Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today this producer, music supervisor, Jack of all trades,
Speaker 1: George Riculius, Hollywood footnote. Good to have you here, George,
Speaker 1: good to be here, Bob. Okay, So I noticed you
Speaker 1: rolled up in a smart car. How did you? Uh?
Speaker 1: Do you like that? That's my third one third one? Well,
Speaker 1: why do you need to do what? You'd be surprised?
Speaker 1: So what happened two thousand nine, I think, or two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. I saw on the line it was coming
Speaker 1: to America, coming to America, Smart reserve. Now, put a
Speaker 1: hundred dollars down, build your dream smart car. So I
Speaker 1: put I put my credit card down a hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: I built a silver with a black trim, and I
Speaker 1: got the upgrade, which is I think at that time
Speaker 1: some kind of dials a hundred dollars or whatever. And
Speaker 1: two years later I got a call Mr Kulius, your
Speaker 1: smart cars here, like, excuse me. I'm like, what if
Speaker 1: I don't like it? Like, it's all right, We'll give
Speaker 1: your money back, you know. But they so they're Mercedes.
Speaker 1: So I got it and I loved it. I absolutely
Speaker 1: love it. It's great. It's like if you're driving around
Speaker 1: and you're going out and like, hey give me a
Speaker 1: ride home. You give me my drunk friend. Hey, man,
Speaker 1: do you want to get in the in the hatchback?
Speaker 1: And it's big. I mean, I'm a huge guy, you know,
Speaker 1: stupid guy in a smart car. But and then um,
Speaker 1: what else? So like if I go to set, like
Speaker 1: I say, I go to the set, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: crew parking is always like a mile away. It was like,
Speaker 1: I'll just park under like I can park under the
Speaker 1: under the Winner bagel and like you know, like the
Speaker 1: base camp is like I'll go in and just driving
Speaker 1: and everybody loves it. The valets love it. It's funny
Speaker 1: like this is the best car man, you know. And
Speaker 1: they know there's a Ferrari in front of me, they
Speaker 1: don't care. They get all excited about the smart car.
Speaker 1: And as they got older, older, whatever they as, they
Speaker 1: kept in proving them. They got them one with Gland.
Speaker 1: Now I have leather um in side. It's really decked
Speaker 1: out and it's roomy. I've driven to I've driven to
Speaker 1: San Francisco. I mean, I wouldn't want to work much
Speaker 1: farther than that. I wouldn't want to go across country
Speaker 1: in it, okay, But when you're on the freeway, what's
Speaker 1: it like? I love it. My wife hates it. She's like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's just a it's a titanium roll cage.
Speaker 1: And I've showed the videos on line of of a
Speaker 1: smart guy going a hundred miles into a concrete you
Speaker 1: know those divide and they bounce off and they come
Speaker 1: around and one door is like fine, the other door
Speaker 1: is kind of broken, and the people are still upright,
Speaker 1: and said, look, we'll have an open cask at funeral.
Speaker 1: We did, because if you're going a hundred miles and
Speaker 1: now and you stop, that's going to all your organs.
Speaker 1: But I said, but we'll have you know, we'll look good.
Speaker 1: So I love it. That's fine, Okay. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like the black box on an airplane. I love it.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love it. So there's no time obviously she
Speaker 1: has a car, there's no time when you say, hey,
Speaker 1: we won't go in the smart I'll take together car forgetting.
Speaker 1: If she's not she wants to help with me, or
Speaker 1: she's welcome to drive herself. We'll go to Santa Barbara.
Speaker 1: We have friend has got to play up there. Well
Speaker 1: that's about as partial driving it. But it's she's getting
Speaker 1: used to it. It's safe, okay. And then how noisy
Speaker 1: is it when you get to like sixty seven? Right,
Speaker 1: it's a little bouncy, like you don't want to do
Speaker 1: eight seventy five. It's fine on the freeway eighty five,
Speaker 1: it start getting it starts getting a little weird if
Speaker 1: you pass a big truck. But um, it's like I
Speaker 1: think it's a turbo. It has an overdrive and you
Speaker 1: trick them out even more. Mine is pretty stealth black
Speaker 1: on black now, but I love it. And how about
Speaker 1: so you're talking about parking on set? But generally is
Speaker 1: it a great advantage you have a car that's awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know if any street ego too, it's
Speaker 1: always like, oh there's I can't fit there. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can fit there. I think it's only eight feet long.
Speaker 1: And so but now they're not going to import him anymore.
Speaker 1: Oh no, all right, I read about electric, you know
Speaker 1: the all electric one yet, but now they're not gonna
Speaker 1: import electric either. No, you better make this one last.
Speaker 1: I'm leasing it like an idiot. Okay, So I know
Speaker 1: now you're working on movies. There anything else you do
Speaker 1: now that I'm missing? Um, well, I'm running for city counting. Um,
Speaker 1: I working on some movies. I still make a record.
Speaker 1: It's made a record with this band called Stereophonics. Are
Speaker 1: sure so you are still producing? Yeah? I mean someone's
Speaker 1: stupid enough to hire me. You curse on this thing.
Speaker 1: Say whatever you want to. You know the four stages
Speaker 1: of your career? Oh, yes, I do. But tell my order.
Speaker 1: You know, it's who's Georgia Culius? Gotta get Georgia Culius,
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ always he's always booked. It's like a new
Speaker 1: young hot George Culius. Who the fund is George? So
Speaker 1: I'm at that stage again. I've get to reinvent myself
Speaker 1: and hopefully some young band. If you're listening and you're
Speaker 1: very hip hiring me? No, but it's fun. I mean,
Speaker 1: but I get to make a lot of music for
Speaker 1: the movies I'm working on. That's always fun. Um. I
Speaker 1: get to like if I recorded like Vince Vaughan ever recorded,
Speaker 1: Owen Wilson, Kristen uh Christ and wigg you know. So
Speaker 1: that's that's always fun. Like when you get to use
Speaker 1: your skill set and like work with that. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: a little I thought you were, like when you're talking
Speaker 1: about those people, if you're amusing supervisor say, I'm more
Speaker 1: than a music So that's why I'm asking. So you're
Speaker 1: recording them like singing tell us what tell us? The
Speaker 1: four things you are? So I'm very handsome. Um so
Speaker 1: with the movie like something, but it's not trying to
Speaker 1: think of anything like so this TV show worked on
Speaker 1: Escape ad anim or did you watch that with Ben Stiller?
Speaker 1: I know, I just followed so close. It's greatly if
Speaker 1: I gonna pick up on stuff that it's really a
Speaker 1: lot of humanity, you'll love it. And they're wonderful and
Speaker 1: the two mates are plotting with the person who's working
Speaker 1: there the world. They both start, you know, getting on
Speaker 1: with it and who British ocad who's wonderful and so
Speaker 1: probably win an Emmy. I guess Emmy bait um. So
Speaker 1: for example, there's a flashback sine that takes place like
Speaker 1: an early night like mid nineties at the outside of
Speaker 1: strip club and we want to use Wu Tang clan
Speaker 1: ain't nothing to funk with and um, you didn't know this, Bob,
Speaker 1: but they didn't really clear all the samples back in
Speaker 1: the day. So it's like this gray it's this gray
Speaker 1: area where they won't license it, but it's like an
Speaker 1: open secret, you know. It's like this kind of thing
Speaker 1: where well, we can't publishing cleared, but the master we
Speaker 1: don't know. So I know Rizzle and they get to
Speaker 1: call Rizzle like, let's let's remake this thing and so
Speaker 1: we can use it. So like that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: is always fun and that's exciting to do. Um. The
Speaker 1: same thing happened on this movie Do Date, trying to
Speaker 1: use check yourself before you wreck yourself. And again there's
Speaker 1: another thing that was gray area ambiguous. So you getting
Speaker 1: to remake stuff like that is always fun. Or in
Speaker 1: Walter Middy, Christin Wig had a sing so I got
Speaker 1: to record her and then it turns to I don't
Speaker 1: feel so that it turns this big she's singing, um
Speaker 1: uh what's a ground control the major tom and it
Speaker 1: turns this big thing and so she's singing. She's a
Speaker 1: great singer. Also she was she's also a great ukuleleleas um.
Speaker 1: So that's always fun. Like if I'm working on the movie,
Speaker 1: I get to create stuff. That's always fun. And then
Speaker 1: on a movie. It's nice because I do know I'm
Speaker 1: not the I'm not your average pickings. I'm not your
Speaker 1: average bad about park right whatever, Yogi Bear, so I'll
Speaker 1: be able to use me. But but you, uh, Yogi Bear,
Speaker 1: didn't wait till noon? How about yourself? Now I find
Speaker 1: myself getting up and just like sweating because it will
Speaker 1: get into that in a minute. But um so, like
Speaker 1: part of the thing is a directors like I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: like I kind of trying to talk to a composer.
Speaker 1: So I'm able to talk composer in musical terms and
Speaker 1: kind of it's like, you know, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just not I'm like, okay, you want to just
Speaker 1: change the bat here? But I try. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it now excuse me. So that's always fun. So
Speaker 1: that's when it's fun, you know, when I get to used.
Speaker 1: In a perfect world, if you could be doing anything now,
Speaker 1: what would you want to be doing? Nothing? Would you?
Speaker 1: Let's be clear, nothing is not usually that happy right now.
Speaker 1: I would know. I would think, I think I'd like
Speaker 1: to make more I would like to make more records,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to I'd like to make it more meaningful,
Speaker 1: but I don't know what it means anymore, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of strange. Okay, wait, wait, mean
Speaker 1: what would be more meaningful? The process? Just the thing
Speaker 1: in the world I could have a Okay, well we
Speaker 1: talked about it the gig. I remember we were Staples
Speaker 1: Center and you say you used to have fights over records. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that we were coming up. We'd like, you know, coming up.
Speaker 1: It's like especially with rappers starting in you know, early
Speaker 1: eighties in New York over rappers like the disc record
Speaker 1: which was born, you know, and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So you'd like no NPMD or you know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's you know, we hated the West Coast for sure.
Speaker 1: That was like those I'm saying. Yeah, you would get
Speaker 1: into a fight like or it would be beatle Stones
Speaker 1: or whatever that. I think it was the same. It
Speaker 1: just carried on into hip hop or other stuff. So
Speaker 1: you just have arguments, but they're friendly, no no guns usually, right. Um.
