Latest / Caught on the Mike... / Rob Harvilla- Podcaster, Writer- 60 Songs That Explain The 90's

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Rob Harvilla- Podcaster, Writer- 60 Songs That Explain The 90's · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent, that's in their discretion is advised.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Never didn't want to die away from my ultimate data.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I have mistakenly stated that 90s music in particular would be really hard to feel without it for because it felt like it never went away.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Caught on the Mic.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, I have pondered this several times on the podcast before with past guests because it felt like, even though I spent my teen years and early 20s and the 90s, that 90s nostalgia was never coming full circle.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Until about two years ago, it just hit me all at once.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: I threw up a Facebook post talking about the new radicals you get what you give, and somebody responded to me with, Hey, have you ever heard this podcast called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I immediately went to that podcast episode, checked it out, and it was fantastic.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have been a listener ever since.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's also now an accompanying book with the same title, and I am pleased to welcome Rob Harvilla, the host and author of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing, man?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm great, man.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: The the You get what you give episode was an emergency episode.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because they played, they played Joe Biden's virtual inauguration.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Remember how weird that was?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: But like no one had heard from those dudes for years, like years, decades, or whatever.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we like you found out about that like 72 hours before it happens.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like we have to do an episode on this right now.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: So that was that was a rush job.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm relieved if that was the first one you heard and you were not immediately repelled by it.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, I have like this weird nostalgia relationship with that song myself.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like I'll never say that it's like a great song, but I'm not gonna say it's a bad song.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: The comparison that I kind of make with it, and I think you have to watch the video to understand it, is it does create a certain time stamp in the 90s that is unmistakable, even though it didn't sound like anything that came out in the 90s.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: I uh typically call it the everybody wants to rule the world of the 90s.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love that song so much.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: That would be a great honor to you get what you give.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: They're in a mall, right?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't the video in a mall?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: So there you go.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's why it's you you wouldn't have thought at the time of the mall as a nostalgic, you know, as a retrospective entity, you know, but but 20 years later, Stranger Things sets scenes in a mall, and you're like, the mall.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: I remember yeah, that's that's very funny.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have the retail pocalypse that's going on right now.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So malls are dying.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: So too bad.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: I miss a good food court, you know what I mean?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like the the the the like the chicken, the bourbon chicken samples, that was one of my favorite things about the mall.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Just walk back and forth in front of that lady four or five times until she recognizes you.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I know that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I know that exercise all too well.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's spending time in the Sam Goodies and the Oh yes, oh yeah.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Camblot.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So without any further ado, let me kind of pass it over to you.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And why don't you introduce yourself and let's talk a little bit about your origin story?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my origin story.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's see.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: That I've been doing the podcast since 2020, since late 2020.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's the first podcast, first thing like this I've ever done.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: I've been a working rock critic for 20 years.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up mostly in Ohio in a suburb of Cleveland.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: I started out writing for alt weeklies, alternative weeklies, which are still around but are far less prevalent now than they were, you know, in the year 2000.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Written for a bunch of websites, you know, magazines, stuff like that.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've been at The Ringer since it launched in 2016.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I've been a writer almost exclusively uh in all that time, in the first 20 years.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I started the podcast, you know, it was very much a pandemic type exercise, right?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm just barricaded in my house with my children and I need somebody to talk to, but no one will talk to me.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I just talked to myself, you know, and released the the tapes, basically.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I this has been by far, you know, my favorite thing I've ever done and the most feedback I've ever gotten.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of that I put down, you know, as you know well, the parasocial type nature of podcasting, right?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like just the connection that you forge with somebody that you've never met and you never will meet just because they have your voice in their ear.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just been a really cool thing, you know.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then the book, like I my episodes are scripted, right?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're monologues, I guess, you know, and I have a guest in interview at the end, but it is mostly me talking.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And for the book, you know, I I had like 600,000 words of raw material that I had to radically distill down to normal book size, you know, but it was a cool, it was a cool challenge, you know, and to take 120 songs from the 90s and see if I could get them interacting with each other, you know, in unexpected ways.