear a lot of subtlety even from the worst seat in the
41:58
house, so to speak. Then that allowed composers to get more subtle and
42:01
more nuanced in their compositions. And basically that same concept and tradition continues,
42:08
and he cites many other examples of how the room you're listening to it in
42:13
shapes how people even make the music and what it sounds like. Yeah,
42:16
here's a quick quote from chapter one titled creation in Reverse. He's talking about
42:21
just that. He says, quote. In a sense, we work backward,
42:23
either consciously or unconsciously, creating work that fits the venue available to us.
42:30
That holds true for the other artists as well. Pictures are created that
42:32
fit and look good on white walls and galleries, just as music is written
42:37
that sounds good either in a dance club or a symphony hall, but probably
42:42
not in both. In a sense, the space, the platform, and
42:44
the software makes art, the music or whatever. After something succeeds, more
42:50
venues of a similar size and shape are built to accommodate more production of the
42:53
same After a while, the form of the work that predominates in these spaces
42:59
is taken for granted. Of course, we mainly hear symphonies in symphony halls.
43:04
What a brilliant art mind. He's a brilliant art mind. Definitely.
43:07
And yeah, I think that's example of something that we all kind of know
43:10
intuitively. For instance, if you ever, if you enjoy seeing stand up
43:15
comedy, we kind of know that the small club is inherently a better place
43:17
to see stand up comedy than a large stadium. The reality is that certain
43:22
comics are big enough to book a stadium, and they do, and we
43:25
go to them and I'm not saying it's not fun, but it is a
43:29
different experience. And similarly, if you've been to a lot of concerts as
43:32
I have, you may have noticed that as bands gain in popularity and gain
43:37
in ticket sales, you know, they size up the venue they're able to
43:40
play. Clearly, every once in a while, if you're an astute listener,
43:45
you will hear you'll go see a band. I saw a band once.
43:49
I'm not sure if I should mention their name, but I saw them
43:52
right as they were kind of breaking, and I could tell from listening to
43:54
the music they were in a large theater. When I saw them, it
43:59
was clear to me that they had just bumped up from playing small clubs with
44:02
ceilings, you know, maybe ten feet high to a big theater, and
44:07
their sound had not yet progressed to fill the theater. And that is something
44:13
that you have to think about when you see these big arena shows, whether
44:15
it's Taylor Swift or Bruno mars or or Van Hillen or whatever, you know,
44:20
they have to level up, they have to change something about what they're
44:23
doing to fill that arena, that is for sure. Well, yeah,
44:28
I remember seeing a documentary on def Leopards Hysteria and the singer Joe Elliott.
44:32
He was talking to the drummer Rick Allen, who was kind of stressing out
44:37
over the symbols and what to play and where and all that stuff, and
44:42
Joe Elliot said, listen, man, we're gonna be playing in huge arenas,
44:45
so the people weigh in the far back, they're not even gonna know
44:49
the difference. So just play with that in mind, play with a big
44:52
venue in mind, leave a lot of space. Yeah, absolutely so.
44:57
And I think there's a lot of other really interesting tidbits and from in the
45:00
David Byrne books, So I would really I think I might go read it
45:02
again, to be honest, because it has been a while, but some
45:05
of those ideas have really stuck with me for a long time. So let's
45:07
wind down with some books that you haven't read yet but you want to read.
45:12
And you have a few books on your list, some legendary jazz artists,
45:15
and you were just talking about this in the last episode on Sinatra's album,
45:19
how you're getting into more and more of the jazz artists from I think
45:22
that would mid fifties to the mid seventies. One book you want to read
45:24
is by Herbie Hancock, another by saxophonist Wayne Shorter, which you just started
45:30
reading. Who are your favorite jazz artists? You mentioned Chet Baker in that
45:34
latest episode, Jet Baker's Great, Yeah, Chet Baker. So jazz is
45:38
relatively new to me. I would say that through college I listened to stuff
45:43
from the seventies, you know, Herbie Hancock's head Hunters maybe, and the
45:45
Miles electric stuff like Bitch's Brew and some of the Mahavish new orchestra, prog
45:53
rock fusion, things of that nature. Right, returned it forever maybe,
45:57
But when it comes to that classic jazz really only ever until recently, I
46:00
only had a passing knowledge of it. And a few years back I decided
46:06
to start learning piano pretty seriously, or take it more seriously, and that
46:10
has been since then. That's been a window into discovering a lot of this
46:15
classic era jazz, this kind of nineteen fifty five to nineteen seventy five acoustic
46:19
era. So it's all still pretty new to me, is what I would
46:22
say. I mean, I've known these names for a long time, but
46:24
in terms of the greats from that era, I really liked Thelonious Monk kind
46:30
of an obvious choice. I think he's an example of a great innovator.