Speaker 1: I was robbed a few times, like, uh, okay, let's
Speaker 1: stop there. When were you robbed? Well, you get away
Speaker 1: about at the roller rink at the Roxy. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a great hip hop club called the Roxy, which
Speaker 1: was a roller rink and a hip hop club. And
Speaker 1: where is this Manhattan streets gone? I was living on
Speaker 1: the West Coast, Okay eighteen Street in the West Side,
Speaker 1: and um, I remember being online. There's two stories. One
Speaker 1: was being online. This this is the mentality like hip
Speaker 1: hop that being online. It's like you crushed, you know,
Speaker 1: crushed it in trying to get in there. For those
Speaker 1: who are not in the East Coast, online means in
Speaker 1: line right, not on queuing up. I don't know you're
Speaker 1: all to get into the club today is you know,
Speaker 1: the internet? So you squished in and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I feel something like somebody's hand in my pocket, like
Speaker 1: I got like bubble gum in four bucks. I'm not
Speaker 1: like you know, so for some reason I had a
Speaker 1: pen like stads like you're like, hey, man, where you standing.
Speaker 1: I'm like, your fucking hand in my pocket? What are
Speaker 1: you doing? You know? Like this weird stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But the best was, uh the like bud Wise is
Speaker 1: super fessed. It was like Llo Clue, j Run dmc um,
Speaker 1: Jaqueline Hide which is Andre Harrell was in this band
Speaker 1: called Jack. I don't if you know that Jakol Hide
Speaker 1: was hip hop, and um, you know, I was backstage
Speaker 1: and we had this like for rabid hat, which was
Speaker 1: very much very back in the day, and they're like,
Speaker 1: where are you going. I'm like, why check out the crowd,
Speaker 1: Like if that's a good idea, I'm like, it's okay,
Speaker 1: you know down you know. So I was walking around
Speaker 1: his Madison Square world and I'm working on the outer rotunda,
Speaker 1: and um, I start heading into the inner thing and
Speaker 1: I see these two guys kind of coming out and
Speaker 1: one guy grabs my hat runs into the crowd, and
Speaker 1: I chased him down because I like my I'm like,
Speaker 1: and I caught him. I'm like, okay, cool, give my
Speaker 1: hat back. He's like, it's my hat. Man. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I got you know, so mayhem and sues.
Speaker 1: I'm holding one ear, this this two ear for a
Speaker 1: rabbit hat. I'm holding it going back and forth, and
Speaker 1: then it's like, all of a a sudden, bunch of guys
Speaker 1: jump me and the same thing like start punching me up,
Speaker 1: like like I elbow some hey man in order, like
Speaker 1: what are you guys doing? You know? The hat rips,
Speaker 1: I keep the ear. I go back and I remember
Speaker 1: Rustles like with the hat man, I held up the
Speaker 1: ear and I was like, okay, they gotta be there. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I totally get him. You're the type of person someone
Speaker 1: does you wrong. You don't get scared. You're gonna just
Speaker 1: dive in. You're gonna lean in. Uh. I mean, I thought, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the gig is up being normal for like, hey, I
Speaker 1: got you man, it's cool, just give my hat back.
Speaker 1: What's this? You know that kind of thing. But it
Speaker 1: was a different it was a different mentality back then.
Speaker 1: I remember we had this um a Thursday nights. We
Speaker 1: had this thing called The Spot at dancer Tria, which
Speaker 1: is a really great club where we would go six
Speaker 1: seven nights a week in the New York. It's really great. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's also be clear what time would you go, you know,
Speaker 1: not till twelve thirty one right now, and but we
Speaker 1: this would start probably eleven. We had this thing called
Speaker 1: the Spot. It was Death Jam Presents the Spot at
Speaker 1: Dancer try It was the third floor. We'd have a
Speaker 1: DJ and maybe a guest act like the BCS would
Speaker 1: play there once or twice, or spoon, you know, like
Speaker 1: Spoonty somebody would come and do a wrap and we
Speaker 1: had this guy. Um, it was like god, oh, ship
Speaker 1: was busy. Be was the the official MC. So we
Speaker 1: just basically talk shit, Hey, what's your favorite restaurant? Is
Speaker 1: it needed? Is it Burger Gat? You know, and then
Speaker 1: you introduced DJ the act. Got a hundred dollars to
Speaker 1: do that, just and then pick up girls. They get
Speaker 1: re drinks. So I was responsible paying everybody. So I
Speaker 1: usually paying them about two thirty three in the morning,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, for the club and close. He's like,
Speaker 1: hey man, he came to like one o'clock. Hey man,
Speaker 1: I get my money. I'm like, well, happen going to
Speaker 1: the office and that's it. I'll tell you what. Let
Speaker 1: me go up there. Now see if I get paid.
Speaker 1: I go up there, I cut back down. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: here you go. Hundred dollars. He's like, I just go back.
Speaker 1: So he comes up to me, he goes it starts.
Speaker 1: He goes, hey man, I borrowed twenty dollars. And I
Speaker 1: was in, I'm like, I don't know. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I'll go upstairs. See if I get paid early and
Speaker 1: get your money. Give hundred. This is this that makes
Speaker 1: more sense. I give him hundred dollars, Like, hey man,
Speaker 1: it's only eight dollars. I'm like, what I got and
Speaker 1: it's a hundred? Can you let me ten? This is
Speaker 1: a college, like like we gave you a hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Rick Potter pocketed most of the money and I put
Speaker 1: like twenty dollars in my town my pants so I
Speaker 1: could like get into a cab and go home. But um,
Speaker 1: that was a lot of fun. I felt where we were.
Speaker 1: But we just talked about but we're talking about really
Speaker 1: is today as opposed to yesterday? Yeah? I guess. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, maybe kids listen. I don't
Speaker 1: have kids listen to this thing, but maybe they are
Speaker 1: having more fun. I don't know if they are. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine they are, to be honest, because you can't
Speaker 1: sunk up, you know, everything's everybody's tracking everything you do,
Speaker 1: where they're posting everything they do, so you can't do
Speaker 1: something stupid and nobody know about it, or you can't
Speaker 1: like venture out out of your comfort zone for a minute,
Speaker 1: you know. So I feel tough. I don't have any kids,
Speaker 1: so it's weird. I don't I'm not tracking it the
Speaker 1: same way. I think you know that I don't have
Speaker 1: a kid, you the same thing, you know. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say. But then like my nephews fifteen, Um,
Speaker 1: he's just out here. Music is not that important to him.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm trying to get him like, hey, you
Speaker 1: want to get you talking. You know, he plays Dungeon
Speaker 1: Dragons kind of thing. I took him over a Bad
Speaker 1: Robots meet JJ Abrams. That was, you know, that was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like meking Hendrix for me or something
Speaker 1: like that. Um, So, I don't know the kids who
Speaker 1: are into music. I think it's uh, I think just
Speaker 1: another thing that happens. It's just kind of the right
Speaker 1: on their phone or whatever. It's just not I don't
Speaker 1: have a penetrate, you know. So you're bay, So let's
Speaker 1: talk about today's generation. You say today's generation music does
Speaker 1: not have the priority that he used to. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's right. I mean I think it does,
Speaker 1: but it's just different, you know, like you don't fight
Speaker 1: about the band's kind of you know. I think it's
Speaker 1: like I don't think you invest as much into the acts. Okay,
Speaker 1: so if you talk to your fifteen year old nephew,
Speaker 1: you'd rather play dungeons and dragons. But if you go
Speaker 1: through some happening acts, does he know them? No, he
Speaker 1: doesn't know them. And it was like made it's on
Speaker 1: the pop stuff, you know, like maybe whatever the biggest
Speaker 1: pop records are probably he knows. You know, he's not
Speaker 1: going any deeper. Well, let's just go down this rabbit
Speaker 1: hole a little bit deeper. Let's say, would you go
Speaker 1: on record that today's music is not as good as
Speaker 1: yester years? Different, you know different. I can't say it's
Speaker 1: not as good. It's not as good to me, you
Speaker 1: know that I'm talking about for you? Yeah? For me? Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's not made for me. Right, I'm fifty.
Speaker 1: I look at it totally differently because music represented something
Speaker 1: different back then. That's I'm older than you are and
Speaker 1: listening to the radio. The radio had its own hip
Speaker 1: news whatever. That was the only outlet. There were no
Speaker 1: video games, etcetera. And in your era, you know there was.
Speaker 1: It was a little different. You have the dominance of
Speaker 1: MTV and then everything else could perklate, so you know,
Speaker 1: today there are many options. The other thing, I don't know.
Speaker 1: A friend I mentioned this all the time. Friend of
Speaker 1: mine wrote a book about Dwayne Allman. Dwyne Allman used
Speaker 1: to take his guitar to the bathroom to practice. Almost
Speaker 1: no one's practicing that much anymore, whether we make it so.
Speaker 1: As I said, I don't want to make it a
Speaker 1: guitar as opposed to a keyboard, as opposed to a
Speaker 1: synthesize or whatever. But there's so many other options to
Speaker 1: become famous and to half click that people are not
Speaker 1: dedicated to music as much as they used to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, that's that's I would say. That sums
Speaker 1: it up. You know, it's just a different it's different. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you've made rock records, so let's go deeper. As
Speaker 1: I'm putting you on the record, is rock dead? It's
Speaker 1: just changing. I think it's still. I think the metal
Speaker 1: shows they'll do it. There's always post just post provescent
Speaker 1: teenage boys who want to hear, you know, big beats
Speaker 1: and go to these shows. So I think that's that's
Speaker 1: always gonna make it regular rocket like straight up. I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty much over. Is there any way to
Speaker 1: be damned? I mean, I don't, I don't. I know,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of records. I don't know if it permeated,
Speaker 1: you know, right, well, metal historically waxes and wings kind
Speaker 1: of like electronic music. But there's always a cult deep
Speaker 1: into it. Someone's gonna buy a Ramon shirt, Someone's buying
Speaker 1: a Misfit shirt, Someone's buying a motor Head shirt always.