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was it's cool to sort of jump from medium to medium and see what I can keep the same and see what I have to keep different.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully the book is interesting to people, you know, who don't even know the show at all.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like you need to know the show to get the book or vice versa.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So our options are pretty diversified these days with streaming.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: How did you land on the 90s as being your topic?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what my initial rationalization was, but in time, what I realized is because I'm like you, I grew up in the 90s, right?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was a teenager in the 90s, high school and college.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's I think that's the whole ball game right there.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I uh the one thing that I know for sure, and I've said is like the the music you loved when you were a teenager is the music you'll love most in your life.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's no offense to the music you're listening to now, and it's not that you don't love music anymore, but there's there's something very specific, you know, and you can't replicate that teenage experience, you know, of it soundtracking those years and the mind meld, you know, that I had with Billy Corgan or whoever it was.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Just I cannot and would not want to, frankly, replicate that with anybody else at this point in my life.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's what drew me to the 90s, even if that I I couldn't have articulated that at the time.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: An observation that I've had in particular is I talk a lot about the 90s being the Lollapalooza era because it was such a melting pot of so many different styles.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Young enough to be able to appreciate it, but old enough to somewhat remember it, the late 80s, it seemed like music was very much fragmented.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was like you, if you listen to heavy metal, you were listening to heavy metal.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you listen to hair metal, you listen to hair metal, hip hop, so on, so on.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: But when Lollapalooza launched in '91, it seems like Perry Farrell really kind of created that melting pot in the mainstream.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is that an observation that you've had as well?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And how did that, from your perception, affect all genres of music?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think that atomization did start happening in the 90s, and Lollapalooza is a great example, right?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like putting Susie in the Banshees and Ice Cube, you know, on the same bill.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was legitimately sort of a revolutionary idea, you know, rage against the machine is rap and rock.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not like they were the first, but they were so huge, you know, so popular, you know, so influential that it could feel like you know they invented, you know, the idea of cross genres in that way.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I it's interesting, the late 80s.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree with you.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of it is you had to buy records, right?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: You had to buy CDs, you know, and so you buy one CD for$20 and now you're stuck with this thing and you're gonna play it over and over again.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that encouraged that kind of tribalization, you know, and that you you do end up, you know, sticking to your lane and what you know and what you know you like, you know, whereas now, like, you know, streaming services, whatever you can put any song, you know, on Spotify, on YouTube, whatever, like you can dabble in everything to a degree that financially, logistically, you could not, you know, certainly in the late 80s, but really through the whole 90s.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like another interesting thing to me about the 90s is that they're basically pre-internet.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the internet's around, you know, Napster appears late in the decade, but it's not until the early 2000s when Napster destroys, you know, the music industry.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that it does appeal to me and fascinate me in retrospect, the idea that, like, you know, you're a person with 10 CDs, you know, that you just listen to over and over again.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I do think that lends itself to that sort of, you know, I know that I like hip hop, I know that I like hair metal, you know, I don't want to spend$20 to find out that I don't like something else.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so it it does, it does lead you to silo yourself off a little bit more than people are now.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting you brought up Napster.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Are you in the camp that firmly believes that file sharing and Napster was kind of the domino that caused the industry to fall down or the industry that we knew to fall down?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I it's the in-sync record, right?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's I think it's the 2000 in-sync record sells like it's that that's the record to this day, I think.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Still for most albums, you know, sold in a week.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember what it is offhand, but like that's the peak of the music industry.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's the peak of the CD era, right?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then post-NAPster it falls off a cliff.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess there's some you know other things happening, but I I do think that Napster pretty explicitly, the idea that music could be free, you know, that you could type you know something into a bus, and it's it's hilarious in retrospect how arduous it was, you know, especially if you're on dial-up or whatever.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just remember watching those bars fill up, you know, to get this radio head song or whatever.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's it's funny how inconvenient it was in retrospect, but how rad and and revolutionary it felt at the time.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I you can say that there's other things happening, but I I do think, you know, just explicitly, undeniably, you know, music suddenly being free on the internet had a cataclysmic effect, you know, on you know, the record store in the mall that very quickly no longer existed.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: A fair counterbalance to that one that I feel you brought up in one of your episodes was 1998.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: That was the year of the one-hit wonder where there was something from all over the place, tons and tons and tons of one-hit wonders.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do you ever consider that maybe there was a lot of bloated signings by the big record labels from the mid-90s on that also contributed to that?