46:35
No one else sounds like him on the piano and how he composes. And
46:38
he's also known as someone who's written a lot of songs that have become standards
46:43
very quickly, so you can hear his compositions on Miles Davis records and everybody's
46:49
records thereafter. In terms of you, in terms of other piano players,
46:54
I quite like a guy called Sonny Clark. He's maybe a slightly lesser known
46:59
guy, but he put out a bunch of records and he was a famous
47:01
sideman, a little bit more on the bluesy side of piano. But here's
47:07
the main thing I want to say, and it's on display in the Frank
47:10
Snacha episode too. We talk a little bit about it, which is that
47:15
discovering jazz, especially if this era, is also a process of discovering the
47:21
Great American Songbook, the standards songs that were written in the twenties, thirties
47:25
and forties, often with singers that then jazz musicians typically remake and reform to
47:34
fit their own needs and adapt. And so to me, that's been a
47:37
really interesting look at songwriting, because songs were certainly written in a very different
47:43
way in a pre Beatles era. By the time you get to the Beatles,
47:45
and the Beatles are amazing songwriters, however, something shifted about how songs
47:51
are crafted. There's something that's a lot more simplistic about them, a lot
47:54
more blues based. The Beatles specifically often transcended that and made really complex songs.
48:00
But if you go back to those earlier eras of Cole Porter and Jogi
48:07
Carmichael and the songwriters like that, that made a lot of these standards George
48:10
on My Mind and Stardust and Dream a Little Dream, you know, my
48:15
favorite things from the sound of music, things like that. They have a
48:20
lot more intricate moving parts and interest ate harmonies and the way the melodies move
48:25
across the chords. So a lot of it has just been an interesting study
48:29
for me on that level. And books on rock that you'd like to see
48:31
written that haven't been yet, and unfortunately your pick never will. You mentioned
48:37
David Bowie. You wish that he wrote a book from his own perspective.
48:40
There are plenty of David Bowie books out there, but none that came straight
48:45
from him. Yeah, he was notoriously a bit of a closed book.
48:50
I think that was part of his artistic identity all the way through his death.
48:53
I think he felt like he put himself into the music. You know,
48:58
he's spent a lot of time creating. Obviously released a record the day
49:01
after he died, and so it would have been great to hear more from
49:07
him about his creative process, but frankly it would have been antathetical to his
49:13
ethos I believe now. I should mention there was a recent documentary film called
49:16
Moonage Daydream that attempted to compile what there was of both video and interviews of
49:22
Bowie. I found that really interesting. But yeah, he's just a character
49:25
that I was always fascinated by. He early on helped you know one thing
49:34
that was I was kind of a weird little kid, not the most popular
49:37
kid is he can maybe imagine nerdy and David Bowie is one of the people
49:42
who helped me understand that weird was cool and that stuck with me. So
49:45
so I want to give you the chance to plug your projects. Tell people
49:49
where they can find the podcast, your music, Where can they find you
49:52
on social media? Yeah, so you can go to at the Chop Unlimited
49:57
on Instagram. That is the sort of mother account for our creative collective,
50:01
and there's a link there for our podcast one thousand and one Album Complaints,
50:06
as well as all the music that we're currently making. I'm currently in a
50:10
star Trek the next generation tribute band called the Beverly Crushers. We've released one
50:15
record and we're working on a follow up currently. And then just last year
50:20
we released a heavy metal concept album about Arby's, the fast food restaurant nice
50:25
called Ghost Beef. So that that's that's that's linked there as well, And
50:30
of course check out the podcast one thousand and one Album Complaints. We it's
50:35
musicians giving a reverent takes on classic albums and we publish it every Monday.
50:40
All right, and we have the latest episode on Sinatra. What's what's the
50:45
next episode? You know what it's going to be one oh eight will be
50:47
Astra Weeks by Van Morrison. Oh nice, Astra Weeks. Yeah, so
50:52
get excited. That was a That's a big one for me personally, but
50:57
we did. We did argue about it a little bit and I recall,
51:00
hey, that's what makes it interesting. Rob Casise, thanks so much for
51:02
being here man. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.
51:12
Well, no, that was an adventure. I was quite a show
51:15
you put unto me. Well, let me just close this conversation by saying
51:20
you are one unique individual.