Speaker 1: You know, that's kind of does your perennials they come
Speaker 1: back like weeds, you know. I certainly think that they've
Speaker 1: sold more Ramons shirts than albums, absolutely, you know, but
Speaker 1: that's the big thing. And I grew up in the
Speaker 1: era we could tell somebody was hip how long their
Speaker 1: hair was, and then once I had, you know, the
Speaker 1: nerds were in their immediately cut all mind off. I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's my personality. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: the people putting the Ramons shirts on their babies are
Speaker 1: the people who never listened to the Ramans when they
Speaker 1: were happening. No, But my other like Nickel Tour or
Speaker 1: whatever when I was a kid, Frankfurt's or a quarter
Speaker 1: kind of thing was how if a band came through town,
Speaker 1: you knew who went to the show, and it could
Speaker 1: be any It could be an r M, or could
Speaker 1: be like you know, good pavement. They have to be
Speaker 1: necessarily the big metal band, but you'd see you'd be
Speaker 1: a Tower Records something like with a I was at
Speaker 1: that show, you know, like and like you had an
Speaker 1: instant you found your gang, you know, I mean the
Speaker 1: same way, and then you can kind of it was
Speaker 1: like an instant thing. Now it's like I think there
Speaker 1: aren't really at least I don't see it, even Kate.
Speaker 1: I don't see Katy Perry teacher. I don't even see
Speaker 1: anything like that. And if I see somebody wearing a
Speaker 1: T shirt like Kenny Loggin's ironic, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: And it's two ars and it was they bought at
Speaker 1: vintage and it's some time and they got the stud
Speaker 1: muffin thing to put the bedazzler. They've bedazzled it. And
Speaker 1: now it's like you know there so it's all right.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no like like usaid be how you
Speaker 1: define yourself, you know. That's that's maybe we can talk
Speaker 1: about that. You know, that's like you were in this gang,
Speaker 1: you know, and you knew like who you knew who
Speaker 1: you be for like, oh yeah, I was at that,
Speaker 1: I went to the Pixie Show or whatever. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: the other thing about it, I have a friend is
Speaker 1: a big concert promoter, and he's a little bit younger
Speaker 1: than you, not by much, and he says, I'm throwing
Speaker 1: a party. When we used to go to those shows,
Speaker 1: that was not a party. We were enthralled to the bands.
Speaker 1: It was really about the music. Forget that there weren't
Speaker 1: phones whatever. You know, people people are grazers now where
Speaker 1: we were just wow, these are gods. How can we
Speaker 1: get closer? It's interesting. I mean, I guess the concert
Speaker 1: business little. When it's good, it's good, But I don't
Speaker 1: think there's no I think the bands, who's probably the
Speaker 1: last band that's gonna do Arenas, who's come through at
Speaker 1: the latest? Maybe Musea, it's like the last band I
Speaker 1: could still probably Arenas in rock and roll rather than
Speaker 1: that Black Keys maybe depending on the burned it out
Speaker 1: there coming back had a band fleet sells a lot,
Speaker 1: but not quite arena. I mean, they don't have a
Speaker 1: catalog to be an arena, you know, to come back
Speaker 1: every year. They're not a c D see. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like so it'll be it's interesting to see what
Speaker 1: will happen. Um. But I think people just want to
Speaker 1: go to events, Like you said, throwing the party they
Speaker 1: don't care. It's more important to go to Randall's Island
Speaker 1: than to see who's at Randall's Island. Right, Okay, But
Speaker 1: since you're very knowledgeable on hip hop, do you believe
Speaker 1: there's a scene or not a scene? What's different in
Speaker 1: the hip hop? I do? I'm not to be honest,
Speaker 1: it's a kind of I didn't leave hip hop man.
Speaker 1: Hip hop left me. Um, I'm not as invested anymore.
Speaker 1: A couple people I like, like Thundercat, I think it's
Speaker 1: a great producer or whatever. Like those people are talent,
Speaker 1: you know. And I've grated that Kanye you know, I
Speaker 1: guess he's a genius because he says he's a genius.
Speaker 1: But um, I don't know, you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: there's nothing really Lahova. I'm still impressed with him, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm impressed with his voice and impressed with his his
Speaker 1: rhyming style. But um, I don't it was nice And
Speaker 1: again that's like an whole guy. Oh crouchyo guy. But
Speaker 1: the thing was the record. It was being heard and
Speaker 1: it was as aspirational. And now it's like I got
Speaker 1: my footwear brand, you know, It's like and now there's
Speaker 1: so many other things involved with it. It doesn't feels
Speaker 1: as pure anymore, you know. And right about what about
Speaker 1: the beefs, Bill, I think they shut they should have
Speaker 1: let should have a coke and a smile and shut
Speaker 1: the funk up. I mean they getting paid, they get
Speaker 1: like like there's no reason to be beat back. You know,
Speaker 1: when they were twelve inches and you were in different
Speaker 1: hoods and you were still living with your grandmother in
Speaker 1: Queens and they're the ones living that was really you know,
Speaker 1: that was still you know, I don't have any sorry
Speaker 1: Drake whatever, Bill, millionaires don't you know in beefs don't
Speaker 1: excite me. Well, the other thing, as you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: they're more about the brand than the music. It's like
Speaker 1: people want to be famous as opposed to be musicians.
Speaker 1: It's just a stepping stone. It's about to see. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I got an Instagram accountany about three thousand
Speaker 1: followers whatever, I don't I don't don't post that much.
Speaker 1: But um, I went to see Trapy Scott and um
Speaker 1: what's his face? Little guy from Compton Kendrick and uh
Speaker 1: and I posted like the Travy Scott came out of
Speaker 1: this fire, this wing bird with the spinning fire and
Speaker 1: I posted a small little video on my thing and
Speaker 1: I had a fifty thou beauties because I tagged, you know,
Speaker 1: I tag Travy Scott or whatever, and it was like
Speaker 1: the next thing. He was like like, can this be right? So,
Speaker 1: I mean the power they you know, they're very powerful people,
Speaker 1: so I can understand. Okay, Musically, what do you think
Speaker 1: about Kendrick. I think he's great, you know. I think
Speaker 1: I think he's one of the you know, one of
Speaker 1: the better ones for sure. And I think he's it's emotional,
Speaker 1: it's you know, I think it's his aspirational. I think
Speaker 1: he wants to take I think, whatever, there's a white guy,
Speaker 1: but I think he wants to take his people somewhere.
Speaker 1: You know. He's definitely of that. You know. I think
Speaker 1: he's a leader, which is which is great. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, sorry Ny, I think Conny is a clown.
Speaker 1: I think Kendrick is a real leader, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to one of your peaks, and not
Speaker 1: that you don't have peaks mean in the future, but
Speaker 1: you produced the first two Black Crows album, okay, and
Speaker 1: the first one was Gigantic Kid. How did you end
Speaker 1: up producing that um, that was that's a good story.
Speaker 1: So I was working with Rick at def jam Rick
Speaker 1: rub Ruben, and he made this movie called Tougher Than Leather.
Speaker 1: If you have seen it, Have you seen Tougher than Leather?
Speaker 1: Starting run dmc No, No, I didn't see it. It's
Speaker 1: like bad. It's like a really it's like a black
Speaker 1: exploitation film. You know, it's low budget exactly black exploitation. Um,
Speaker 1: low budget. He's in it. He starts, he wrote, start,
Speaker 1: he started, and directs it. Well. Actually, you know, there's
Speaker 1: this Rick Rubin's series on Showtime and they show part
Speaker 1: of that movie with Rick in it. I know he's
Speaker 1: embarrassed by it. But you know it's completely racist, but
Speaker 1: in the best way. You know, it's over the time. Everybody,
Speaker 1: no one's spared. It's like it was like the era
Speaker 1: of earlier Howard starting to makes fun of Jews, makes
Speaker 1: fun of Blacks, makes fun Chinese people, Asians, everybody, no
Speaker 1: one's spared. Everybason equally insulted. But I remember telling me
Speaker 1: he sat next to day. He played for David. He
Speaker 1: screened for David Geffen because they wanted he was looking
Speaker 1: at a distribution and Geff's like you can't put this
Speaker 1: movie out. It's like, what do you mean goes the
Speaker 1: way you talk about the Jews? And there's one there's
Speaker 1: only one line about Jewish people in the whole thing,
Speaker 1: Like there's only one cut and that's the only thing
Speaker 1: he saw. And Rick was like, he's how proud of it?
Speaker 1: I think he's embarrassed And maybe we'll have to all
Speaker 1: watch the documentary and the genius mind of Rick Rubin
Speaker 1: to figure out if if he is embarrassed by that.
Speaker 1: So he's making this movie. He kind of was pulling
Speaker 1: away from Russell. He didn't really want to miss Simmons. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Russell Simmons. He Um moved to l A, moved to
Speaker 1: the into the Montreal, didn't come back and never went
Speaker 1: back to New York. So I took a job at
Speaker 1: A and M for a year because Steve Robowski signed
Speaker 1: the def JAM deal to Colombia and now he was
Speaker 1: the head of A and MIGHT, so he hired me
Speaker 1: like a low you know, like a director of A
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. I went out and so you know,
Speaker 1: I want to try to see a couple of bands.
Speaker 1: Um and then I was in. They sent me to
Speaker 1: Atlanta see a band called bare Back I think it was,
Speaker 1: and it kind of like a southern boogie band, and
Speaker 1: I thought they were just gonna be playing in town
Speaker 1: with so I was online at a Kentucky literally at
Speaker 1: a Kentucky Fried Chicken at the Marriott Hotel where I
Speaker 1: was staying in front of me had long hair. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: there any other bands in this town. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: this man called Mr. Crow's Gardener pretty good playing tonight
Speaker 1: at the Peacock or somewhere whatever. It was like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: I'll check it out. After these guys, I found that
Speaker 1: this band is playing about forty minutes outside of town,
Speaker 1: like some dive bar. I take a cab out there.
Speaker 1: The manager is also the lyric right it hands me
Speaker 1: a loose leaf book with lyrics. I'm like, what this
Speaker 1: like in the lyrics man, I'm like okay, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I'm singing in the back of this club
Speaker 1: and the band's playing. He's literally singing the songs to
Speaker 1: me in my ear. I'm like, I gotta get out
Speaker 1: of here, and he's like, okay, we've got the second set.
Speaker 1: Come on me. Like so I meet the man, He's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm let it stay for the second set. It's great.
Speaker 1: I got back into cab, travel back into Atlanta, which
Speaker 1: is like a half hour whatever. I get to the
Speaker 1: club and they were over, Hey, what happened to the
Speaker 1: Girl's Garden? Oh? They they finished. I'm like, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: And I was living in New York at the time.