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because you look at the second half of the 90s, man, there's a shit ton of one-hit wonders.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: There are, and there are always one-hit wonders, and I do think that's another place where being a teenager makes you more attuned, more passionate about your particular era of one-hit wonders, but no question, you know, 97, 98 is when you get like how bizarre, like tub thumping, you know, I steal my sunshine, I think, was 99.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think you get what you give was was in that frame as well.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: There is a quality that those songs have.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're absolutely right that post-nirvana, right?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's this gold rush where like any band gets signed, you know, and we burned through those for the first half of the 90s.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 1994, partly, you know, the passing of Kirk Cobain, partly just the sort of the natural waning of grunge, you know, of alternative rock, of a law of Palooza culture, as you said, you know, there's there's a hangover a little bit.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I do, you know, bloated is the way to put it, you know, like the other thing, Napster felt like poetic justice, right?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for a music industry that had made you spend$20 because you wanted to hear, you know, standing outside a phone book with money in my phone booth with money in my hands by primitive radio gods, right?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like I haven't heard that whole record.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's great, but like just not having not being able to buy just that song, you know, it's we we were headed toward this moment where the music industry was gonna pay for that uh eventually.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's that there is, I've talked a lot about that, about just the weirdest, it felt extra weird.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, the late 90s, right in that vacuum between right before like boy bands took over, the Britney Spears of it all took over in Ernest, right before New Metal took over, as far as as rock was concerned.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: There is something about that time period that was just singularly you know bizarre.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you brought both of those up as well, because it felt like the boy band era and the new metal era were an overcorrection of that because they did the same exact thing.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you were in a decent, passable new metal band, you got a record deal, you know?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of crazy.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, what was the genesis of your music fandom?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, who turned you onto music and got you going?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: It would have to be my parents, you know, like my parents' record collection I've talked about a lot.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the Cars was the first band I ever loved.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: That first Cars record with like just what I needed on it and stuff.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I just I would listen to that obsessively is like a two-year-old, three-year-old, four-year-old, you know, and this is vinyl era, right?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is early mid 80s, you know, and so that's still happening.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the physical sort of quality of being able to like hold the album and like look at the liner notes and how scary these people looked.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like Steely Dan, man, there was there's a Steely Dan record where it's a photo of them on the back, and it's not just the two dudes, it's like the whole band that made this record, and they look terrifying, right?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they look like they're gonna beat you up.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I don't want to deal with it, but it's I'm fascinated by them at the same time, right?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I got into music that way in the vinyl era, in the MTV era.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: It cannot be overstated, you know, the importance of MTV to me and how, you know, with apologies to my parents, MTV raised me.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: It almost feels feels like, you know, and then in in high school or even in junior high, you know, I start reading Rolling Stone, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I decide like I want to be a ruck, I want to write for Rolling Stone, you know, that's all I wanted to go to college to do.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's all I ever wanted to do professionally, you know, and so it's it's always been that way, but I would I would have to take it all the way back to my parents' record collection and like driving around with my mom listening to the radio, like those are the formative foundational moments.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: In the no doubt episode of your podcast, you mentioned a brief period of time where you played bass in a ska band.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So were you a musician your whole life, or did you just pick up bass to play later on in college?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: I talk about this way too much, man, relative to like the impact that we had at the time.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I just it this has made a big impression on me.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: I had, let's see here, I took piano lessons in as a kid, right?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I played a little piano in high school.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like I would accompany, I accompanied the choir once, you know, that I was in, and that was very cool, but like nothing serious, not recitals, you know, nothing, nothing real.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but late late in high school, maybe even the summer between high school and college, like my buddy needed a bass player, and I picked up a bass for the first.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that was like a rock band, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like a pop rock, pearl jam, etc.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: type situation.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: But no, the ska band was my freshman year of college, and it was right in that moment.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And again, this too is 96 and then 97.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like that the ska moment, the mighty, mighty Bostones of it all is part of like the randomness.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like the Boston's aren't, you know, the Boston's have a huge successful career, but like the impression that I get sort of stands is a one-hit, you know, in the pop world, and and that's in that time frame as well.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: But so that technically the ska band I was in was the second band I'd ever played bass in, but I'd only been playing for a year or so.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I certainly wasn't very good at it, but it was it's it's so funny that that did the dudes I were playing with had been in ska bands before, and I think were way more about that life.