Latest / age / Ep. 13: Nostalgia, Music & The Moments We're Chasing

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Ep. 13: Nostalgia, Music & The Moments We're Chasing · age

• 0:02
  All right, Reggie, what was your favorite part of this episode? My favorite part was appreciating that I was sitting amongst other musicians and I felt heard. Well, I want to hear about Tim's Bieber fever. Oh my gosh. One, what was your favorite part of the episode? It was actually off camera when I opened up this thing we threw on the ground and actually found out that it was a prompt, we thought it was a piece of trash, but it was actually man versus gorilla.
• 0:32
  Alyssa, what was your favorite part? I think my favorite part was hearing everyone's memories from years past. It was fun. Love that. What was your favorite part, Tim? My favorite moment was just remembering my big CD case. CDs! I mean, there's just so many good memories in this episode. That was my favorite part. Blacker signs in.
• 1:04
  13.
• 1:07
  Welcome to Age. This is a podcast where we talk about something random for a long time. And today, we have two guests that have joined us last minute, and we're so freaking thrilled to have them on the show. So thrilled. Juan, musician. Hi. Actually, introduce your own name. Juan Holiday. My wife told me that if each person introduces themselves, we get a sense of their voice if you're not watching. Oh, I like that. This is Juan. Juan Holiday. Welcome. I'm Reggie Tidwell. You all know me. I'm Alyssa Downey.
• 1:37
  Melissa Downey and Juan are our new guests today, and it is feeling good. So we're going to pick the theme out of the trash can because Juan's got to get out of here as soon as we're done. He's got to skirt on out of here. Skirt on out of here. We're not going to dilly-dally with our chatting like we normally do. Hey, is there actually trash in here?
• 2:00
  unless that was a topic then i just threw it away yeah my gosh no i think all the topics are in a white paper okay oh man here it goes my heart's beating my heart's beating oh nostalgia oh that's easy oh i love nostalgia that's a fun one actually nostalgia i like it this is good
• 2:25
  First thing I go, yeah, what do you think? Yeah, the way we kind of talk about these subjects, it's just like an immediate response. When you hear nostalgia, what do you think about? I said easy, easy, easy. It's like I think the nostalgia is, it's like what everyone wants. I mean, it's what everyone wants right now, I think, or at least I get that sense that like we are nostalgic for past. It's got a red light on.
• 2:54
  We are nostalgic for past times that were not as stressful in general. You know what I mean? Like I watched The Matrix last night. Someone just told me they didn't see The Matrix. It's so super weird to not have seen The Matrix. That there are people that haven't seen The Matrix. But it is more and more common. Years ago. I know. So long ago. But one of the things about The Matrix is that The Matrix is
• 3:23
  the computers, the robots, they created a fake world for humans that loops basically like the late 90s, 1999, over and over and over again. That's a spoiler alert. I'm just kidding. That is. Yeah. Well, too late. Yeah. Too late. But if you haven't watched it by now. Will's going to put spoiler alert up on it. I'll give you that one. Yeah. Rest. I mean, if you haven't watched The Matrix by now, I mean, it's been spoiled over and over again. Yeah. It's kind of been a theme in our culture. Yeah.
• 3:48
  But yeah, I think the late 90s was like in the matrix that's considered the peak of human. And I think it's the peak, the peak of human existence as well, at least like liberal Western democracy, like because it's like the moment before 9-11. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got the end of Bill Clinton right before George Bush. Yep. It was the peak of like what we can. I think it's the peak of Western liberal democracies. We peaked in high school.
• 4:13
  Yeah. I mean, we were in high school and there was a very open, imaginative possibilities. It just felt. Yeah. The ozone layer was healing. Yeah. Yeah. In the 80s, it was like the ozone layer. And then the 90s was like, oh, it's healing. We're fixing it. Like through regulations and stuff. Like it's working. The system's working, you know. Recycling, like, you know. I just told my wife, I was like, the 90s were such a happy time.
• 4:38
  Because we didn't know anything was wrong. That's right. You know, like, I don't know if it was happy in the sense of, like, everyone was happy, but there was just, like, this, like, grunge was ruining, like, hair metal, ruining in a good way. Satisfying. Music was coming alive. Like, bands were coming out of the woodwork. And culture was just... Garage bands and stuff. Yeah, garage bands. It's funny you say music because when I think of nostalgia, I think of music. I think music is always my...
• 5:05
  direct tie to nostalgia. I can listen to a song from a certain amount of certain time in my life, something I listened to in high school, something I listened to in college, and it takes me right back there. And I feel that nostalgia. I'm like, wow, this was a whole epic era.
• 5:23
  Right. And it's funny because all of us on here are kind of musicians. Alyssa has been a phenomenal designer for a lot of music bands back. It's how she kind of started her career working for, which label was it? Virgin? Atlantic. Atlantic. I was an intern, though.
• 5:40
  Yeah, still. Just an intern at Atlanta. Still, being an intern at Atlanta. Still really cool. That's really freaking cool. And Juan's musician. Tim used to be the front man, as you guys probably already know, for Enemy Lovers. I survived the boy band movement. Enemy Lovers, go look it up. Yeah, somebody, one of our friends, Victor Davidas, said. You look like the survivor of a boy band. Yeah. I was like, is that a compliment or is that a cut down? I don't know. I think it was a complice. Yeah.
• 6:11
  What about you, Alyssa? What do you think of? Well, that's very relatable what you're saying about music. I, my mind just goes to youth, like high school through college. I feel like I have a lot of nostalgia for those years, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to go back to them. Oh, gosh. Yeah, same. But there's like... I don't know. Wouldn't you go back to knowing what you know? I would go back. I would be so much cooler. Even not. I do think about that. But the point of being a teenager is, well, not the point of being a teenager, but you're kind of an idiot.
• 6:39
  Yeah. Like, I don't think I could ever have the same, like, depth of wisdom. You're just like, YOLO. Yeah. You'd actually be a terrible teenager going back. No. It probably would be really annoying compared to all the other teenagers. I would be more annoying if I went back, if I had any remembrance of, because I would be more YOLO. Because I was more like. Oh, yeah.
• 6:59
  I was more like, oh, I'm setting myself up the rest of my life. I better not mess this up. God's watching, you know. So I wasn't like YOLO. I was like, I'm not going to sleep with you. Better behave. Because that would be a bad idea. Yeah. I definitely. Then you'd be like, I'm young and I'm living. Yes, the answer is yes, girl. Yeah. Anyways. I would love to go back. I would go back.
• 7:19
  Oh, well, yeah. If I could, like, retain all the same knowledge. Yeah. Or at least, like, some of it. Not all of it. Yeah. Do you feel like that time was so intense or difficult that you feel like that you're glad you're through it?
• 7:33
  Yes and no. I think like when I think about the nostalgia factor, I just think about, well, kind of what you were saying, like, 90s, like we didn't have access to the media, like, it was kind of like this blissful ignorance. Like, we didn't know what was going on at every second of the day in every place in the world. And there's something very...
• 7:51
  peaceful about that. And also not having the same burden of responsibility. Like I would never want to be a kid again. Like being an adult is great, but also there's something nice about not having to worry about paying taxes. Oh, I know, right? Or how you're gonna pay your bills or any of it. You just like. It's like in the same way that we look at our cats and we're like, what a life, wouldn't that be nice? Like that's how it is as a kid. Basking in the sun spot all day, getting fed. No clothes on, it's a little collar. Yeah, I know, right?
• 8:20
  You know what's funny? I saw a meme the other day, and it was, it said something to the effect of my, I'm not
• 8:31
  My subjects feed me and... This is a cat, right? It was a cat. But the way it was framed is though you actually didn't know there was a cat and just read like, yeah, my subjects bring me food, do this. And, you know, sometimes I, you know, will reward them with a smile or whatever. And then on the next slide, it was like, it was a cat. Yeah. It's like, yeah, that's pretty much the life of a cat.