Speaker 1: I got back to New York and I look in
Speaker 1: the Voice and they were playing in New York the
Speaker 1: next week, so I just happened to go and and
Speaker 1: they were good. I mean, he was a presence. You know,
Speaker 1: Chris was great, great, Chris Robinson great. He's you know,
Speaker 1: he's a he was a front man. He had it
Speaker 1: back then. He had the moves, you know, he had
Speaker 1: the whole thing. As brother was kind of handsome and
Speaker 1: like with like mysterious, you know. He's also he was
Speaker 1: just this young guy. And uh. I watched that set
Speaker 1: and it was kind of like dang, and everything's like
Speaker 1: very up up up up. And at the end they
Speaker 1: played Down the Streets by and the Stooges and they
Speaker 1: played No More, No More by Aerosmith, Love That No More.
Speaker 1: I'm like, dreamna that and I'm like okay. So I
Speaker 1: met them, I said, h that's great. I said, let
Speaker 1: me ask you something. I said, he played this whole
Speaker 1: set in the last two songs you played had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the other stuff, and like what gives
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, we're the most popular band in
Speaker 1: Landa right now. We play a lot of colleges and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and this is what our audience is like.
Speaker 1: But we like this, like oh interesting, okay. So we
Speaker 1: stayed in touch, exchanging numbers, no email back then. And
Speaker 1: then I remember men Peter manch our mutual friend, took
Speaker 1: me to see to Monsters Rock in Dallas and I
Speaker 1: had gotten this uh cassette. I know really, I had
Speaker 1: a cassette and had a Sony Walkman with the extra
Speaker 1: bass boom base on it. And I was listening to
Speaker 1: the Faces record, Um, not as good as a wink,
Speaker 1: And I said, that's a terrible record except for the hip.
Speaker 1: That's not true Miss Judy's Farm. Like no, that was
Speaker 1: compared to the second album. In the first album, Miss
Speaker 1: Judy's Farm, it's pretty good and also good, Hey goodhead
Speaker 1: a huge Rod Stewart film. I was just I mean,
Speaker 1: I bought that album. I always still owned it. Well whatever,
Speaker 1: so you're used to that So I'm listening to it
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, this is interesting. I'm gonna play
Speaker 1: this for Chris Robinson. So I called him up like hey,
Speaker 1: what are you. Hey man, I'm down Texas, blah blah
Speaker 1: blah whatever. I'm gonna play something. So I played in
Speaker 1: Miss Judi Farm in the song you don't like right. Well,
Speaker 1: as I say, certainly that album have the right sound,
Speaker 1: I just didn't think the material was the songs are right, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe in the B So I put and put the
Speaker 1: ear you know, the ear phone to the speaker and
Speaker 1: standing man, man, dude, dank, you know. I was playing
Speaker 1: whatever here hello, Like right, what's up? Like, um, you
Speaker 1: sent me that record? I'm like showing up wrong. So
Speaker 1: I send him a copy and then we kept a
Speaker 1: touch and then like a couple of months later, like hey,
Speaker 1: so that was not the sound you saw it heard
Speaker 1: in New York. Couple of months later, it's a couple
Speaker 1: of months. Like a couple of months later, he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: come down, we got a bunch of new songs. Um
Speaker 1: come down and see us. So I went down. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is it's kind of rock now.
Speaker 1: And then we made a demo at them, and I
Speaker 1: was I wanted to sign him, and then I was like, well,
Speaker 1: can we do development because they were doing these development
Speaker 1: deals and they're like they're kind of tricky to get
Speaker 1: out of, you know whatever, so they're kind of hemming
Speaker 1: and hawing. I'm like, well, that's not fun. And then
Speaker 1: Rick called me. He's like, hey, I'm not moving back
Speaker 1: to New York. I'm saying in California. Come out. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start a new company. It's be more rock based.
Speaker 1: Just get out here. I'm like, all right, So anything
Speaker 1: you want to do. I said, well I found a
Speaker 1: big He's do what the hell you want. I don't care,
Speaker 1: you know, just come out here. So I moved out
Speaker 1: here in my thirties, year eighty nine, and then I
Speaker 1: told we signed the band. And I took about a
Speaker 1: year to get the songs going, like back and forth.
Speaker 1: I go there a couple of times. They said, we
Speaker 1: sent a sets back and forth, and then I went
Speaker 1: down there and then we made a record in uh
Speaker 1: around this time in eighty nine. We're around the summer,
Speaker 1: sometime in the summer at eighty nine, and it came
Speaker 1: out first week of January. Thirty years was just insane. Okay,
Speaker 1: did you know it was going to be such a monster.
Speaker 1: I knew it was the best week we had to
Speaker 1: you know, we had to offer. And then there was
Speaker 1: there was them at that age, and we had one
Speaker 1: guitar every everything. I think every every song starts with
Speaker 1: the one guitar on the left speaker, because I thought
Speaker 1: we knew how to do at that point. And then
Speaker 1: I think the best thing was getting Chuck level to
Speaker 1: come down and play the stone towards the stones in
Speaker 1: the Almond Brothers everything, and that really took it to
Speaker 1: another level. And I was like, well it's good, you know,
Speaker 1: I said, I you know, if it doesn't want to
Speaker 1: tack the copies, they can make it. We can make
Speaker 1: another one and they can tour and get an opening
Speaker 1: slot or something like that. And that they just was
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just you know, who knows better be lucky
Speaker 1: than good. I wish, but hard to hear. The loose
Speaker 1: idea was to do that. That was I think it's
Speaker 1: Chris's you know, Robin, and he's like, I said, we
Speaker 1: should do something, you know. And then my idea was
Speaker 1: to make it like walk this way basically basically rip
Speaker 1: Buffa walked this way and then just turning it. You know,
Speaker 1: but I think I was like, we should see some
Speaker 1: Odo song. It was just, you know, we could be
Speaker 1: listening to a lot of stuff, like we picked that one. Okay,
Speaker 1: did you make a good amount of money from that record?
Speaker 1: I worked for Rick Rubin. How much money you think
Speaker 1: I made? Okay, let's go back to the least have
Speaker 1: those things? Uh, it makes like a catalytic converter. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I get to joke about the catalytic. They
Speaker 1: camp downright, tamp down what you can make, you know,
Speaker 1: like or whatever. He's like a governor where they call
Speaker 1: those things like some cars, like like rented cars. I
Speaker 1: have to think, called a governor back and we let
Speaker 1: you go over sixty five or something that I know
Speaker 1: I did. Okay, I look, I did. Fine. You know
Speaker 1: she'll ever get paid on it? Oh yeah I did.
Speaker 1: Of course it didn't be today. No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's I don't know. Every now and then
Speaker 1: a check shows up, he's moved. He's moved the label
Speaker 1: four times, so who knows? You know. Okay, let's start
Speaker 1: at the beginning. Where where was your born? And you know,
Speaker 1: for the chechen Chong song. What's that? Do you know?
Speaker 1: That chechen song? Song? Exit forty three? Long Island where
Speaker 1: I grew up. You know, I grew up in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: I'm not super Long Island. So my I was going, well,
Speaker 1: let's see, Um, I was born in Valley Stream and
Speaker 1: then we moved to Siuset when I was young. My dad,
Speaker 1: Greek immigrant, came over when his fifteen didn't speak any language,
Speaker 1: married my mom when he was eighteen maybe she was.
Speaker 1: It's funny. We had our fiftieth anniversary. We did the math, like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, was seventeen my mom's seventeen was? You
Speaker 1: got married? Like? But she turned eighteen shortly after, so
Speaker 1: he was I think he was twenty maybe or night
Speaker 1: he was like nineteen and they got married. Their children,
Speaker 1: you know, getting married, might have an older brother's four
Speaker 1: years old, four years older. Um, just the two of you,
Speaker 1: just the two of us. So okay, So your mother
Speaker 1: she Greek, yeah really, but she better through the network
Speaker 1: he met yeah exactly, he met food, food church or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, somehow they knew and um, it's funny. I mean,
Speaker 1: I find an interesting. Some people don't don't follow me
Speaker 1: when I say this, but it's right. It's both my
Speaker 1: grandfather's were born in America as a turn of the
Speaker 1: century and taking back to Greece's infants. That makes and
Speaker 1: no one knew and I my dad's dad died when
Speaker 1: he was like three. He never really knew him. And
Speaker 1: my mom's dad, I always asked him Babu was Greek
Speaker 1: for grandfather, like boo, what happened? Goes I was a baby,
Speaker 1: you know, one told me why. I don't know, like
Speaker 1: he has no no one has any memory of why
Speaker 1: they were he was he was he was born in Michigan,
Speaker 1: and my other grandfather was born like in Massachusetts. And
Speaker 1: then they went back, which is strange. Maybe they came
Speaker 1: and they didn't thing that people went back. Not really,
Speaker 1: it's so odd, you know, it's very odd. So my
Speaker 1: dad technically wasn't I guess he was born in American
Speaker 1: citizens He didn't go through Ellis Island, but he came
Speaker 1: over on the boat a fifteen in the in the
Speaker 1: fourth in the you know, in the four years, late
Speaker 1: fifties whatever. Do you have a heavy Greek association personally? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of it's ingrained to you when
Speaker 1: you're a kid. You know, it's it's um, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: it's it's very much about the church, and it's not
Speaker 1: necessary religion. It's just the church is like a social center,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's what it is. And you know,
Speaker 1: and my dad was a dyner owner of course, because
Speaker 1: we're Greek, so you have a you have a whole
Speaker 1: network of diner owners and and those are your friends.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't think my parents had many
Speaker 1: other out you know, until maybe we had the neighbors
Speaker 1: for Ferrars. They were Italians. I was okay, but outside
Speaker 1: of like, didn't have any friends who were in Greek,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. He's like, not just by whatever, okay,
Speaker 1: other than having these roots, are there anything you do
Speaker 1: today that is Greek associated? Just eat? My mom sends
Speaker 1: me spinash pie and I and I get a lot
Speaker 1: of mileage out of that. Um this my secret man
Speaker 1: camp where I go. Um, Bob we are came by.