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like they didn't just pick this up because ska got popular on MTV, right?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like they were onto it beforehand, but not me, man.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was I was I was just on the bandwagon and I was enjoying the hell out of it.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you too played in a ska band, and that is this is delightful to hear.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, because it it's so funny because the band I was in, we went from like playing Bush and Smashing Pumpkins covers to being a ska band almost overnight, and it really was it almost was really disingenuous as far as honoring the craft, but the craft, the craft of ska.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Don't take it so hard.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, that's hilarious.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Post-pandemic era, you know, a lot of people are focusing on their mental health, and I've noticed personally, maybe I'm alone in this, that people's relationship with nostalgia has really changed.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's just the age that we're coming into right now.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel that nostalgia at large, especially since you're kind of retelling stories about the 90s, is a healthy thing or no?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's a really interesting question.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the show itself, the podcast itself is very much a pandemic, a product of the pandemic.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: It started in late 2000, late to late 2020, right?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it, you know, the first Christmas, the first fall of the of the pandemic.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're you know, we're barricaded in my house.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: My wife is pregnant.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: We got two boys already.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're not going out at all.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: This seems like a good time, you know, just to remember some jams from my youth, you know, when things were better.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And people, it's so disingenuous to talk about the 90s as like a halcyon era, you know, of peace and prosperity, because that's not true in retrospect.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's way oversimplifying it, you know, for a lot of people, for most people.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that just, you know, the 90s has always felt, even if it's untrue, felt like sort of apolitical or less political, or certainly less fraught day-to-day moment to moment, you know, than the existence we're in now, you know, and partly that's that's Twitter, right?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's the internet, you know, having access to everyone's thoughts and anxieties and like furies all day does not help matters.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I do, especially within the pandemic and beyond the pandemic, you know, it's we're still, you know, not locked down, but very tentative about that stuff.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it doesn't feel over for us.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do still sort of feel like there's this oasis, you know, of calm that I get from the 90s, you know, that's fraudulent.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I know it's fraudulent, but I can't help myself.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that's interesting.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm sure, you know, an excess of nostalgia is a bad thing, of course.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, anything is, but just, you know, again, like oversimplifying the 90s to back when everything was perfect and everyone was happy is just absolute bullshit.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you can take that too far so fast, but I do think that there is value in a certain amount, you know, of trying to revel in that stuff, you know, and especially in you know, the good memories of of your teenage years or whatever, but also trying to re you know, contextualize it, you know.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I never want to be on the show like the 2020 guy scolding, you know, the 90s people, like a madman type thing where it's like, look how much better we have it.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: But like you read like the press, you read Fiona Apple's press or Tori Amos's press or Sinead O'Connor's, and just the way that people used to talk, you know, about these women in particular, and you just sort of cringe, you know.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I do think that to some extent, to a modest extent, you can use that, you know, to find better ways of of Listening to this music and treating these people in the present, you know, from a mental health perspective, from any perspective, you know.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I, you know, this show is is built on is fueled by nostalgia, you know, and there's no getting around that.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it is the case for me of just of just figuring out how much of it is too much because too much of it is bad, you know, and so we're going for just enough.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I get that all too well.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: I accidentally on purpose might have traded a little bit too much nostalgia on my own show because I started my show at the same time.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was fall of 2020, and I'm like, man, I need something to do, I need something to do creatively.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like exactly I played in the I was in the music business for 15 years.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why not like exercise all the connections that I had made in different areas?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I'm gonna lean on nostalgia.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna kind of trip people's memories of a time where they felt better, but I've always made it a I've always made it a point to avoid politics, avoid religion, avoid anything that's divisive, but maintaining a certain sense of integrity and sincerity in the stories that I tell.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I I totally agree with you.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a delicate balance, isn't it?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah, yeah.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and it's it's this is a silly show at the heart of it, right?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I'm not I'm the same way with you, you know.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: I just I don't want to talk politics to religion, you know, or talk about the pandemic at all.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right the pandemic has obviously affected, you know, is sort of a catalyst of this show in the first place.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's come up in passing a couple of times, but like I don't want the real world to intrude, you know, and I just I guess it's a case of understanding, you know, that I can keep out the real world, but that the real world still exists, you know, and it's still the world we're living in, you know, and like we can spend, you know, a half hour, 45 minutes or whatever reminiscing about you get what you give, you know, as long as we get back to the real world eventually.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: So of all the episodes that you've done, do you have a personal favorite?