• 8:56
  I have this interesting, I think nostalgia is a surprise always. You don't know when it's going to happen. You'll just be smelling, you'll smell something in the air.
• 9:07
  I know, scents. Scents are things that bring back. You'll hear something, and all of a sudden it's just something floods back. And I find it invigorating, nostalgia. It makes you feel alive. Right. Because it takes you back to an awareness that you've been around long enough to have a nostalgic moment. Right.
• 9:27
  But it's not deja vu. No, not at all. But like I always as a musician, I'm always like music is one of the most powerful things to bring people together. But what's more powerful than music is food and food is basically smell. Right. Like taste and smell is a big part of it. And smell, I think, is. Yeah.
• 9:50
  potentially one of the most like memory activating experiences, the smell of something like a perfume or like, yeah. Oh yeah. When I smell CK1, that takes me right back to high school. Oh heck yeah it does. Yeah, same. I don't smell it though. Where are you smelling CK1? I never smell it. You know, if you go to Belk, I always stop by and smell it so I can go back.
• 10:11
  If you're near a Belk, I know they've closed down somewhat. I actually had a food nostalgia recently. So I haven't done fast food in like maybe years. It's been a long time. Wait, hold on. When's the last time you did fast food? Probably like 15 or 20 years. You ate like two weeks ago. Yeah.
• 10:31
  I don't really eat it either, but I probably have had a Frosty in the last couple months. Okay, I just had to. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. So I used to... Jack in a box. You know what? It's Chick-fil-A. It's Chick-fil-A's fast food. Yes. Oh, yeah. Chick-fil-A is fast food. All right. It's a couple weeks ago. I have kids. Come clean. Come on. Yeah. I don't know why I put Chick-fil-A out of the fast food category. It is fast food. It's probably the fastest. It's probably the fastest. It's probably the fastest. It's probably the best. It's probably the best. It's probably the best. It's probably the
• 10:56
  So Jack in a Box used to have these tacos. There were these three tacos. There was like meat and beans and it was like greasy and flat. Sounds good. It was so good. I used to love those. Recently, I bought these little tacos from Trader Joe's and they are the same exact vibe. They have poblano peppers and...
• 11:22
  Maybe that's it. Maybe some cheese or beans or something. But they're the same greasy. You put them in an air fryer, you heat them up. And I took a bite and I was like, damn, it took me right back to 30-some years ago when I was doing those Jack in the Box tacos. It's funny you bring up fast food because my son was talking to me about Taco Bell for some reason. And I was like...
• 11:42
  Oh, I used to love Taco Bell, you know, like the little, the Cholito and the little, what's someone that was like tiny little Mexican pizzas. Mexican pizza. Those are so good. And so he was like, oh yeah, they were showing this commercial, this one that's got steak and cheese and it's all. And I was like, I want you to go to Taco Bell and try that.
• 12:01
  go see and then I want you to do a side by side and maybe like do a video of it this is what we're being shown and this is what I'm what I've just received and it just hit me I was this it reminds me of voting you know yeah right and and it's and I was like I'm telling him this and I was like why are we okay with this
• 12:19
  Yeah, being... Being disduty. Lie to. Yeah, being lie to. Straight up, lie to. The bait and switch. It's real. If you were just to put this picture of fake food, I've seen food photography, it's literally just fake food, in there, in the frame. They use glue, they use non-food things. It's toxic. We've created a culture of dishonesty. I was thinking about it, because I'm a gamer, I love phone games, and a lot of times you'll be playing a game and they'll show this ad for some game and you're like,
• 12:49
  Wow, that looks amazing. And you go and you download the game, and it's nothing like the video. You've got to do some other quest to get to the ad game. Or it's not even there. Or it's not even there at all. Or it's not even there. There's some that's completely different. There are some, like...
• 13:04
  Oh, gosh, I forget the name of it. Like King's Quest or something. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know what they actually did? They finally came out with a game that matches their ads, probably because they got so much heat and pushback because all the reviews were like, this is nothing like the ad. And so now they have a completely different game by the same company that is all those where he's like trying, do you have to do the match three to save him from some dragon? Yeah, oh, I love that. They now have that now.
• 13:31
  I would challenge every fast food restaurant to do this side-by-side test to push themselves to the limits of whether or not they're lying to their public. And once we get that refined, then we should do that for politics. Oh, man. Don't get me started. That is a deep well. Have you seen the KFC did a rebrand?
• 13:49
  You see this? Like it's this big, cool letters, and they're focusing on the little bucket that they have, this classic thing. And so I'm driving by KFC this morning to get here, and I thought about the rebrand, and I was like, it's similar to the Taco Bell thing. I was like, why don't, why, they just did a rebrand KFC. I mean, all the restaurants look different. They had this real stripped back to the colonel's face. They took Kentucky Fried Chicken out of the name. They can't mention chicken. Right, because of certain issues. But wait, is that real? Because I was just thinking about what the name is.
• 14:18
  I don't know. I thought it was an urban legend. They said they were like manufacturing them to not have beaks and feathers so they'd be easier. Like mutants. We'll leave that to the internet to discuss. I'm not going to go out to say that that's what's going on, but I heard it was an urban legend. I guess the point, what I felt there was that what if a fast food restaurant did a rebrand and changed nothing about their look and feel and rebranded what they were? Yeah.
• 14:44
  Like a values-led rebrand. Domino's, I think, did this one time. Remember when they started doing... They really featured the quality of their pizzas as being... They either said, your money back, or they said, we're just making quick pizzas. Something they did really... It's like this game. It resonated with the reality of the experience. Like the fastest pizza you'll get. They're like, we need to actually match the experience with what we're putting out. Yeah, and it really resonated with the audience. So I wondered if...
• 15:12
  When are we done with just being lied to? Yeah. Like, were they always lying to us? Like, did Taco Bell always look? Because I remember loving it. I have the nostalgia of what Taco Bell tasted like. I think objectively, I think objectively, food in the 80s and 90s, even fast food was better. Yeah. It was definitely better. Because I mean, they have had whatever, 20, 30, coming up on 40 years to like squeeze more money out of less quality, you know, because that's the gap is where you make your profit.
• 15:41
  When you're in a capitalistic world, then they're obviously gonna try to cut as many corners as they can. And they'll approach it scientifically to where it's like, eventually you're just eating a piece of cardboard that tastes good. Right. For like one second as it goes in your mouth, and then it's over and you gotta get another one. You know like french fries? You have about 20 seconds to eat french fries. And then you can tell your kid, it used to be like really good. Like McDonald's. It used to be really, really good. I just thought that was me. Like, would we just have bad taste back then? But I think it was better.
• 16:09
  I think there is some, I mean, I don't know, but my personal theory is that they probably have changed in order to like make the food faster and cheaper, but I also think like as a kid, like going back to the kid nostalgia thing, like our perception of simple things is like, this is the best thing ever. And then when you're older and you're like, wow, remember that thing from our youth? And then you try it and you're like, this is awful.
• 16:35
  I'm sure even toys, too. We go back and look at toys that we play with. We're like, man, this is the best toy ever. And you're like, it's smaller. It's smaller than you remember it. Yeah, that's true. That's true. We were healthier as a little kid. You're like, oh, this is delicious. Now it's like, well, I can feel this is not that...
• 16:52
  Like a box of cropped, mac and cheese as a kid was like the best thing. You should bounce back like that. I put away a lot of Happy Meals when I was a kid, so I'm glad it was hopefully maybe healthier. Hopefully. Maybe. I don't have any evidence behind that. Maybe you brought up the ignorance of being young. Yeah, there is definitely a bliss that we don't realize that things are better than this. And kids don't have a developed palate. You don't really...