Speaker 1: We had dinner and I gave him a piece of
Speaker 1: the spinach pie and he's like, I said, oh, Boab,
Speaker 1: you gotta try this. My mom made it. He's eating
Speaker 1: it now. You know, if you seem Bob, he has
Speaker 1: like he looks at he's got that joant. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know what, spinish pie is very flaky. He's got
Speaker 1: a flake of Philo doll over his mouth. He's like,
Speaker 1: did your mother really make this? Like yes, Bob, He's
Speaker 1: like it's quite delicious. And I said, well you know
Speaker 1: what you're tasting, Bob. He's like no, I said, that's love.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's that's the thing. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: why I'm so fat, because she just wants they just
Speaker 1: forced food and they come out twice a year and
Speaker 1: refrigerator becomes you know, like there's only a limit to
Speaker 1: how much we can fit in your mom, I'll make
Speaker 1: a room, I'll make room, and they still just want
Speaker 1: to feed me. Is We were having Christmas dinner a
Speaker 1: while back, like twenty years ago, and he's like yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were talking, you know, we haven't talking, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, Peter stopped eating and Peters my brother, Like
Speaker 1: Peter stopped eating? What do you guys do? And my
Speaker 1: mom was like, we took the plate. We took his plate,
Speaker 1: we put in front of you. You You ate all the food,
Speaker 1: you're happy, you know, Like I was three, How do
Speaker 1: I know if I this stuff in my so that's
Speaker 1: probably why that's the most Greek thing about me is
Speaker 1: probably food and guilt. Now, your wife is not Greek. No,
Speaker 1: she's what you call like Senny's non Greek or um
Speaker 1: I guess. I remember we got married married twenty years
Speaker 1: and um so we've been together for like nine before that.
Speaker 1: And he said, you know, we should probably get married,
Speaker 1: like sounds good. I said, I want a big church
Speaker 1: wedding and she's like, shut up. You know she knows me.
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I said, no, I want a
Speaker 1: big church wedding. She's like, I don't understand. I said,
Speaker 1: not for me. But if we don't get married in
Speaker 1: the Greek church, your life is not going to be
Speaker 1: you know, you you my mother will make you miserable
Speaker 1: and you should live the day you'll regret it. So
Speaker 1: we go down to the gi Me the Saint Sophia is.
Speaker 1: It's great. They do a Greek festival, which is the
Speaker 1: best thing. If you've been to a Greek festival. Well,
Speaker 1: I've been to a Greek I've been to a Greek festival.
Speaker 1: We're saying, Sophia. It's kind of like Normandy and uh Pico.
Speaker 1: And there's a place called Papa Cristo's across the street.
Speaker 1: You've been there. It's like a Greek restaurant and they
Speaker 1: do boils and tyd of cheat. It's great and it's
Speaker 1: the end of the summer. You should go. It's it's
Speaker 1: a good festival. So we go down there and um
Speaker 1: talking to the priest and telling him, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: and my wife's Roman Cathy at least, that she's bad.
Speaker 1: They've even baptized, Like, yeah, she's been baptized. He's like,
Speaker 1: and he tries to upsell it right away. Have you
Speaker 1: thought about the Greek religion and it's blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And my wife's great eight aunt is a litizable. So
Speaker 1: this is Greek Orthodox is Greek Orthox, which is basically
Speaker 1: because the right next to me in a high school,
Speaker 1: Spiro had the us, he had the locker, and his
Speaker 1: father was the priest at the Greek Orthodox church. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what's nice is that it's so when they broke off,
Speaker 1: I came up with the rules of It's it's pretty
Speaker 1: much similar, except this too. Like the two main difference
Speaker 1: of priests can marry, which means it's you're much more normal.
Speaker 1: You can be much more normal. Um, the archbishop isn't
Speaker 1: for the archbishop is the first among equals, they say,
Speaker 1: So it's not like he's the only one who God talks.
Speaker 1: It was like, if anything happens, we all looked at him,
Speaker 1: he'll tell he'll take us all on the you know, Like,
Speaker 1: so which is I think it's a nice sentiment. And
Speaker 1: it's something to do with the Jewish calendar. We can't
Speaker 1: have Easter till have to pass Over, because I guess
Speaker 1: pass Over was the last last supper was a pass
Speaker 1: over dinner. But um, so he's like tying upseller and
Speaker 1: my great her great aunt is a littlebath seat you
Speaker 1: know that is Seaton Hall University. Yeah, she's the first.
Speaker 1: She's the first. I just changed the name. The guy
Speaker 1: gave all the money. I think that's the one further
Speaker 1: down she's But sister Mary Liveath Seaton was the first
Speaker 1: American CANNONI st So I'm like, oh, her great auntswer
Speaker 1: Mary of the seat, and you know it's like I
Speaker 1: will table it. She can get married. It's fine, you like,
Speaker 1: you know, mess with that. So let's stopped for one second.
Speaker 1: You went Greek Orthodox? Are you a believer? I don't know.
Speaker 1: So you okay, I'm not gonna push that, do you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, I don't know what. I
Speaker 1: don't know what's gonna happen, you know. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: do get what Barry did the Greek Orthodox just to
Speaker 1: make it so we could come home. There's this thing
Speaker 1: called stefana, which is they put these have you been
Speaker 1: to Greek weddings that three hours long? But they put
Speaker 1: these crowns on your head and they go back and
Speaker 1: forth everything three times, three times, and Stephanas these these
Speaker 1: two crowns that they marry you with. Um As call
Speaker 1: my mom in the car, like, okay, we just brought
Speaker 1: some sides. You. Oh, we're getting married next week, but
Speaker 1: no one's coming. I don't care. As long as you're
Speaker 1: getting married at church, makes no difference to me. And
Speaker 1: that was the end of it, you know. So so
Speaker 1: they didn't even come out for the wedding thing on
Speaker 1: the phone. Wedding we just got it was my brother
Speaker 1: was on his way to Nagao for some reason for
Speaker 1: the Winter Olympics, and her sister was in Texas, and
Speaker 1: you just need you need someone to stand up for you.
Speaker 1: There's just the four of us on a Thursday afternoon,
Speaker 1: you know, getting married in the morning. In the morning
Speaker 1: was empty when we left. So what did your brother do?
Speaker 1: He's in advertising, he was, so I feel bad. So
Speaker 1: you have kids, you have brothers, no two sisters, so
Speaker 1: he's older. And then my dad went from restaurants apply
Speaker 1: to this, I mean this is this is just for
Speaker 1: meeting you. But he went from restaurants supplies to restaurants,
Speaker 1: I mean only restaurants, a restaurants supply business. And my
Speaker 1: mom's brother was his partner. And then my mom's brother
Speaker 1: had midlife price, So you want to go to law
Speaker 1: school at age forty or whatever. And he thought, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just sell the business. And you know, my dad,
Speaker 1: my dad was still a young man. He's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna retire. What are we gonna do? So my
Speaker 1: brother got kind of he just finished college. He got
Speaker 1: suckered into it, and he got trapped in a family business.
Speaker 1: And while that was happening, is when I was out
Speaker 1: moving in California, I was sending it. But he TV's
Speaker 1: gotta have, you know, platinum records, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: and I felt bad. He got stuck at the things.
Speaker 1: So he's an AVERTI you work with Donnie Deutsch for
Speaker 1: a long time. Um, he set up like a company
Speaker 1: with this like urban um d Rush, this urban Donnie
Speaker 1: Deutsch thing. And then well how did in with the
Speaker 1: family business? Eventually my dad retired, so my my brother
Speaker 1: came in for about he's stuck there about ten years
Speaker 1: and then you know, and then my dad just kind
Speaker 1: of got rid of it. But was there any money
Speaker 1: when he sold it? Yeah? Absolutely? Okay, they had the
Speaker 1: condo in Florida. We still have the building. They had
Speaker 1: the condo in Florida with all the other Greek owners
Speaker 1: in Fort Laura Dale, which they still have the house.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Sais you know, so there's snowbirds
Speaker 1: they call it. Okay, So your father owned a diner
Speaker 1: until you were how old? Uh? Teenager? May just a
Speaker 1: twelfth thirteen? And then he had this restaurant. How close
Speaker 1: was the diner to your house? Up five minutes? Okay?
Speaker 1: Did your mother work in the diner? So? How much
Speaker 1: were you in the diner? I was I was just
Speaker 1: to feel potatoes. I'd still put me in the back,
Speaker 1: turn over a big like fifty gallon cauldron and give
Speaker 1: me a stack of potatoes. I said, there peeled potatoes.
Speaker 1: My dad was like, you know, he he left the
Speaker 1: house at fourth three in the morning. It was a weird.
Speaker 1: We'd always have dinners a family, because breakfast and lunch
Speaker 1: was really in the dinner. It was. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: a four hour kind of vibe. It was more like
Speaker 1: a right next to the train station. So it's a
Speaker 1: lot of breakfast, a lot of lunch, and then my
Speaker 1: dad would come home, we'd have dinner as of family.
Speaker 1: My mom would go and close up, and and then
Speaker 1: my dad would fall We watched Courtravettie's father and he
Speaker 1: fall asleep in the lazy boy and I had to
Speaker 1: wake him up, and then it all started over again.
Speaker 1: If we went out, like on a Sunday night U
Speaker 1: to like a church dance, we'd go to the dinner,
Speaker 1: he'd open it up and start making the muffins, you know,
Speaker 1: at midnight whatever, and he sometimes he didn't sleep there.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, it's it's a blood business.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a real restaurant business in general, but
Speaker 1: it would be the type of thing that you kind
Speaker 1: of owned the place. You'd go and say, hey, you
Speaker 1: don't want a cheeseburger. My mom had no idea how
Speaker 1: to shop for you know, forever, because she took everything
Speaker 1: out of the wall again from the thing, and you
Speaker 1: know we'd have to stay. You know, it's come home
Speaker 1: another thing, like I come up from school. Hey, I
Speaker 1: think I come home with Tim whatever, my friend, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna do band practice in the basement. Whatever. He
Speaker 1: got hungry man? All right, something small? All right, I'll
Speaker 1: make you some steaks. You know. It's like you know
Speaker 1: it didn't you know we had a deep fry in
Speaker 1: our house. It's like, you know, so was that kind
Speaker 1: of thing? Okay, So let's turn to music. Were you
Speaker 1: a big music fan from growing up? Yeah? I loved it,
Speaker 1: you know was um it's funny. Uh. I think I
Speaker 1: told you I've met all Beatle I met all four Beatles.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that story, right, so, uh George Paul
Speaker 1: and Ringo event later. You know, once I was out here.
