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I'd Do It for Free! · Armstrong & Getty One More Thing

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You ever heard anybody say I do that job for free.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: It's one more thing.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: I'm one more thing.
• 0:09
  Speaker 3: I've said that about a lot of things.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. I like to say, when it turns
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: out somebody's making you know, fifty million dollars, I'll do that.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: For half that.
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  Speaker 1: It's my favorite. Ah. Before we get into that, were
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: you ever a Doctor Demento fan radio personnel?
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: I'm familiar with him.
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  Speaker 1: He would feature wacky songs and song parodies and stuff
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  Speaker 1: like that. He has finally called it quits after fifty
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  Speaker 1: five years.
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  Speaker 3: I didn't know he was still alive on the radio.
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  Speaker 1: Doctor Demento real name Barry Hanson been doing it fifty
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  Speaker 1: five years, introducing audiences to figures such as Tom Larrr
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and cult songs like fish Heads. He also is revered
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and condemned for popularized, popularizing, and mentoring weird Al Yankovic.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Here's a big booster of Weird Al's breakout song. Another
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: One Rides the Bus, a parody of the obvious queen
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: title portrayed with wit and a plum by the office
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  Speaker 1: is Rain Wilson in the underappreciated twenty twenty two biopic
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  Speaker 1: Weird The Al Yankovic story.
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  Speaker 3: I've heard it has a good movie. I didn't see it.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I've heard it is too. I don't watch
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  Speaker 1: many movies at all, but I could see watching that someday.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Move and Judy.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: You know what. My son and I watched last night,
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  Speaker 3: like the first third of and he actually liked it.
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  Speaker 3: He's fourteen odd thing for a kiddylic Annie Hall by
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Woody Allen. Really, I was watching it the other night
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: in the middle of the night. I mentioned it last
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  Speaker 3: week because I couldn't sleep, and I thought, ow, bet
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  Speaker 3: Henry would actually like this. He actually did like it.
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  Speaker 3: He's a pretty.
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  Speaker 1: Cerebral kid, and it's a very cerebral movie. Yeah, the
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  Speaker 1: comedy that well, the humor is all pretty cerebral too,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: So yeah, not surprised. So this guy's really named Barry Hanson.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: He became doctor Demento after getting a master's in folklore
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  Speaker 1: and ethno musicology from UCLA. I was going to do
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that and joining the free form FM radio station KPPC
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  Speaker 1: and PASADEN in nineteen seventy and he's been on the
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  Speaker 1: air since nineteen seventy.
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  Speaker 3: In radio is so much cooler, way way way back
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  Speaker 3: in the day.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, my god. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I was
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  Speaker 1: thinking about that. Why was I thinking about that?
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  Speaker 3: Because I think.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: About music a lot. I was thinking about the dawn
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  Speaker 1: of album oriented rock radio AAR as we called it
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  Speaker 1: in the business, where they would actually where it went
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  Speaker 1: from no song can be more than two and a
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: half minutes long to here's an album side, We'll be
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  Speaker 1: back afterward. And just as a music freak, how incredibly
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: cool that is?
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  Speaker 4: Was?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? It was because also you couldn't stream every single
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  Speaker 3: song you ever thought of anytime you wanted. You either
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  Speaker 3: owned the album or you.
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  Speaker 1: Didn't, right, and even if you did, you enjoyed it.
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  Speaker 1: And to hear like somebody's whose musical opinions or persona
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  Speaker 1: you respected and liked, say, hey, this is a great
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  Speaker 1: album side and it's one of your favorites, that was cool. Well,
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  Speaker 1: you listened to it kind of for the affirmation too.
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  Speaker 3: And then prior to the what late seventies, mid seventies,
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  Speaker 3: there was no recording device that you had in your car,
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  Speaker 3: So even if you owned the album, you couldn't listen
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  Speaker 3: to it in your car unless you're Elvis had a
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  Speaker 3: turntable in your car.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, or like the Rolling Stones. Had I know Keith
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Richards had a little turntable in his glove compartment, presumably
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: you'd have to listen to it through the speakers in
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  Speaker 1: the little turntable mechanism.
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  Speaker 3: I've seen the one in Elvis's car. Wherever that is
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: might be the Peterson Auto Museum, but somewhere they've got
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  Speaker 3: Elvis's Cadillac that's got a turntable in it.