• 17:19
  I feel like kids don't usually like very flavorful. Either way, you can say a refined palate or a destroyed palate. It's like, alcohol tastes good. It's like, no, it doesn't. IPA tasted good. No, it doesn't really taste good. You just compromise your way to be like, this is good because it keeps me awake. You give kid any kid black coffee and they're going to tell you it tastes terrible. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think...
• 17:47
  I think so I never acquired a taste for beer. And I think it was simply because of that. I tasted it the first time. I was like, God, this is horrible. Why is everybody drinking this? What's the big deal? Like, you just have to acquire a taste for it. I was like, why? Yeah, exactly. Why do I want to do that? You have to be worn down. Yeah. And so I would get like a, you know, a cooler. Remember they had those wine coolers? Yeah. That was like my beverage of choice. But you still like your sweet drinks. I do. I love some frou-frou drinks, love some ciders. But yeah, beer I never acquired a taste for. Same, me neither. Yeah.
• 18:16
  What about Kool-Aid? Did you ever get into Kool-Aid? Dude, I put back some Kool-Aid, but then I grew out of it. I was like, this is so much sugar. I think what happened was I saw an aunt or somebody make it one day, and I saw them dump like two things of sugar in it. I was like, damn. Maybe this is why we don't like fast food, because we see how things are made. Yeah, yeah. And then we see how they can't possibly make them good in that situation.
• 18:46
  Not to mention we've seen all the backstage videos about what happens in the back of a fast food restaurant. Yeah, what was that? Oh yeah. What was the one with the guy that ate McDonald's for like 40 days or something? That guy? Oh, Supersize Me. Supersize Me. And then there was also that- Can't unsee that. No. No, and then what, like the last time, not the last, I think the last time I went to Burger King,
• 19:08
  Like, I remember I pulled up, I ordered a Whopper, and the kid that handed it to me, he looked like maybe 15 or something, or 16. He didn't look me in the eyes. He was looking off. Yeah.
• 19:20
  He's like, he was like, it was like he was handing me drugs or something. He was looking off in the distance and he handed it to me. Guess what I did with that Whopper? I drove right to a trash can. I was like, I, the vibes is way off. If you can't look at me with good conscience and hand me this, then I am right. I just feel like you did something to this burger. I don't.
• 19:42
  So apparently looking for your mom out in the parking lot, like making sure she's not watching. So apparently fast food restaurants are a part of our nostalgia. Yes. Do you think they're a dying trend? Because I was just thinking about like Arby's. Like these things just feel old. Yes, Arby's still a thing. Do you think people still go to these places? I saw an ad that said if you've eaten Arby's in the past, whatever, you know, you might be owed money like.
• 20:08
  That's not a good sign. Yeah. But you just think of the trend of fast food. Like, is it dying or are we just in a place? I think Asheville is a foodie standard. It's definitely a foodie town. Foodie town. I feel like people, I mean, people are always going to be on the run. And they need to be able to grab quick things. And I think fast food's always going to have its place for that. Yeah, like Five Guys, Chick-fil-A. These are like the Five Guys is way better, though. I just don't think it's going to be most people's first food.
• 20:37
  option. You know, you don't wake up and go, God, I want to get a Big Mac and a quarter, you know, I don't think. I bet people do wake up with that feeling. Maybe they do. Maybe they do. Isn't that what it's made? I don't want to be a hater for sure. It's made to give you that feeling. Yeah. I would be curious. I mean, I don't have kids. Maybe you have insights into this or all of you. What does like what is like the high school and college generation? Yeah.
• 21:04
  Are they into it or are they, what, how is the health trend like getting into the. My 22 year old has never had fast food. Really? Yeah. Never. I love that. My kids have never had fast food.
• 21:16
  I used to have it because... Well, that's because you don't as a parent. Also, but... But would she tell you if she had? No, she actually is completely... Let's have this discussion, Reggie. Yeah, no, she... Your daughter is perfect. She would totally tell me that. She would tell me. She'd be like... She definitely would tell me. I had a Big Mac the other day, and it wasn't as bad. Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. It's like her age group, are they into it, or are they like, we want healthier food? I don't know. That's a really good question. I will say this.
• 21:43
  I do find that the Gen Z kids are so different. Like, their communication is different. I was just thinking about this yesterday, because one of the hosts that we were supposed to have, or guests that we were supposed to have on the show is a Gen Z kid. Super awesome. He's like a nephew to me.
• 22:02
  Um, but he, I think they're so used to communicating through like TikTok and Snapchat that like texting and like emails and things like that are just so kind of cool. Yeah. It's like, I mean, I'm kind of down with that. Like when you were like, Oh yeah, you were telling me about this, doing this and you're like, Oh yeah.
• 22:21
  What's your email? I was like, oh, man, I got to. Okay. All right. Let me double. Let me rethink this. I got to read an email right now in order. I was like, fascinating. Can I just pull up and talk? Are you Gen Z? No. I do hang out with a lot of teenagers. But he has teenagers. Yeah. But my kids, because my kids, their mom and I, like, we both.
• 22:44
  much eat pretty healthy. Like, you know, and we and they grew up in Asheville, you know, so it's like they had a lot like they were spoiled with a lot of really healthy farm to table options. They didn't really have fast food. The first time I took my daughter to Brueger's Bagels.
• 23:01
  like she's 15 now, but she was like maybe four or five then. She said, daddy. And she looks at me and she's like, she's looking around like, she's like, never take me to this place again. Seriously? Yeah. Or she said, never take me to a place like this again. And I was like, okay, word. Okay. That answers your question a little bit. Well, this is the rest of the answer, at least for my experience, is that
• 23:25
  Then once I started getting a little older and having more of a social life with other kids, they were just like anti-healthy. They basically be like, Dad, you get us a snack from the food. I'd be like, what do you want? Anything not healthy. Oh, yeah. I think that's a rebellion. My 17-year-old is all over that. That's a rebellion. Like, I eat.
• 23:42
  We went traveling, went ate in Europe, and food is amazing around the world. Absolutely. And when you come back to America, you're like, oh, I've got to go back into this. Expensive, bad food. And he loved it. He was like, great, I get all my dyes and I get all my additives. And I'm like, what are you doing?
• 24:01
  You're hurting me. I think it's just rebellion. There's no way. But this is another element of the nostalgia when you could eat whatever you want and it didn't matter. You were totally fine. Yeah, because that's fine. Yeah, because we didn't die. Drink, somehow. Yeah, Megan and I were just talking about how we can't do anything right now.
• 24:19
  You know, like everything we do is a failure. You're not eating right. You're not doing your life right. There's always so much self-help. You could be doing more. Right. You could do this to save the world. You could do this to save your family. You could do this to save your kids' lives and their future. You could do this to save, and you're not doing any of it. And if you are trying, you're not doing it right. And there are seven more steps.
• 24:39
  And then if you're doing it all, you're doing too much. Yeah. Yeah. You're overworking and you're, yeah. So there's like this, why now? Like I remember when we were younger, you didn't know you were doing something right. Yeah. You had tests at school. That was pretty much the bar for if you were doing things right. And.
• 24:54
  I don't know, that felt so much more present, like you were doing your life and figuring it out. I think we should go back to that. I think we should go back to establishing our own bar for winning and what winning looks like. Right. Because when society is telling you you're not winning because you're not this, you're not that, then you're constantly having this state of failure and dysfunction, which doesn't feel good. I oftentimes compare myself to an animal because I'm just like, well,
• 25:23
  An animal doesn't. Yeah, like, I mean, basically what we're talking about right now, I'll just be like, how am I doing it? To society standards, not too well. To a mountain lion's standards, I'm doing good. I know I can go to Five Guys tonight and get a really good burger.
• 25:37
  You know what I mean? And I'll be good for another 24 hours. This is why you introduce yourself as a happy person. I feel like there's something to that. There is something to that, for sure. I absolutely do it a wholeheartedly. Well, I mean, it's, you know, having kids and stuff and people to take care of makes it be like, okay, I got to be a smart mountain lion, but like, you know, like, still. Like, what does it take to take care of a kid? You just give them food and water and make sure they stay alive, right?