Speaker 1: But I met John as a kid at Walt Disney World. Again,
Speaker 1: I was young. It was like seventy one, I want
Speaker 1: to say, right when they were breaking up. I think
Speaker 1: it's it's documented somewhere. How do you meet John Lennon
Speaker 1: at Disney at the Polynesian Hotel, at the buffet of
Speaker 1: what was she doing there? He was there with Julian,
Speaker 1: there with Julian. I think I'm pretty sure it was Yoko.
Speaker 1: Some people think maybe it's made paying I can't. I
Speaker 1: have to do the research again. But that's where he was.
Speaker 1: That's where he signed his disillusion papers for the Beatles.
Speaker 1: But um so, my brother, like I said, my brothers
Speaker 1: four years older than me, and I knew the Beatles
Speaker 1: kind of from the cartoons, and I like the music
Speaker 1: and whatever. But I'm online and all of sudden he's
Speaker 1: all he's not, you know, on top of me. He's
Speaker 1: like sausages. Like every time, every time I put some
Speaker 1: on my plate, he was like, he's like pancake. I'm
Speaker 1: like in the accent. It was just it was all
Speaker 1: too much. Like I had never met a British person,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was like five, maybe four, I
Speaker 1: was four, maybe four or five whatever, like this guy
Speaker 1: who he is whatever? Okay, maybe it's a little seven
Speaker 1: of it. Okay, he's like, oh, potatoes, potatoes, potato, like
Speaker 1: like like yeah, potatoes, you know, And I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: lie to you. Always been a fat kid, So I
Speaker 1: got back to the table and we're sitting like one
Speaker 1: table over from them. My parents aren't just freaked out
Speaker 1: because they were working. It didn't really you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like as much of them. And my brother grabs,
Speaker 1: He's like, what were you saying? Dude? What were you saying?
Speaker 1: And I like, I don't know. I just started crying
Speaker 1: at the table, like I lost my ship at the
Speaker 1: table and just I was crying and like, what do
Speaker 1: you say? What are you saying? Leave your brother lane?
Speaker 1: What do you say? Like? Who is that guy? Like
Speaker 1: my Dad's like who is this guy? You know? Like
Speaker 1: and so then they had this man made lagoon. Will
Speaker 1: you do these like power boats? And that was with
Speaker 1: my dad in the power boat and lending comes like hey, sausages,
Speaker 1: and my dad's like, who's your friend? So that was funny.
Speaker 1: But music can ask if you remember four years old
Speaker 1: he was sent I think I was six or seven? Okay?
Speaker 1: Could he walk around freely? Yeah? It was like it
Speaker 1: was I don't know. I guess he was who knows,
Speaker 1: but man, I don't think anybody with him. But I
Speaker 1: think my mom would get these um like Dick Clark
Speaker 1: records and it and like twenty twenty fifties tracks aside,
Speaker 1: and I would listen to those constantly Earth Angels and
Speaker 1: she's just saying Earth Agel to me, and I got like,
Speaker 1: I really had to Simon and Garfunkel when I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: like Cecilia was a big one for me, and I
Speaker 1: just loved it. And then I started playing drums. My
Speaker 1: brother got a drum step for Christmas. Of course I
Speaker 1: want to play drums. He but he was, you know,
Speaker 1: fourteen and I was ten, and uh so he started lessons.
Speaker 1: I started lessons. I started getting pretty good, and then
Speaker 1: I'm on eleven and twelve. I'm like eleven, twelve year old,
Speaker 1: and don't want to play with me in the junior
Speaker 1: high band because I'm I'm still in grade school. So
Speaker 1: that Christmas, I'm like, I want a bass guitar. I
Speaker 1: had no idea what it was was I want a
Speaker 1: bass guitar because I knew every band had a bass player,
Speaker 1: and so they got me a bass player for I
Speaker 1: think about six or seventh grade that Christmas, and by
Speaker 1: January I was in four bands because oh, you play,
Speaker 1: you gotta be in our band, man, you know. So
Speaker 1: that's and then I turned over to bass, and then
Speaker 1: I never looked back. No, you did you take piano
Speaker 1: lessons as a kid, I took I just took drum
Speaker 1: lessons and bass lessons. Basically I'm not taking I mean,
Speaker 1: I can fake it pretty good. I can pick out
Speaker 1: the notes. I can I can read a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I'm not I'm not a highly skilled musician. So
Speaker 1: when you're in a high school, you're playing in bands
Speaker 1: and playing a couple of bands. And played Max when
Speaker 1: I was sixteen, Maxes, Kansas City. Yeah, yeah, what what
Speaker 1: kind of music were played? We were a silly pomp band.
Speaker 1: It was kind of crazy. We played a biker night
Speaker 1: at Max's and they loved it. They thought we were cute.
Speaker 1: You know, you've been to Max's back. So they middle
Speaker 1: of those long tables like those my ar lead singer
Speaker 1: kind of walked out table like songs like they dreamer
Speaker 1: dream like these little kids, and like they got to
Speaker 1: kick out of it. Played Max's different lounge in the city,
Speaker 1: my father's place, and I'll remember my father in Roslyn.
Speaker 1: We played a bunch of un like the place called
Speaker 1: Uncle Sam's. Also, rather that there was a competing place.
Speaker 1: We played a bunch of these places when we were
Speaker 1: still young, very young, we were I mean, we're okay.
Speaker 1: We had one guy who was Phili Bono, sweet guy.
Speaker 1: His dad was uh in charge. He had an air
Speaker 1: freight company at the airport. If I mean that's all
Speaker 1: I need okay, Oh yeah. He was in and he
Speaker 1: was in summer camp for most of Phil's childhood. He
Speaker 1: was away at summer camp um and he kind of
Speaker 1: funded everything, Like we get we had a great gear,
Speaker 1: we had a truck, we had like lighting things. So
Speaker 1: we're very we're very pro. That's pretty serious. And was
Speaker 1: there a dream we all thought were gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: let's do it. He was. He was a songwriter, and
Speaker 1: I kind of it's where I started, Like he was
Speaker 1: a songwer. I kind of would range it and say, look,
Speaker 1: we can't just be playing the same four songs, important
Speaker 1: chords all the time. We gotta do something different. And
Speaker 1: this is Petty became really influential to me. Like Dan
Speaker 1: the Torpedoes wreck it came out and I was like,
Speaker 1: I really studied that, and like we had a bridge.
Speaker 1: We need to say something interesting, we need this. So
Speaker 1: I started arranging these songs and that's what became that's
Speaker 1: what led me to be want to be you know production. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're in the high school, you graduated from high
Speaker 1: school and then what go to n y U, which
Speaker 1: is okay, but why n y you? It's a good story. Again,
Speaker 1: I might be boring you. But so I applied to
Speaker 1: m y U because I had this music business program,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a morphous and weird. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the Clive Davis School. It was a it was a
Speaker 1: dual major you can do. It was music and business.
Speaker 1: I play to use l A because I wanted to
Speaker 1: go to California. It was it's a dream. And you know,
Speaker 1: you live out the East coast Boston University because it
Speaker 1: was it wasn't music college town at a time, and
Speaker 1: I think Syracuse and my brother went there and then
Speaker 1: in the in the spring, whenever he finds out where
Speaker 1: they're going, it's like, I got it to this this.
Speaker 1: I got to see my guidance counselor, Mr McMahon. I said, hey, MGA,
Speaker 1: what's happened? He goes goes. Oh, I didn't send anything.
Speaker 1: You think I didn't send anything out? Where do you
Speaker 1: want to go? I said, Well, at this point, I
Speaker 1: guess y U you know because I've gone I've been
Speaker 1: going to the city and playing in the city. He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you go at any whet you We'll go to the
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurant, bring your mother, we'll talk about it. Pools
Speaker 1: a public school by this gets this gets weird. I
Speaker 1: go to his office. He goes, all right, we go
Speaker 1: getting his Dodge Dart, late model Dodge Dart, no license
Speaker 1: player like. Mr McMahon goes because don't worry. They know
Speaker 1: who I am. You know who I am, right, George.
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, you'm Mr McMahon, my guy, that's counsel.
Speaker 1: But you know right. I'm like, okay, goes through a
Speaker 1: stop sign. He's like, they saw him. You don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. Then starts telling me the story of falling down.
Speaker 1: No Bruce like, I'm kind of following it. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: he goes because you know who I am, right, he's Jesus.
Speaker 1: He thinks he's Jesus. We get to the restaurant. I'm
Speaker 1: umen parking a lot, ma'am. I see that someone with
Speaker 1: the baby. I see the baby have nothing but happiness,
Speaker 1: enjoying with this baby. Is that blah? Blah blah. See George,
Speaker 1: I kne who I am. I'm white and freaking out.
Speaker 1: My mom's already this Chinese restaurant called Moers, which is
Speaker 1: a great Chinese restaurant in the the Woodberry Commons. We sit down, Sophie,
Speaker 1: your son is this blah blah blah blah blah. He starts.
Speaker 1: He starts giving a sermon. Basically, he has a glass
Speaker 1: of wine. I call it, you know, I like, this
Speaker 1: is my but and I was like, oh, he's such
Speaker 1: a good boy. You know, we don't get him done with.
Speaker 1: You get Sophie. I promise you're gonna George tell your
Speaker 1: mother you you're on in respect them. Okay, great, I
Speaker 1: don't need anything. Mom's eating the whole time. I take
Speaker 1: my food to go. We get in the car and
Speaker 1: my mom's like, you were very hungry. What happened? I go,
Speaker 1: did you hear what the guy was saying? Oh, he's
Speaker 1: out of his mind? But we're going to n y U.
Speaker 1: You're head to say that we're in. A week later,
Speaker 1: he gets committed. We got n y U. Somehow I
Speaker 1: have no idea to the state. It's mystery because I
Speaker 1: wanted to do like a short film about I think
Speaker 1: it's like a really interesting film about guidance counsel of things.
Speaker 1: He's Jesus and you get you. He gets committed. We
Speaker 1: get a down Yu, and then the rest of decision
Speaker 1: is another funny story when we get down why you?
Speaker 1: But just it's funny that you said that this was today,
Speaker 1: I'd be in therapy. We probably owned the land that
Speaker 1: sizz the school district was not you know that we'd
Speaker 1: have a huge settlement, you know, I mean like, and
Speaker 1: I called my mother, She's like, I don't know. But
Speaker 1: he got in YU, So I guess we got you that.