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say the Tom Petty episode that I did is one of the first.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was on It's Good to Be King off the Wildflowers record.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the first one of the first ones I did where I talked a little more personally, like about my family, like about my kids.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't want to do that too much for a variety of reasons, but like I I felt like that one turned out all right in that sense.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I they might be giants is one of my favorite groups of all time, you know.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I I had gone back and forth on whether it would be too indulgent to do a whole episode on them, but for the 100th episode of this show, it's like ah, you know, I deserve this, you know.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was that was really gratifying to do, you know, like I had avoided the Macarena episode forever, right?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, because I don't want the Macarena stuck in my head for two weeks, and I did it, and the Macarena got stuck in my head for two weeks.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: But like I enjoyed all that way more than I thought I would, you know.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: I that was a way cooler journey, you know, and and sort of learning just a little bit about these dudes, you know, and where they came from, and like how random and unexpected, you know, and out of their control all of that was.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that was a really cool story, and you know, I had a lot more fun doing that than I imagined that I would have.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: There was an episode you did recently, well, this past fall, that I don't know how you got there, but it was amazing.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Where you were covering uh Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden and you tied it into Smashmouth, and I was like, How did he get from this to this?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it was so well done and so poignant.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely loved that episode.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was uh doing something with my day job, and my buddy who also listens to your show, he goes, You gotta listen to this one right away.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I'm I'm not the biggest Soundgarden fan.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, listen to this episode now.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like working air buds in, and I'm like, holy crap, that's anything.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: So kudos to you here.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I that was one of the first ones back.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's I had like a couple months to think about that one, you know, which is dangerous sometimes, but like maybe it worked a little better in that case.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I it's that one ended up being, you know, we lost Chris Cornell like a couple years ago.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: The guy from Smashmouth had just died like a month or two ago, you know, and who was the other one?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: No rain, right?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like blind melon.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like people had been telling, people had been asking me to do or to talk about blind melon, no rain for a long time.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I that episode got heavier than I had anticipated, but it ended up being about like, you know, people, you know, rock stars, songs you love, even if they become memes, you know, a little bit in the smashmouth case, but then you know, like the singer dies, you know, and it it changes the way you hear the song, you know, and maybe you give a little more grace, you know, to the to Steve Harwell, to the Smashmouth guy than you did before when he was just like, you know, the Shrek of it all, you know, I think can turn can turn that song into literally a cartoon.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not to say that like you know, All-Star is like a sad, mournful song now.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, not at all.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's a great song, and it's a silly, you know, ridiculous song, but it just it's a gives a little more depth and a little more humanity to it.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really cool to try, you know, and connect those dots like that.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really it's uh thank you very much.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's really cool to hear, you know, if that worked out okay.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, to a similar extent.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I just recently came back around to Counting Crows because of the bear.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I had written off the counting crows because of Shrek.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's right.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Shrek, man.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Shrek, Shrek will get you.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Shrek giveth and Shrek taketh away.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any band from the 90s that you may have written off in the past you've come back around to now and you appreciate more now?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I uh I was worried when I started this that I'd go back to the music I loved and not love it anymore.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that certainly hasn't happened.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I'm trying to think of things that I actively disliked.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think there's, you know, but like something like Jane's addiction, right?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think I was a little too young, you know, to totally get Jane's addiction.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like a little too hard for me, you know, as a weenie little 12-year-old or whatever.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but like I have a greater appreciation, you know, for them and how foundational they were, you know, the Lallipluza of it all, like you said.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, that that was really cool.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's cool to go back to bands, you know, where I know this song so well just because I heard it on the radio eight billion times, but I never really explored the band beyond that song.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's true to Smashmouth or something like that to an extent.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's true to Blind Melon, certainly.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's again, you either buy the CD or you don't.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't buy the CD, you don't know.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: The Counting Crows were like that for a while.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like I knew, you know, the the same five songs that everybody knows, but I didn't get into those records until later, you know.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's been gratifying to go back and do all that, you know, and have a lot of familiarity, you know, with some of these songs, but to not really know the others at all and to to learn so much, you know, and to gain a deeper appreciation.