• 26:03
  sometimes we're like 24, 48 hours at a time we're good right now I'm rich right now life has become so complicated all the things we have to do how many things do we have to really do in order to live
• 26:19
  If you just left, or if you got stranded on an island with your kids, or without your kids, what... Oh, this came because we watched that movie. Remember that movie? What movie? Castaways? No, that's a good one. It came up when we were watching it. She...
• 26:37
  he is anyway whatever is it the one we just watched yeah it's called we have a guy's movie club where we watch random intense movie it's kind of a horror movie but it's the one with Rachel McAdams it's called yeah Rachel McAdams is stranded on a beach with her
• 26:52
  Send help. Yes. Send help. Okay, so thank you, Will. Thanks, Will. So what if we got stranded on a beach on an island? How do you live? What is essential to living life? My dad is a survival teacher. So what he says is that I think this is a good measurement. If you have what it takes to make a cup of tea, you're probably good. Which means like...
• 27:13
  That's pretty good. Water, fire, maybe like a cup or something. Some kind of herbs or something. And then, yeah, then something to put in the water. Like then you're doing pretty good. I love that bar. That's pretty good, yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like to raise a child in this world
• 27:30
  to be alive on planet earth. I have done. I've got what it takes to make a cup of tea right now. Make it right now. We could do it right now. We got the little quick pot. That's covered. Now we just got to think reverse engineer. Okay, what's the next thing? The next level. Right. But I think that there could be this. I think we're like in a world where we're trying to be sold a lot of things. So adding more things is all you can do when you're trying to sell something to someone who's got a lot who can already make tea. So you have to sell them a better, quicker water boiler or a better...
• 28:00
  tea bag strainer or whatever it is you got to make something better and then they feel like they need something more
• 28:05
  But really, when I think back to when I first got my license and I had no phone. Your driver's license. My driver's license. Had my car. No directions. I actually went and got lost. Literally got lost. Accidentally. Oh, accidentally. I just wanted to drive and experience it. And I thought I knew where I was. And then I realized I didn't know where I was. And I had to find a pay phone. That was a little scary. It was so awesome. And a pay phone. Oh, and a pay phone. And a pay phone. No, I was watching The Matrix. Nostalgia. But I was watching The Matrix last night and they have the pay phones. Yeah. And I was like...
• 28:35
  What if like the reason, one of the, maybe the real reason why there's no more payphones is because that way we can't get out of the matrix. We can't go find a payphone and get out of the matrix. I see where you're going. The matrix is the truth. There still are payphones in like Nevada somewhere. My dad was telling me there's some town that's like so far just like removed. They've got payphones still at work, that function.
• 28:57
  Okay, so get this. My son tells me that I'm going to spend my whole paycheck on this gun skin. He plays Valorant, this game where they first-person shoot each other, and there's all the strategy, and they have... You can't see the person, so you're not buying a suit or an outfit. You're actually buying the color of the gun and kind of what it does when it shoots. It makes a sound, and it does something in the world, but no one else from any other perspective can see what it does. It's just for your own sense of...
• 29:25
  It still just shoots and like, it's just changing. Exactly. It's changing for the shooter. Exactly. And it costs, here's what it costs, $25 for a skin of this gun.
• 29:36
  Dude, my kids have spent so much on, well, just my son has spent so much on Robux. Yeah. So he can buy stuff in Roblox that he can't ever do anything tangible with. So I'm giving him a hard time. Yeah. And I'm like, why? And I'm like, I would have priced, who priced this? Because I would have priced this all wrong. I'd have been like, 99 cents, please buy this skin. And they're paying $25. Dude, it's crazy. And so I tried it.
• 30:03
  I try to talk to him and understand, because I want to understand him. And this doesn't compute. So I'm talking to him and I'm like, so why, why would you want to spend? Because he's gonna buy this big pack that's $75 and it comes with all these classic skins. It's crazy. So I'm like, please help me understand.
• 30:19
  And so he's like, Dad, okay. So he pulls out his phone and he's showing me. And he's like, this skin comes from this time. And then they hired an artist to create this skin. And then there's these sounds that happen. And each skin has a different sound at every shot. And then there's this artwork that happens when it explodes and they kill someone. And I started thinking about it from a very different perspective.
• 30:42
  It was art. Yeah. They were buying. And then I was like, he's on this game for hours. Yeah. So what did we do as kids? If we were doing something for hours, we would try to buy the coolest thing. In that whatever it was. Whatever it was. So we would ride our bikes around town. Bikes. So we wanted the coolest bikes and we wanted like the coolest little embellishments. Because that's where we were the most of the time. That's what we spent our money on. We wanted someone to see us. That makes sense. And so when he's in the game and everyone else is in the game for 12 and 15 hours a day,
• 31:07
  No one sees him out in the world. So spending, I mean, there's another game. That's where people see him the most. Right. They see them with that gun skin. And they're like, that guy has this. There's one game that's not Valorant, but came before Valorant. I can't remember what it's called. And there's a skin in that game for their gun that's $50,000.
• 31:23
  Damn. And even more. There's more. They're collector's items. They're rare. You could buy multiple cars. Right. But you remember the NFT movement and the Bored Ape Yacht, the Bored Ape Yacht Club? Yeah. They would buy these profile pictures to go on Twitter. And these were like $500,000 pictures, JPEGs, because these people were spending so much time in that world.
• 31:46
  that people were looking at them from that perspective. So it was like buying a Ferrari. So they saw the value. If you were being seen in the real world more times than not, like when I was growing up, buying a Ferrari was the coolest thing ever because you pull up in front of a hotel or in front of a casino. I don't know why I'm naming these weird things in Vegas. I just imagine a Ferrari being in Vegas. Well, that's like why a rapper would rent a Ferrari for the music video.
• 32:09
  Because people are going to see it. Even though you don't really got a Ferrari. But also, like, even... But you guys talk about your bikes and stuff. Like, that's... But still, the bike is, like, real world. It's...
• 32:19
  It's different. It's different than the skin. But it's not different. It's the Matrix. But you know what? That's what I'm saying. It's the Matrix. They're in the game. We, if we're in the game, buying a bike is our version of what they're doing from a meta level. I get it. Because that's where they are. I think an even better example, I think, for us, what I thought of when you were talking about this first was just music. Like...
• 32:41
  I would spend $75 on music. On a collector's album. What does it do? Like, what does it do? It's not a bike. It's not a car. It's not a physical thing. I mean, you do have the physical art, so that is a little bit different. But it's mostly the nothing, the sound, the intangible thing. You should see me trying to explain to my daughter that she would have to buy an album to listen to it.
• 33:06
  she looked up a new album we have Apple Music like everyone does and I was like you know what if we didn't have Apple Music you'd have to buy that album she's like what do you mean? you have to go to the store we used to have to go and buy a CD and without that CD we couldn't listen to it it wasn't anywhere else it would pop up on the radio that's nostalgia for sure yeah buying a CD you know what I
• 33:27
  what died hard for me was switching to digital music formats when we didn't one of the things i love so much certainly as a designer was getting the cd and getting the art and opening up the cd and they went the extra mile and had a really nice box set when you had a little sleeve and you pulled out the little booklet this is coming back beautifully designed you had
• 33:50
  all these things yeah you would look at it yeah i used to spend hours just like listening to the album and reading the lyrics and i knew every song and what song came after what song in order on the album yes and like the whole album together is very intentional like there's a story throughout the whole album and now with spotify like i recognize that like i know these songs but i have no idea what it's called or who sings it or the lyrics you have to like go to a separate screen and get the lyrics right i
• 34:17
  I know. I was like, what are you listening to right now? I was like, I don't even know. Let me go back and look at this one song on my Spotify. Oh, it's called, it's this. You know, that's what it is. You remember those CD books? You take your CD out of the CD case and slide it in the thing. And then it all gets taken. That's what I was talking about. And then someone steals it. Someone steals it. And you're just like, all the empty cases with no CDs or covers. Oh, you're like, oh.