Speaker 1: I get the n y U. And I see this guy,
Speaker 1: Professor Broderick this September, you know, being later early September,
Speaker 1: dog days of New York City. He's got a blue blaze.
Speaker 1: He's like a jazz hipster. Let's say Mr Burns kind
Speaker 1: of with gray hair, tall, like six four like Hi,
Speaker 1: Professor Brodrick, George Culius, first year you know this music
Speaker 1: busy program? He runs it. What should I take? He
Speaker 1: looks at me. He opens like a steelcase test takes
Speaker 1: out a a tall boy and a round taper back.
Speaker 1: This is how long has it been sitting so it's
Speaker 1: piss warm. I was up takes a few stive because
Speaker 1: hey man, I don't know you had that take whatever
Speaker 1: turns you on. So this is great. This is the
Speaker 1: best school in the world. So for two years I
Speaker 1: took like film class, like some biology for like for
Speaker 1: med students, like I just picked these things. He gets
Speaker 1: retired somehow, they call me to the teen's office, Mr
Speaker 1: colis what we've been doing here for two years? Like
Speaker 1: hey man, just taking what turns me on? Like well,
Speaker 1: you have like three credit stores, this weird major that
Speaker 1: doesn't really exist, and this and that. It was like
Speaker 1: through the So they put me back on track, but
Speaker 1: I didn't. I went four years, but I didn't graduate,
Speaker 1: and I want my degree. If I've now that it's
Speaker 1: the Clive Davis School of whatever. I talytically if you
Speaker 1: were to go back, how much school they say you short?
Speaker 1: I think probably about a year and a half or
Speaker 1: something that, um it's funny. Uh. I had someone looking
Speaker 1: up and they were like like, oh man, no problem, Like,
Speaker 1: oh man, I think you got like a year and
Speaker 1: a half. It's just too much and this and that.
Speaker 1: So I haven't really and by the time to be Honest,
Speaker 1: my third year school, I was already working, you know,
Speaker 1: we were stopped really going to class, would be in
Speaker 1: the studio four or five in the morning, and you know,
Speaker 1: so it was but senior I was really coming at all.
Speaker 1: So I don't blame them. It's not like, Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're in there, you're in this program, when do you
Speaker 1: meet your compatriots? Um? I went out with a girl
Speaker 1: that Rick dated Reuben, and then he was the social
Speaker 1: committee chairman, which meant they gave him a couple hundred
Speaker 1: bucks every three months to throw a party. And he'd
Speaker 1: get as much cheap grain alcohol you can get, and
Speaker 1: I get like a like a hip hop DJ or
Speaker 1: somebody to come down. And this was how long after
Speaker 1: we're going to n y U. This is my junior year. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is my junior year. And then um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he'd throw these parties and I just started helping him,
Speaker 1: you know, d help him DJ and Karen Crates whatever,
Speaker 1: and then he but he was hiring a DJ. He
Speaker 1: wasn't DJJ. He was the DJ. And then he have
Speaker 1: but then you have guests, you have guest people come
Speaker 1: and scratch whatever, blah blah blah, so helping the crates
Speaker 1: and talent whatever. And then so what year we in
Speaker 1: eight five, eight four, I started eighty two and um,
Speaker 1: and then he put out this record call It's Yours
Speaker 1: A little bit slower You're coming. You're have a nexus
Speaker 1: with him. At the time he's throwing these parties, he's
Speaker 1: also starting to put out records. He had made one
Speaker 1: record that he that that he with this guy called
Speaker 1: Tela Rock and this DJ called Jazz J called It's Yours.
Speaker 1: It had n't been out yet, and it went out
Speaker 1: went out that summer. There was one of those things
Speaker 1: you heard everywhere, wasn't on the radio, you know, was
Speaker 1: that you heard every car, every every boom box. You know,
Speaker 1: let's be clear. Is that because you know, if that
Speaker 1: things don't happen by themselves. Was Rick working at that hard? No,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a natural. It was a very natural.
Speaker 1: It was a zeitgeist of hip hop at that moment.
Speaker 1: It was a great beat. The this guy Tiler Rock
Speaker 1: had an amazing voice, um, interesting lyrics. You know, it
Speaker 1: was just it just took hold. It is magical. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that there was no you know,
Speaker 1: no one's working at really he had it, So that's
Speaker 1: what That was the first def Chan release, but def
Speaker 1: Chan wasn't really a label yet. It was the def
Speaker 1: Chaan release through Party Time, which was Mars Leavey. So
Speaker 1: I never got exactly, you never got paid. And then
Speaker 1: he met Rick Russell thought that was I thought Rick
Speaker 1: was a black person. So he's like, I'm gonna meet
Speaker 1: this guy Rick Ruben. They met each other. Now Russell
Speaker 1: was doing what Russell was managing run the MC and producer.
Speaker 1: He was a producer also and he was managing them,
Speaker 1: and he was he's runs you know, he runs brother
Speaker 1: so okay, but he's not going in why are you?
Speaker 1: He lives at the FRAC City. He's older than us.
Speaker 1: He was at City. He's a couple years older. I
Speaker 1: think when the Queen's College was dropped out um they
Speaker 1: started label and the first official release was it was
Speaker 1: l L Cool j Um. So that's when I kind
Speaker 1: of went all time. So I took it. You're dating
Speaker 1: his ex girlfriend, you're helping him with the social parties.
Speaker 1: How do you become all of a sudden invested in
Speaker 1: all this ship. Yeah, it's all about the hang. That's
Speaker 1: my masket. But not everybody knows he's gotta be cool
Speaker 1: like you gotta be you know, you gotta be you
Speaker 1: gotta be easy person to be around, and you gotta
Speaker 1: have you gotta have input, and plus you had it
Speaker 1: was a head of hands. Back then, Um, everything was.
Speaker 1: There's no computers, so everything was manual. So if you
Speaker 1: listen to these old records, these these first eight death
Speaker 1: Jam records, and basically just a drum machine, a guy
Speaker 1: yelling and some scratching. There's not much more music involved
Speaker 1: than that. But if you wanted, if you want to,
Speaker 1: if you just want the high hat to play, you
Speaker 1: have physically mute everything else, so you need his hands
Speaker 1: on the deck. So everything was like everything was manual
Speaker 1: that It's hard to explain it, but it was. It
Speaker 1: took a couple of people to work the desk because
Speaker 1: all right, he comes break, you need to kick drum,
Speaker 1: who's on kick drump, you're on kick drump? You know
Speaker 1: who's on scrap that kind of thing, so you have
Speaker 1: to and then you'd added pieces together and so it
Speaker 1: was it was a more uh kind of like that.
Speaker 1: And then the student I knew music, you know, so
Speaker 1: that was like another thing, and you know, that's it
Speaker 1: just became you just started running around them. You started
Speaker 1: run around the best, the beasts and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and just go to the studio and help. Were you
Speaker 1: a hip hop fan? I loved soul music. I loved
Speaker 1: old black music, the blue stuff like that. So through that,
Speaker 1: you know, that was like the new that was the
Speaker 1: newest black music, you know, So you were a fan
Speaker 1: of the music stuff we were doing and the stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now they start deaf jam. I mean, you're you're
Speaker 1: an official employee. What I'm a I'm a I'm getting
Speaker 1: I'm getting college credit. I'm not getting I think I'm
Speaker 1: not getting paid, of course not. But I have three
Speaker 1: or four jobs. Is the college radio promo guy? I
Speaker 1: was ah, I did sales and I answered the phones
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. When it was basically Rick Rick
Speaker 1: dorm room. So and I had different people. I also
Speaker 1: made different people to be those things. So when I
Speaker 1: was calling up, I can't remember the names that I had,
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump, Yeah, yeah, I'm John John whatever yeah,
Speaker 1: um uh So I would call and then I would
Speaker 1: also be responsible for getting for shipping labels. So you'd
Speaker 1: make this Let's give you the quick story. So you
Speaker 1: go to the studio, which this is another thing that
Speaker 1: was I think I might have told you the story,
Speaker 1: but it was very You knew kind of right away
Speaker 1: where the record was working. You'd go to the studio,
Speaker 1: make a record. You cut an ascetate, go to this guy, Um,
Speaker 1: who's the guy boom boom boom gardener that we had
Speaker 1: a guy in New York, Herbie Herbie Powers. Maybe this guy.
Speaker 1: You get an a state smell like a bowling ball,
Speaker 1: which is great. You just didn't smell it all day.
Speaker 1: You go to the Roxy two in the morning, three
Speaker 1: in the morning. I asked the guy to play. You
Speaker 1: go to up to the d J booth. He played
Speaker 1: this for us. He put it on. He's like, all right,
Speaker 1: wait around, he'd wait around, he put it on. You're
Speaker 1: sitting up on top, you're looking down the dance floor.
Speaker 1: Record comes on and you watch and if people walked
Speaker 1: off weren't interested, you knew this is not ready, this
Speaker 1: is not a record we should put out. People like
Speaker 1: looked up to the DJ booth went what's you know?
Speaker 1: Because also the thing with Hippop, it's all about the
Speaker 1: new which was interesting, which is fun. This is really
Speaker 1: not what my personality is. But it's also about the
Speaker 1: newest record, the newest thing, the freshest to flow. You know.
Speaker 1: That was like it was very much and not knowing
Speaker 1: what was coming next. So like play a record, they
Speaker 1: look up, give you the you know, like give you
Speaker 1: like put your hands in the kind of people get excited,
Speaker 1: like all right, this record is ready to go. Let's
Speaker 1: press it. Who's money were you using? So Rick Rick's
Speaker 1: dad was the baby shoot king of Long Island Total
Speaker 1: you know south Shore, you know, new money kind of
Speaker 1: thing that does anything wrong, you know. I was saying,
Speaker 1: it's like, um, so from that point, okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: make this thing. We had these labels. Labels were printed
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, but the pressing plant was in Jersey. So
Speaker 1: I'd go to Brooklyn on the subway, get two boxes
Speaker 1: of five thousand label whatever it's five thousand labels, take
Speaker 1: them the Port Authority put him on a bus to
Speaker 1: New Jersey and they'd go to the plant and then
Speaker 1: the plant would send to test pressings back and I
Speaker 1: go back to the Port Authority, wait for the wait
Speaker 1: for the Union bus to come in. Take that and
Speaker 1: then I would take it down. We'd give us to
Speaker 1: DJs and stuff. Like that. And then we had we
Speaker 1: had an official distributor in New York who was like,
Speaker 1: because indies, they didn't pay you to you put the
Speaker 1: next record out. So there was a there was a
Speaker 1: there's a place what's that called. So we'd have one
Speaker 1: official place in Long Island City that would handle all
Speaker 1: the stuff and they would they would order directly from
Speaker 1: the plant once we once the record without and but
Speaker 1: then we get two boxes and sell it on the
Speaker 1: sly to this woman uh Pearl on like eleventh Avenue
Speaker 1: in the forties, and she would buy for cash and
Speaker 1: she just go cash and my job was to go
Speaker 1: drop him off there and you have to cash. But
Speaker 1: back then it was all training hookers that area. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like as hip as it is now. And so
Speaker 1: I take a subway there or whatever. I walk over
Speaker 1: with these two boxes and then I had like five
Speaker 1: in all his money. I put it down my pants
Speaker 1: and I treat myself to a cab to get home.