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  Speaker 1: And were the speakers just part of the same like
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  Speaker 1: little console thing, Yeah yeah, yeah, which pretty seemed crazy
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  Speaker 1: cool as at the time, But I mean, how often
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  Speaker 1: would it skip if you're driving always? Yeah? Wow, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but yeah, I'll bet there are libraries full of like
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  Speaker 1: old timey you know, early days of AAR radio out there,
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  Speaker 1: college stations and hipster stations.
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  Speaker 3: I grew up in the middle of nowhere and we
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  Speaker 3: had no FM radio, and I could pick up a
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  Speaker 3: couple of AM stations barely from very very far away,
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  Speaker 3: so like lots and lots of music that everybody grew
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  Speaker 3: up on that's, you know, from our age group. I
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  Speaker 3: never heard. I didn't even know it existed. There was
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  Speaker 3: just no way for me to be exposed to that
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  Speaker 3: sort of thing. And I remember going to Denver one
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  Speaker 3: time with some people in college. It's probably like eighteen
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: nineteen years old. Went to Denver and listened to one
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  Speaker 3: of those kind of ar stations you're talking about, and
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  Speaker 3: I was like, Wow, radio stations that play this, that's crazy.
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  Speaker 3: I had no idea.
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  Speaker 1: Our first boss in talk radio, Ken Cole was He
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  Speaker 1: was one of the like founding generation, founding fathers of
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: free form FM radio back in the late sixties early
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  Speaker 1: seventies in New York, right Long Island and New York. Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And we saw it was funny because you know, he's
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  Speaker 1: news talk guru and really good leader and all. And
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  Speaker 1: to see pictures of him back in the day, it
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  Speaker 1: was hilarious. I mean, he looked like he was walking
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: on the stage it Woodstock. But oh man, those must
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: have been heady days, free love, smoking pot in the studio.
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  Speaker 1: Damn it. I was born too late.
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  Speaker 3: There's an interesting thing that is happening with the democratization
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  Speaker 3: of everything, books, music, movie, acting, whatever, whatever you want
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  Speaker 3: to talk about. It's on one hand, there's so much
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  Speaker 3: more of it, and they got rid of the gate
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  Speaker 3: keepers that kept a lot of great stuff out and
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  Speaker 3: blah blah blah. But there's just so much everywhere all
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  Speaker 3: the time that it's lost a lot of it's something.
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  Speaker 1: Well luster profitability, both of them.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, I've definitely lost its profitability by a lot.
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  Speaker 4: But just the excitement of discoverings, you know, you finally
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  Speaker 4: get to hear this, or that there's so much everywhere
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  Speaker 4: of everything all the time, right that it's it's I
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  Speaker 4: don't know, it's it's I can't tell if it's just
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  Speaker 4: nostalgia for liking things the way they were when you
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  Speaker 4: were younger, which is a natural tendency, or if things
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  Speaker 4: were actually better.
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  Speaker 1: Right as an economist wait, checking own credentials, not an economist,
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  Speaker 1: as somebody with an interest in economics, it's it's almost well,
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  Speaker 1: you can look at it just as a case study
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  Speaker 1: of two economic systems, one in which there is scarcity.
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  Speaker 1: That's I almost said, artificially created, but it's not. Because
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: it was very expensive and difficult to get music from
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  Speaker 1: the songwriter's head into my home. You had to manufacture
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: equipment and records and ship those records, and I had
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  Speaker 1: to go buy them blah blah. That was the only
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  Speaker 1: way was gonna happen, really, as opposed to now, when
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  Speaker 1: everything's streaming all the time. There is zero scarcity and
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  Speaker 1: there is zero gate keeping to get to the point
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  Speaker 1: that I notice you. And it's two very different economic
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  Speaker 1: systems for music, which is what we're talking about. Whether
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  Speaker 1: one's better than the other or not. It's just super
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  Speaker 1: interesting to look at the differences. I mean, because there
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  Speaker 1: are there is just how would you I was gonna say, realms,
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  Speaker 1: it's not rems. It's oceans of shitty music that you
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: have to sort through or formulaic or created by AI
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  Speaker 1: or whatever to get to stuff that really connects with
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  Speaker 1: your heart. But at the same time, you know, when
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: led Zeppelin, for instance, was playing their electriflied electrified blues
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  Speaker 1: glories to everybody, there were a hundred unbelievable bands that
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: you'd never heard playing great heavy rock just because the
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: record companies only needed a few of them.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't need another one that sounds like this.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, which one's better, which one's worse?