• 34:39
  But you used to keep track of your collection that way. You know, like I had one in my truck. I used to work on the road a lot and I had a CD case that was the full on four CDs. Oh yeah. In a zip bound binder. Yeah, yeah, I had one of those too. And it was massive. With the sleeves. Like a book. Yeah, like a book. I used to leave it in my passenger seat. I'd pick it up, put it in my lap. I still have mine. And I like flipped through it and I could just remember all my music. I still have one. Yes, it was so fun. There was something about that experience. Yeah, case logic.
• 35:06
  It was Case Logic was the company. Yeah. Yeah, I still have it. And now Apple Music is like recommendation, and it's the same album. I listen to the same three albums all the time. And I can't even think of another album.
• 35:19
  I'm like, what do you listen to? Like you, I'm like, I don't know. And if you flip back through my like hits, you know, like you have your own personal hits, they're all my kids songs. So it's like, there you go. And there's just random music. Like Ezra has this cool, he has cool taste. Do they not have their own Apple? No. They listen to mine. Get them on the family plan. Give them their own. But they don't have their own phones, right? Well, they're starting to get their own phones.
• 35:41
  It doesn't. But that is the thing, though. Not having, there's no physical artifact. Like, I think when we were buying CDs or tapes, like, I remember. Oh, tapes, dude. I love those. So I was so desperate for the sound waves. We're having a rewind to the beginning. I was so desperate. I would sit on the radio with the tape ready to record. Oh, yeah. Say it. And I remember the song, even. I was at a radio, had my tape, and I was waiting for Dead Eye Dick.
• 36:03
  It was a song that was on Dumb and Dumber. Oh, fun. Anyway, I'm waiting there, and it came on, and I hit the record button, and I had it on tape. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to love that. But when you have the artifact, and this is coming back with...
• 36:20
  I don't K-pop. They will sell my, my niece. She has bought the same album like three times, exact same songs, but each member of the band, I think this is what I understood from her. Each member of the band puts their own flair on the art and the images in it. So it's like all this one member of the band. And so she's buying everyone for the artifact of this collection that she's making.
• 36:45
  But it's physical? It's physical. She buys the actual physical- CDs? CD and case. It's like this really high design, yeah. And my daughter just said she wants to buy CDs. I'm like- Oh, I love that. So I don't know what's happening and if- You're like, we don't have anywhere to play them,
• 37:00
  I know, because my dad brought me a CD I made when I was like 18 and I was like, yes, I've been looking for this. Where do I play it? Where do I play it? I don't even have the SuperDrive. You see it with your laptop and you plug it in. Yeah, but I don't think it works with the new OS.
• 37:16
  Oh, does it? I don't think it works. I should bring mine in because I have one. I bought one foolishly. It was the funniest thing, actually. It was one of those senior moments, I think. But I had all my old, like, client CDs, all my CDs with all my, like, DVD, DVD-ROMs with all my, like, client work from, like, right after high school and all through the years until I stopped using DVDs. And one day they were in my garage and I was, like, so over. I'm like, I got rid of some of this stuff.
• 37:45
  So I'm like, am I ever going to go back to these old, like, college, you know, zip files and all these college projects? So I started cracking them and throwing them in the trash, cracking them and throwing them in the trash, and I got rid of them. Then I totally forgot. And one day I was in Best Buy and I saw the CD-ROM or the Super Drive, and I was like, oh, yes, I can get this and go look at my old work. Yeah.
• 38:11
  And you had already cracked it all. But you had to crack it before you put it in the window. I didn't want somebody else to like... You could have just lightly put it down in there. No, I didn't want somebody to... Because you had to crack it. I had to crack it. No going back. This is the... Nobody's going to see me. But yeah, I was so... When I remember, when I had that epiphany, I was like...
• 38:30
  So maybe there is this, I don't know if it's with everything, but there is with music. It is ethereal and it makes us feel so much. We want an artifact of its existence. Totally. I think there's a reason to cling on to it. And why kids are starting. Right. And kids are starting to start. Vinyl hasn't gone away. No, vinyl never goes away. Vinyl is continuing to grow.
• 38:50
  And I saw this thing last night or yesterday or the day before, but it was like this guy, I forget the artist's name, but he was making these records, these vinyl records that had three different ways to play it. If you put it in one hole, then it's on this track. You put it in the next hole, it's on the outer track. You put it in the last hole, it's on this other track.
• 39:09
  And each record cost like a thousand dollars or five K. Like he would make like a hundred of them and then sell it for, uh, you know, a hundred dollars or $500 or a thousand dollars or $5,000. Like, and, um, yeah. So, so scarcity.
• 39:27
  It's scarcity, right? Those are like quality and scarcity. Super high quality and the music being really good. But, you know, I kind of wonder like CDs, cassettes, vinyls, all three of those things are terrible for the environment.
• 39:40
  Yeah, because they're making... It's so cool in a way that we still have vinyls, but vinyl is polyvinyl chloride, isn't it? Oh, yeah. It's like PVC. I think so. And when there was that big train explosion of polyvinyl chloride in like, what was it, Pennsylvania, a few years ago, it was like this big environmental disaster. That was the substance that we make vinyl out of. Oh, wow. Vinyl records, you know? See, this didn't matter when we were younger, right? It's not good. It didn't matter when we were younger.
• 40:06
  No, it didn't. We didn't know about that. So what would you say? Do you think that it's better that we're not making or that these things have gone down in production? I mean, I wonder, would it be better to let go of those? Because as a musician and I would say an environmentalist to some degree, when I was younger, I was like, why would I aspire to like...
• 40:31
  travel around the country or travel around the world promoting myself and then selling plastic crap to people. Like, what am I actually doing for the world? You can make your CDs out of the paper like recycled paper. Sleaze. The CD can't be that. The plastic is still that. My conclusion is just, well, live music.
• 40:55
  Oh, that's what I'm talking about. Talking about a scarce asset. Live music. Live music to be live to feel that. You remember going to bands, going to shows when we were younger and they didn't cost $500 and you have to wait on Ticketmaster for hours and a queue? Like, I don't know what music has done. But doesn't it feel like, though, going to see live music used to be an intimate thing?
• 41:15
  I don't know if it's just because I'm from a smaller town. I never went to the, I know there were big stadium shows happening, and that was an era of the 80s and probably into the 90s. I went to Lilith Fair, which was nothing like, it was massive. Oh, Lilith Fair, but that's a whole different experience. Yeah, yeah. But you mean going to like the Great Eagle or the Orange Peel? Yeah, going to like a show to see someone that's not broken yet, that's like, to see music being created and crafted and birthed. Not, like, so when you go see a big artist, like, let's just talk about Taylor Swift. Yeah, yeah.
• 41:44
  You're not seeing anything but a very polished preset exterior performance. Like, there's nothing about... It's all choreographed. I know she's great, and I know a lot of people love her. I mean, unless she's... I mean, a lot of these huge artists, they don't actually perform. They just slip-seek. They move around. I think Taylor Swift probably does perform. So there is a degree of authenticity there, because there's other ones that are less so. Right, right.