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that was hopefully that's what I was hoping would happen, and that is what happened.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got a few questions left.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: First one being, what's next for Rob?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: We gotta figure this out, dude.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, as I I have started, I believe this morning I have started writing the 114th script.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we are gonna stop at 120.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: I considered going on again just to be crazy obnoxious, but like we gotta stop sometime.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: It would be ideal, I think, to stop doing the 90s.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: I we're gonna do another show.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: I am for sure gonna do another podcast.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not quite sure what that is.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was just telling somebody, like, I'm torn between like the same sort of format, like X songs that explain X, or doing something completely different.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I I don't think I want to lose the storytelling aspect, you know, the monologuing and the freewheeling, the digressions of it all.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's all really important to me.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like I it has to be music, just because it has to be music.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I'm not quite sure what we're gonna do next.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: We have a few ideas, you know, that I like, you know, I but we're gonna do something, you know.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna take a couple months here and lie on the floor when this is all over, but I we're we're gonna go on and we're gonna find something else to do, and hopefully a way to apply, you know, a lot of this format, you know, and and and this approach, you know, to something else.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll we'll figure it out soon.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to it, man.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: My final question, and this is the question that I ask of all of my guests that do the show.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: I ask UFC fighters all the way to musicians themselves, with everything that we've dealt with in recent years.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's your advice for making the world a better place tomorrow than what it is today?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's a very good question.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very profound question.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's a tweet I saw recently that went viral with something like, just keep in mind that everyone you're encountering is like completely insane.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I just I and I think that applies, you know, to this moment, to the last five, ten years in particular, but I think it always has.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's especially true, you know, on the internet, on Twitter, you know, for all we talk about Twitter as a wasteland, and it is, but like just trying to remember that like every person is an actual person, you know, and like that the other cliche, not like just everyone's fighting a battle you know nothing about, like that kind of thing.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like just trying to remember, even if this person is being an asshole and maybe is an asshole, you know, and isn't worth your empathy or your time, which you hopefully figure out very quickly.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like everyone is struggling, you know, with something, you know, very likely with a version of the thing that you're personally struggling with, you know.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that was the high fluent, like just take a walk is is was the first impulse that I had, because that's what I do, right?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like again, like, you know, we're not locked down type, but we're still in a COVID mindset, you know, we still have reasons to be.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, just nothing clears my head or makes me feel better, you know, than just walking around for an hour, you know, listening to an album.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I have no doubt that that makes me, you know, a more pleasant person who at least isn't making the world worse for a little while.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let everybody know where they can find you online and your podcast.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, yes.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, the show again is 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, and we're in the final run here.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're in the final seven or eight episodes.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: The book is also called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on Twitter, H A R V I L L A.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on Instagram, you know, just the just the usual type places.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: But again, like, you know, just the emails, the DMs, the feedback that I received is so cool, you know, and I try and respond to everything and just that conversation, you know, is just meant the world to me.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's, you know, that's done wonders for my mental health far and beyond even, you know, walking.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Likewise, my friend, Rob Harbilla, the world is a much better place with you and it.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for doing the show, man.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's very kind.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is awesome.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: How great was that.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: 60 songs that explain the 90s can be found on your favorite podcasting platforms.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can also purchase the book online.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know I have one coming my way.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited to get it.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much to Rob Harvilla for doing the podcast today.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you give him a follow on all social media platforms.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you're following Caught on the mic on all social media platforms or visit me at www.cotonthemic.com.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: For all guest inquiries, email cotonhe, M-I-K-E, at gmail.com.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: As we start this new year of 2024, I'm really excited for things that are coming up with Cot on the Mic.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: So stay tuned.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: More to come.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: We have an abundance of nostalgia on the way.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: But much, much more.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Caught on the Mic with Michael Clark.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Michael Clark.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you.