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  Speaker 3: I don't know, well, but it's always changed, and it
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  Speaker 3: just changes with the technology. Because what book I think,
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  Speaker 3: it's a book about Louis Armstrong early days of jazz,
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  Speaker 3: but recorded music right when it got the ability happened
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  Speaker 3: to where you could travel around the country pretty easily
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  Speaker 3: trains and that sort of stuff. Then there would be
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  Speaker 3: big music stars that would travel around and make lots
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  Speaker 3: of money because it was the only way you're ever
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  Speaker 3: going to hear this song is if you.
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  Speaker 1: Saw them live.
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  Speaker 3: I mean that was the only way. Then radio hit and.
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  Speaker 1: That really hurt them to where well, now.
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  Speaker 3: You can hear this song on the radio. I don't
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  Speaker 3: necessarily need to pay to hear it. Then there was
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  Speaker 3: the next step of quickly after that, some way to
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  Speaker 3: record it, and then you could buy it and listen
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  Speaker 3: to it, and then that changed everything. We're all just
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  Speaker 3: happenstance of technology changing. Nobody's like particular idea of what
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  Speaker 3: would be best for music.
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  Speaker 1: M Yeah, I'm sorry. Where'd you get that?
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  Speaker 3: It's from a Louis Armstrong biography?
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  Speaker 1: Oh, because that's such a great companion piece to a
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  Speaker 1: book I've touted several times David Byrne of Talking Heads
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  Speaker 1: book How Music Works, because that talks it's more specifically
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  Speaker 1: about the musical styles how those were affected by changes
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  Speaker 1: in society and technology as well, for instance, the Krooner era.
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  Speaker 1: This is my favorite example because it's super easy to
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  Speaker 1: understand but you're being Crosby's and Frank's Sinatra and all
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  Speaker 1: those guys. They never would have existed because prior to
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  Speaker 1: the advent of the microphone and effective pas, you had
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  Speaker 1: to sing so much louder you couldn't croon. They wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: hear you in the back row. And so that technology
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  Speaker 1: led directly to that style. And then you know, electric
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: guitar amplifier is becoming much better. Blah blah blah. You
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: can do some of the rest of the math yourself,
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  Speaker 1: but there are a bunch of different examples like that
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  Speaker 1: in the book Can. I don't know human beings need
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  Speaker 1: to create music. We've always done it. There is some
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  Speaker 1: nostalgia involved with the way it used to be and
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  Speaker 1: how great records sounded on big speakers and blah blah blah.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, it's about the human urge ultimately, and you
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  Speaker 1: know that'll always exist. To think. Ah, I like AI music, God,
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  Speaker 1: I was gonna say. On the other hand, you get
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  Speaker 1: AI music, which feels like somebody reaching a fist down
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  Speaker 1: my throat and trying to pull out my soul. I
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: don't appreciate it. Hurt, it sucks, It hurts, Michael, It
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: hurts bad. Now we've gone on long enough. Why don't
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: we do the I would do that for free thing
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  Speaker 1: tomorrow on the One More Thing podcast. Any final comments?
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: M dog Yeah. Music stores.
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  Speaker 2: I remember buying stuff for my sister for Christmas and
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: you'd go up to the clerk and say, all right,
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  Speaker 2: what's a good album, what is something that you'd like
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: or whatever? And they say, oh, well, this is an
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: awesome album here. Why don't you get this one?
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: And I would and she'd love it. You know, I'd
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: miss that, Yeah, you know I was speaking to me.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Is a friend of mine who really likes it sing
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  Speaker 1: and likes music. Is like sponsoring a karaoke night in
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: my community at like the Big Bar, but it's scheduled
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  Speaker 1: from six to eight pm. You can't do karaoke when
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the sun is shining. It's gotta be night. You gotta
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: be drunk.
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  Speaker 3: A woman the other day was talking about how she
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: is doing karaoke. She doesn't drink and she's doing karaoke
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: at some workman, and I thought, people that can do
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: karaoke completely sober, you're a different person.
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  Speaker 1: Or you just desperately want people to hear you sing.
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  Speaker 3: That's a different sort of person.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Man, I still think fondly of my greatest karaoke moment,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: and I wish somebody had taped it. Oh my God,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: partly so I could hear back and think, Wow, I
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: didn't sound nearly as good as I thought I did. Ah,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Karaoke Michael, what's your karaoke tuna choice? Buddy Angel of
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: the Morning, by choosing, could not have come up with
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: a funnier answer.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess that's it.