• 42:11
  Oh, make like, for instance, I don't know, maybe like someone like Pitbull would be like, probably, you know, has the vocals canned, piped in or something, I don't know. Did you see Justin Bieber perform at the Grammys? That was great, I liked that. How incredible was that? That felt like old music to me when it didn't have to be perfect. People used to get,
• 42:30
  I guess you'd call it canceled. We didn't call it that back then. But remember Milli Vanilli? Oh, yeah. For lip syncing. For lip syncing. And people lip sync all the time. They do it all the time now. People wouldn't even care. Yeah. Like. Wasn't it on, was it like Saturday, maybe not Saturday Night Live, but like the Tonight Show or something. Like it was expected that they weren't actually going to be singing the song. Yeah. Because they'd come out and there'd be no like instruments and there'd be somebody out there like. So, so the thing is that I think we protect ourselves from failure or from weakness. Yeah.
• 42:59
  So when you mess up, you have a weakness. You're not as good a singer as you are in the studio. You're probably not good. So they sing that way. Mariah Carey's classic for this. They sing, they really perfect it in the studio and they try to get it perfect and they do a lot of whatever in the studio. But then when they go live, they're like, this is not my best self. I want people to see my best self. And so they lip sync. And it's not that they're not singing, they sing it once. But they're not presently singing it now.
• 43:27
  I think with Milli Vanilli, the problem was it wasn't even there. Right, that was a big issue. And we weren't used to it then. We weren't used to it then. Like Milli Vanilli, the problem was also we just weren't used to it then. Now we're used to it. Now, you know, after Cher did the If You Believe in Life After Love and did the auto-tune, and then T-Pain. Yep, T-Pain, totally perfect. And T-Pain can actually sing really well.
• 43:55
  So when you see someone sing, when someone performs and
• 44:01
  uh what's the right word for is there's something about singing that captures the moment and that experience is scarce because albums i love albums i think if you listen to albums that were created when they had to record live you can somewhat get to that point when they all record it around a mic and trying to capture it beatles is one of those that sing it that's them singing it and that's very little um effects happening um
• 44:25
  But I think now in this world where everything's so contained or plastic wrapped, everything's so perfect, people are looking for the imperfections. And so that's, I think, you're right, that live performance is the only place you can really capture what music is.
• 44:50
  The fullest extent of it. I think you can do it in recordings because whenever I make recordings, I never think, oh, how am I going to do this live? I'm like, no, no, no. I'm just trying to make an experience. Yeah. Recorded experience. Like Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts. And then I will, and the burden will be on me on the feature that either I won't play this live
• 45:09
  Or I'll figure it out later. But isn't this like branding that doesn't work in the real world? Let's make a brand, KFC for instance, that looks amazing, and then we'll just try and figure it out when we move it to the real world. Why doesn't that come first? Why doesn't the real world experience of it influence its creation? For me, it's because the real world experience of recording is...
• 45:37
  Like, you know, I've never seen, for instance, like the Smashing Pumpkins live. I don't even know if I'd want to see the Smashing Pumpkins live because I like Siamese Dream so much. You don't want to hear them ruin it? I don't want to hear it done almost as good as that. I just want to hear that. Yeah. And I just think as a musician, it's like...
• 45:55
  I don't know, maybe like a painter. You're just like, you're trying to do the best you can in this one moment. I'm so present in the creation moment that it makes me not, I'm not worried. I'm not going to pull myself out of that creation moment to worry about, oh, if I can't play this on a mandolin, then I can't record it. It's like, no. Yeah.
• 46:13
  Whatever it takes to make this experience, I'm just going to do it. And then I'll figure it out later. So then that perfectly. But I would cut it. I would do like halfway. I'd be like, I'll find either whether, because I do sometimes perform over tracks. Like I'll play the thing I recorded, sometimes take the vocal out, do the vocal live, or sometimes sing a harmony to the recorded vocal with mixed results. I don't say, I would say sometimes it works really well. Sometimes it doesn't.
• 46:43
  deceptive branding from a different perspective where the artist and the creator is doing what you're doing. They're putting their best into the craft, the tools they have, and then they're like, we'll just figure it out when we get to the world.
• 46:58
  in the next part too. Right. But I'm not gonna, but sometimes people just worry like, cause they're like, how are you gonna do that live? And I'm like, I have no clue. But imagine a producer producing an album for you, and they're doing their best in their craft, and then they release you to the world, and it's a totally different experience than what they, like Counting Crows was classic for this. They had this album that I know this from personal experience, this is crazy. My manager was friends with the guy who edited the first Counting Crows album, which we all loved. Does anyone have any nostalgia when they hear Mr. Jones?
• 47:28
  Yes. So they recorded this album and it was terrible. The editor got it and he's like, this is horrible. So he took the album and literally cut it into pieces. Verses, chorus, bridge. And he had it hanging on his wall. Yeah, because it was all on tape. There was no digital devices then. It was all on tape and this editor had it all around his studio in pieces.
• 47:54
  And he built the album from these pieces that they had recorded. Wow. He built Mr. Jones out of pieces. And so when they went to perform, they had to learn. They weren't that band. Yeah. They were this other band that recorded. So they had to go and learn how to be this band. They had to learn how to play the fabricated version. Right. And you see how long they lasted? They lasted, I don't know, like...
• 48:16
  six, seven years, maybe 10 years, but it kind of fading out. But when it's not core to who you are, if it's not what you're creating, and this goes back to what we were telling one of our guests last podcast, is that AI can make you sound. It's the tool to make you sound exactly like you think you should sound to fit in.
• 48:36
  But it doesn't let you be who you are in this moment. So if you're a band that can't write good songs, then it would be a punishment to give you really good songs to play live because you're not that band yet. That is built over time. So if you're a... And so, for instance, if the producer does this and then releases the band, imagine now a creative agency that's holding this brand is going to do everything in their power to make this brand look badass. And I've done this before. I had a friend say, you...
• 49:04
  have done your clients an injustice because you make them look cooler than they actually are. And so when they come out, people look at them and they're like- They're like disoriented. They're like- Switch and bait. Yeah, switch and bait. And I've always felt- Switch and bait. Switch and bait. Switch and bait. Let's switch this up. It's been bait.
• 49:25
  I felt self-conscious about this because I'm trying to do the best I can with all the tools I have, with my skill, with my being. And then I release them into it and I let them take it. So the people that did the KFC rebrand are doing it the best they can. It's going to attract all the youngsters and it's going to be great for them. And then they just give it to them. And it's crappy this, it's crappy that, it's horrible wages. It does all these things.
• 49:50
  Under the hood it's actually pretty bad. Under the hood it's bad. But this creative team was trying to do their best work, even though it was a lie, essentially. One of the things that came to mind when you were talking about painters and music, Joni Mitchell on Miles of Oz. Yeah. I want a song she says. Yeah, that's exactly what I was talking about. Yeah, she's like, nobody, you know, Van Gogh painted Starry Night, and he does it, and he does it, and that's it.
• 50:18
  They're not like, do it again. Do a starry night in front of us right now. Yeah, it's paint a starry night again, man. Yeah, come on, man. Yeah, exactly. But it's like that's the beauty of art is that, and the beauty of live music. Because I really think that, for instance, we're, I don't know if I told you this story before, but I went to Mississippi Nights to see Fiona Apple years ago.
• 50:42
  You know, Fiona Apple. Anybody like Fiona Apple? I'm still a huge fan. I love her. She's pretty awesome. We got down to the front row, me and a buddy of mine, Brandon, and we penetrated the crowd, but we got pushed over to the left. And...
• 50:58
  We were standing there, and we're like, well, it's still close enough. We'll be able to see her. This is great. Intimate. You're talking about the intimacy of live music. And this is, you only get that kind of intimacy, I think, in small venues or venues that you can actually maneuver your way up to the very front. So I'm up there, Brandon and I standing next to each other. We're looking at the mic. All of a sudden, these guys bring this big box, and they drop it down in front of us. And we're like, ah.
• 51:25
  Ew, this sucks. But at least we'll still be able to hear her. She's going to be right there.
• 51:30
  We're standing there, we're waiting around, and then all of a sudden these same guys come back out and they pick up this box, these legs drop down, and they open the top, and it's her fucking piano. And all of a sudden, we are just like beside ourselves because now we're realizing she's gonna be serenading us pretty much the whole night because more than half of her songs are done on the piano, and that's exactly what happened. We were at the edge of her piano the whole show, which was absolutely amazing. And the whole thing I was thinking is that
• 51:59
  this is going to totally ruin her CD for me because now I can't ever relive this experience. Like this is it in the moment. This is the thing that I'm getting to enjoy. So savor it because when I get back in the car and I pop in the CD, it's going to have a different vibe. You know, it won't be. Yeah. Yeah, because she was, she's a real performer. She's a real performer. She does the craft. She is amazing. They once asked Johnny Cash, why do you sing the way you do?
• 52:26
  I don't know if you all have heard this, but you know what he says? No, what's the answer? It's the only way I know how. Oh, I like that. That doesn't exist now. Right. Because you can sing however you want. You can produce it however you want. We have the digital tools to make you look, sound, and feel however you want to feel. Yeah. What does that mean for the scarce asset that we are as humans, the unique thing we bring? Music, for me, has lost a lot of its...
• 52:54
  the quality of it because it doesn't have its own thing anymore. Like it's all melded together. There isn't stuff coming out, at least that I've found. You mean genres? Genres or styles or unique characteristics of an artist. It's all kind of, this is going to be a crazy thing to say, but I think Justin Bieber's album, the Swag album, is the first time that I've heard an album that sounds amazing.
• 53:19
  like the anti-song, the anti-album. The production's wrong. Is that his newest one? Yeah, you should hear it. It sounds like it's recorded in a room with a tape deck. Is that the one that has the Yukon song on it? Yeah. The whole thing, even the songs, are not written in the pop. You know the song that's like, in the city? I used to ride a Yukon.
• 53:40
  He sang it at the Grammys. I'm talking about a two song. Yeah. You've heard this song. I've heard that song. I don't know. It's so good. But the thing about it is, and I've never liked Justin Bieber. We started a boy band. And then I will have. I'm only just like. But I only have heard it because of my daughter. She's been a Justin Bieber fan before Swag came out and tried to turn me into one. I'm like, no. I mean, his past music, there's no way I'm listening to that.
• 54:05
  It is so what pop is, the part of pop I don't like. It's like the epitome of pop. Yeah, it's like self-manufactured, just fake pop. But he's actually talented. He's so freaking talented. Yeah, he's actually talented. So on this new album, and I tried to see who produced it, and it's got like eight producers. It's not just one mastermind trying to make him sound a certain way. And every song is different. There's one song that's called Glory Notes, Voice Notes, and it's from him singing to his iPhone.
• 54:34
  Oh, really? Yeah. And it's like really good? And it's one of his tracks. And it's so good. But all the songs on it, there's not like this typical formula of here's the bridge, here's the chorus, here's the hook. It is literally him. I don't do that either. And my son's learning his guitar parts in the... Because my son likes it too. This is a weird thing to become a Bieber family. I never thought this would be possible. Is that a thing? A Bieber family? Well, you know, like usually it's just... We're a Bieber family. Usually it's just Bieber fever, you know, like...
• 55:04
  Yeah. Believers. Believers. Believers. Yeah. Wait, that's what they call them? Yeah, Believers. Believers? Right. But now listening to this album, it is so counterculture. And he even performed at the Grammys just himself. Yeah. In his boxers. With his laptop. With his laptop. Or with one guy playing guitar. I think the other time he played for him. No, he was. Okay. Yeah. At a Coachella? It was stripped down, very intimate. Yeah. Right. And he just sings. And you hear him and you feel him. And the entire place was silent.
• 55:30
  That is the heart of what it is we possess as people. The scarce asset we are is that level of unique magic. And I don't think we realize that. I think we're trying to be something that people want. Use AI to write the best email, use AI to write the best song, use AI to do this and that. And now it's become AI, but we did this in measure before AI came out to try and cover the weirdness that we are, the unique imperfection that we are.
• 56:00
  Yeah. I mean, even like a template to say this is how to write a letter. Yeah. Like, you know, I use templates all the time, but like, you know, I mean, just like the conventions, like that's kind of the early conventions of like when, you know, you sit down and your fork is here and you learn all that stuff so that you can be presentable in a certain context. But it's like that stuff all that was somebody else's idea. And like it was somebody else's.
• 56:25
  preference preference it was their their their informal preferences that became our formal expectations yeah and we have to live within that box yeah yeah until you realize because you think it's like oh well it's something it's something but it's like not like you look at all the um look at all the uh latin names for plants
• 56:43
  It's like, oh, it's the Latin name, that's scientific. But then you translate it and it's like, oh, it just sounds like a folk name for a plant. Because that's what it is. It's just got codified. But I was gonna say, you should listen to my music because I think you'll like it. Because when I make songs, I mean, I've done songs.
• 57:03
  maybe like hundreds of songs where it's like, okay, intro, verse, chorus, or intro, chorus, verse, whatever. And then eventually I was like, what about just beginning, middle, end? Okay, I love a good intro. And then this is the next part. I don't know what to call it if it's a verse or a chorus, but it's another part. And then I get tired of that, I want another part. Okay, this can be more versy. And then, am I gonna go back?
• 57:24
  Maybe not. Maybe. Hey, this is only a minute and a half, but it does feel like it has a beginning, a middle and an end and it resolves. Or I had this one collection of songs where I didn't want it to fully resolve. I wanted it to end and you to be like, what?
• 57:40
  I want it again. I want more. And I made a bunch of music like that. They do that with movies too. So I think you would like it because I basically am just like, I've done the formulaic songwriting. Now in order to make me catch my breath or make me feel some chills, I just make stuff that makes sense on its own. Yeah. We were just talking about this yesterday, Juan, but I remember seeing you at this garden party years ago. It probably was...
• 58:09
  It was probably 20 years ago. It was probably 2007. Yeah, so 19 years ago, I was at this garden party somewhere in North Asheville. Montfort. I know where it was. Yeah, and I was...
• 58:22
  The Wands band, Secret Beat Size. But it wasn't even my band. It was like I had a guitar. It was such an intimate break. I had a guitar, a nylon string electric guitar plugged into a delay pedal. And then I also had a Hohner bass synthesizer. Oh, I mean, it's not that crazy. A Hohner bass synthesizer. So I and then that was maybe I plugged that into the delay pedal. Yeah.
• 58:48
  Oh my God. And then my friend was playing saxophone. And then I was also maybe singing on top of that. It was such a vibe. And it was a vibe. And it was a vibe. It was outside. It was a cool summer night. And I was just like, damn, these guys are awesome. I'm going to listen to that. So your band's Secret B-Sides? Well, yeah, I would go listen to my personal music, One Holiday First, because that's like, for me, that's the crowning achievement. Secret B-Sides is more like...
• 59:15
  You're in your, like... It was a practice run. Yeah, more of a practice run. And I'm going to do more Secret B-Sides recordings coming up with, like, a new lineup that I have. Nice. You're going to do live. Are you going to do any live playing out? Yeah, for sure. I want to get back out to some live music. I want to take more kids to more live music so they can understand that and feel that and have that baked into their nostalgia. Right. I'm having so much nostalgia just talking about this. All the things you're bringing up is just...
• 59:45
  You got to take us home soon. We got to get this guy out of here. Oh, it's been an hour? Yeah. It's been an hour. What time do you got to go? Now. Now. Oh, my goodness. All right. Let Alyssa say a whole lot. I'm just enjoying the... Do you want to close us out? Do you want to, like... Do you have a good speech? Yeah. What's a good what if pertaining to nostalgia?
• 1:00:10
  That just put you on the spot, didn't I? Yeah. A little bit. So if, out of all that we've brought up, could you ask yourself a question and say, what if we did this instead of this? Or what if that still existed, would you say? I mean, something I think about a lot is like, why,
• 1:00:33
  does our country place so much emphasis on just selling more and consumerism and bigger food and these chemicals that make it taste better and have different colors when I feel like it would be just as marketable, if not more, to focus on being healthy. The absence of all those things, yeah. Like building up something authentic. So what if we did that? I don't know. I will share this quick thing, and then I'll let Tim bring us home.
• 1:01:01
  There was a guy who did a study recently, blind taste tested. He took Lucky Charms from Canada and Lucky Charms from the U.S. Lucky Charms from the U.S. is just filled with like red 40 and Blue Lake 5 or whatever and more sugar. And then the one in Canada is not, doesn't have, has less sugar, doesn't have all the fake colors and artificial stuff.
• 1:01:25
  And he did a blind taste test. And he was like, oh, my God, this is obviously the American one because it's so sweet. It's so good. And then he tasted the other one. He's like, oh, wait, I don't know because this one now tastes like artificial. It's weird. And it turns out the one that tasted best was the one from Canada.
• 1:01:43
  So we don't even need all of the fake artificial stuff. I started buying the fresh ground peanut butter from Ingalls, which is literally just peanuts. Why don't they put sugar in peanut butter? And now whenever I taste the normal peanut butter, it's so gross. It's so sweet. It's disgusting. I don't know why people need to put sugar in everything.
• 1:02:03
  overly, overly designed, overthought all of our stuff, all of our foods. But there are more options for like eating healthy and eating sugar-free stuff. You've got to be pretty wealthy to eat healthy. Yeah. There are at least more options. But there are more options. That's true. I mean, you don't got to be wealthy, but... But do you think options are what make us happy?
• 1:02:24
  Yeah, I think so. They've done surveys, and people with more options from a survey are less happy than people with one. I mean, you think about it, when you go into the cereal aisle, that feeling of overwhelm, I totally get that. But I also don't want to be forced to eat the version that has all the junk in it. So I do like it. Like the version that's grown from a field, and that's the only option you have?
• 1:02:48
  The real version? Yeah, if it was just the real version, I think I'd be fine. That's what it used to be. Now we have options. We have stuff boxed, cans, frozen, fresh, organic for all of our nostalgia. I mean, I tend to, like there's times where I'll be by myself or whatever. I'll go to the grocery store. There was one time where I went to the grocery store and I was like, I suddenly realized, I was like, there's food from all over the world in this grocery store. And this moment in time,
• 1:03:19
  where this is gonna be, this might not last. I was like, this is kinda cool. I'm gonna walk down, I know I was at Whole Foods, so I was like, there really was a lot of different. Food from everywhere. Yeah, there is food from, they do make an effort to have a whole aisle of stuff from Asia or whatever. They'll have even local stuff too. Yeah, local stuff. So I do feel a little bit like,
• 1:03:41
  I just, I just like, this isn't going to, this wasn't always the case and it might probably is not always going to be the case. So I was like, you know what? I just enjoy this moment. I'm just going to enjoy being in this building and I've got enough money. I could probably buy whatever I want today and walk out and like, you know, kind of like the, like the mountain lion, like the animal, like right now the mountain lion in this grocery store is like feasting. This is sweet. This is good. You know, like, I don't know. I kind of like it. What if my what if is what if we just enjoy the moment and then that becomes the nostalgia that we come back to.
• 1:04:10
  Yeah, it's funny you say that because I was going to tell a story to close this about what if nostalgia was right now. And you just said it and then you said it. So I was just starting out our agency that my wife and I started years and years ago. And we finally got in this office outside of our house. And it was this little tiny, no window, 12 by 10 box. And we were having our first creative meeting with our creative team.
• 1:04:36
  And one of them is on, what was it before Google Meet? It was this, this is the one with the blue Skype. They were on Skype from like Texas or something. And I had a designer here and then my wife and me. And right before the meeting, I check my email. And I get this email from a client that was just, I can't remember who it was or what they said, but it was devastating to me.
• 1:05:01
  And to Megan, she got the same email and it made me just want to quit. I was like, this is fucking stupid. I don't know why I'm even doing this work. And I had this and I'm getting ready to have this meeting, this like creative brainstorming naming session with this creative team. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this is happening right now.
• 1:05:18
  just in a really bad place. And we sit down to have the meeting and I'm not happy. And Megan looks at me and she goes, all right, let's just take 60 seconds and just have a moment of silence just to kind of center ourselves. And so me coming from a family that has very few pauses and very, very few moments of silence, this was going to be a very big challenge for me with this creative team I've just worked with for the first time.
• 1:05:44
  And so I'm like, okay, I'm going to do this. And she says, all right, let's just close our eyes and let's just sit here for 60 seconds. I do it. And my mind is racing. Like, how does this feel? This is so awkward. This is weird. And this is before all the big, like, mindfulness movement. So this is a weird thing to be doing. And someone's on Skype and it's just quiet and my mind won't let it go. And all of a sudden something in me says, just fucking try it.
• 1:06:10
  And immediately, I'm ripped away from the moment, and I'm like pulled back through time and space all the way further and further back from myself out into the universe, and then further into the universe. And it was like I was not only moving in space, but time, years and years.
• 1:06:27
  Yes, this is the weirdest experience I've ever had. And I saw my generations live, and I saw me die and watch all these generations live, and I went back, it had to be a thousand years. And I looked at it, and I breathed in, and it all felt finished. And I went, and I went right back into my body. And I came, I woke, I like opened my eyes, and I didn't know how long I'd been out. And I look around, everyone still has their eyes closed. And I look around the room, and I'm like...
• 1:06:56
  It's like the clock on the wall is making this weird, loud clicking sound. And the printer and everything feels old. Like I'm having the sense of nostalgia, like stronger than I've ever felt in my life. And I look at Megan. She's so young. I'm like, you were so young. And I'm like, that's TJ. And I like...
• 1:07:15
  And I was like, oh, I'm back in this moment. Like I get to live this moment again. And I had nothing that I had to get accomplished. It was already done. I was already, I had already seen it finished. All I had to do was enjoy this time with them. And it was one of the best creative meetings I've ever had in my life. I love that. I used to don't do drugs right before a big meeting.
• 1:07:35
  I will use, it's crazy because my friend says, you're terrible at drugs because you're like already on drugs. But I do this trick. Sometimes I'll be sitting with my son playing Legos and I'm just like rehearsing my pitch or I'm like thinking of a project and I'm like, no. And so I time travel myself back and I'll think about all of it, all of it being able to do it. Yeah, I can do it. You know how to do it now. It'd be like you have the little matrix dial. Right, and I'll zoom out and I'll breathe in and I'll come back in and I'll be like, oh,
• 1:08:04
  There he is. He was only four years old. Right. This is when he was four. Yeah. And it's like I'm coming into a picture. I feel like nostalgia, the basis of it really is like these moments where you were able to slow down and you were able to be present. And there's always something going on that's stressful, always something that's pulling you out of that. But if you can in this moment, just like come back, find the things that truly are blessings, even in the midst of it.
• 1:08:31
  of stress and chaos and turmoil, that those become the basis of nostalgia. It's that moment of simplicity and peace right there in that moment. We gotta love that. Let's get out of here. All right. I thank you for showing up, for listening to this, listening to us just yap, yapping. And I appreciate Juan. Thank you for doing this last minute with us. And Alyssa, it's so great having you both on. Until next time, bye. Thanks, guys. All right. Let's get this photo real quick.
• 1:09:02
  Thanks for listening. This podcast was created and developed by our hosts, Reggie Tidwell, Tim Scroggs, and Mary Green. Special thanks to our guest hosts, Juan Holiday and Alyssa Downey. Produced by Mary Green. Live production and editing by me, Will Kennedy. Graphic design by Dylan Garcia and set design by Megan Scroggs. Today's episode is presented lovingly by 40 Hearts, creators of enduring value.