Speaker 1: So that was the beginning. That was the first eight records.
Speaker 1: There were these twelve inches and then uh Steve Bounci
Speaker 1: signed def Jam as a label. So who signed Jeff
Speaker 1: Steve Abowski? Oh, Steve Roboski d okay. He signed def
Speaker 1: Jam as a label to Columbia and then they started.
Speaker 1: They kind of took over the stuff, and then the
Speaker 1: first album was Yellow Cool J Record Radio, which again
Speaker 1: like you kind of know. So I'm coming out from
Speaker 1: Black Rock. I've got a bunch of cassettes now, and
Speaker 1: I'm walking down the street. I'm on Fifth Avenue. I
Speaker 1: see these two kids who are carrying a boom box
Speaker 1: that's twice there, black Rock the CBS, but black Rock
Speaker 1: CBS building. And these two kids are like sharing a
Speaker 1: boom box, this giant radio and the cover of the
Speaker 1: cool Radio, which is basically the radio. And so I
Speaker 1: see these two guys and they listen to something whatever.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. I'm like, I'm like, hey, hand.
Speaker 1: They look at me first, I think I'm weird. I'm
Speaker 1: like hand in a cassette. It's a local J. They
Speaker 1: look at it, they see the radio. They look back
Speaker 1: up at me, like what's happening here? Exactly to look
Speaker 1: at the thing. Took out their cassette, put this cassette in,
Speaker 1: shut it, and I think rock the Bells is the
Speaker 1: first track. L L cool J is hardest. Let me
Speaker 1: hit play. They both looked down at the radio, they
Speaker 1: looked at me, put the radio on their shoulder. Then
Speaker 1: they were happy, and I remember I went back down.
Speaker 1: I went back to the dorm room like l is
Speaker 1: going to blow up, Like why do you say that? Said,
Speaker 1: I just gave these two kids. They couldn't be like
Speaker 1: they were like twelve fourteen, and they just put it
Speaker 1: on it, said they It was the happiest of this.
Speaker 1: And at this point Rob Botski was a club. He's
Speaker 1: a director of Vice Spread Vice Prevor or whatever the
Speaker 1: titles of Colombia. So that was the That was the
Speaker 1: first album, the first Deep Channel album, and there was
Speaker 1: I think it's the first rapt record to go gold,
Speaker 1: maybe first album to go gold. Okay what came after?
Speaker 1: And it was the best twelve inch which is pretty fun.
Speaker 1: And then the BC's album Okay, how did the Beast?
Speaker 1: You weren't the BC's on tour with Madonna before that
Speaker 1: album because it was a single. They they've done these
Speaker 1: two singles, um and she took them. I had to
Speaker 1: say to her credit, you know, we'd see around and
Speaker 1: she was cool. You know, she took them and she
Speaker 1: was even when they want to get I mean he's
Speaker 1: uh m c a. It was the greatest, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they would they would practice their routine. They
Speaker 1: practice the routines at thet our dorm in the basement.
Speaker 1: But I remember I went to see a show. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been all around the world and this
Speaker 1: is Madonna. This is like a virgin's over every girl's
Speaker 1: thirteen fourteen in the audiences. Like I've been around all that,
Speaker 1: I've been around this motherfucker. I can tell you right now.
Speaker 1: There's no pussy like Boston like, and the kids are
Speaker 1: hard five. It's like, you know, like get these people.
Speaker 1: Like there's so many complaints, but she kept them, and that,
Speaker 1: uh the best was the end of the tour was
Speaker 1: at the Garden and I went out and got a
Speaker 1: bunch of super soakers and during her set they ran
Speaker 1: on and they were underwear and they hosed her down
Speaker 1: with Then that was like a big That was a
Speaker 1: big event. Okay, do you have any idea license to
Speaker 1: It was gonna be so gigantic. Again, I think we're
Speaker 1: just making me. You know, I was firstfully involved, but
Speaker 1: I'm saying I think I sang on. It may played something,
Speaker 1: but it was like, I think it was so happy.
Speaker 1: We just make ourselves happy, like there was so it was.
Speaker 1: I explained to it. It's such a like they were
Speaker 1: like princes of the city, you know, and somehow just
Speaker 1: by being in the court, you were like this thing
Speaker 1: like everything was open to you. Everybody want to talk
Speaker 1: to you. People come downtown. That's when downtown started coming
Speaker 1: to these things. And you know, Lauren Hutton and try
Speaker 1: to pick me up at some club one time, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was a hundred pounds lighter and a lot cuter,
Speaker 1: but you know, and it was just a moment. It
Speaker 1: was a very magical moment. They could do no wrong.
Speaker 1: You know, they were anointed whatever reason. It was still
Speaker 1: it wasn't worldwide, but you just felt good about it.
Speaker 1: But you had no idea it was gonna don't think
Speaker 1: you never know, you know, you don't think it's gonna
Speaker 1: be that crazy. Did you read Did you read the book?
Speaker 1: Their book? I haven't read it. Yeah, I skimmed it.
Speaker 1: The books. It's amazing. Get it on tape because they
Speaker 1: tell a lot of the stories and they have just
Speaker 1: with my nephew last time. He has the book and
Speaker 1: the tape. Yeah, I listened It's Funny to a Treat
Speaker 1: to Vegas, but I never drove the Vegas like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna specifically go to the Vegas. I can
Speaker 1: buy this book. Listen to it and you'll hear it.
Speaker 1: It was a magical time and those I mean, they
Speaker 1: really were blown up into a crazy world. It didn't
Speaker 1: affect me as much. But okay, so what else were
Speaker 1: you working on? There are desk just I mean that
Speaker 1: we then then we had like some R and B
Speaker 1: stuff that didn't Wressell started like doing some R and
Speaker 1: P things, have one that recorded Orange Juice Jones the Rain,
Speaker 1: so you and him, um and then it kind of
Speaker 1: and then it just kind of got weird, like you know,
Speaker 1: the PCs they were gonna make a second you know,
Speaker 1: Rick and they started to have their thing. We're got
Speaker 1: funny with the money, as I like to say, and
Speaker 1: just Rick the movie it just kind of fell apart,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, so it fell apart. That's when you
Speaker 1: go to work at A and M and they go
Speaker 1: to Capital to Capital, they move out here, right, but
Speaker 1: they name check you on the record. You are you
Speaker 1: involved at all? Just you know what rhymes of orange Okay,
Speaker 1: So going back to the story, you're at A and
Speaker 1: M Now you moved to California, to California. I moved
Speaker 1: to California in nine. Okay, Suddenly it was Death American
Speaker 1: and it was all rock instead of hip hop. Right.
Speaker 1: The first was Slayer, Right, I think it was Slayer,
Speaker 1: and then the Crows, a band called Wilf Spain. Maybe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was much more rock. What does that have to
Speaker 1: say about you know, rude Rick, He's I think he
Speaker 1: was really enamored with l A. He loved it. We
Speaker 1: came out, he'd been out here before, like for business
Speaker 1: or something. And then we came out in eighty six
Speaker 1: to do this um soundtrack to Not the One Andrew
Speaker 1: McCarthy and and Downey Reddy Stenella's book Less Than Zero.
Speaker 1: So we camped out for about a six weeks at
Speaker 1: the Montreal and we made a bunch of records during
Speaker 1: the course of that, and then I think he was
Speaker 1: really enamored with it. I think also he was making
Speaker 1: Slayer and making Dance Egg he started making he started
Speaker 1: really this really was from the island, more of a
Speaker 1: rock kind of guy. I think he started making those
Speaker 1: records and the seeing he was incredible. I don't know
Speaker 1: when you were here, right, you know, walking up and
Speaker 1: down Sunset handing out flyers. It was I mean, it
Speaker 1: was incredible. I think he just loved it. You know,
Speaker 1: he had a porno actress for a girlfriend. You know.
Speaker 1: It was just he was just loving it. He loved
Speaker 1: the California lifestyle, he loved driving. I think it reminded
Speaker 1: him of um Long Island, which is what this is. Really,
Speaker 1: It's right, that's why. Actually it's a giant it's it's
Speaker 1: a suburb. It's like Sunset Boulevard is like Sunrise Highway,
Speaker 1: Long Island. It's the same difference. It's just many more whatever.
Speaker 1: You keep going and you hit little neighborhoods um So
Speaker 1: I think he was enamored with it and hearing K
Speaker 1: and NC was happening, so getting to hear the record
Speaker 1: he was making on the radio at a Long Beach,
Speaker 1: so I think he was he was just completely enamored
Speaker 1: with it. He loved it. Okay, so you come out
Speaker 1: here in eighty nine to help, but with the label,
Speaker 1: how do you suddenly become a producer? You know, I
Speaker 1: would we're working on the records back in the day,
Speaker 1: you know, I was working on the records with him,
Speaker 1: and I would always go to the studio UM and hung.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to be something, you just call
Speaker 1: yourself that boh okay. So when you were out here
Speaker 1: with Rick and eight nine, how many people were working
Speaker 1: for Deaf American? Uh? Just me and Rick. And then
Speaker 1: it became that I think he hired We distributed through
Speaker 1: Geffen and they hired Mark Theda, you know Mark. I
Speaker 1: think Marked was the first hiring. And then maybe another
Speaker 1: guy from a guy who used to work Kane A.
Speaker 1: C To help with the radio stuff. And that was
Speaker 1: like I had an office. UM, we had an off
Speaker 1: as across the Geffen. There's a pizza place on top
Speaker 1: of Corey Street that was our office. So I had
Speaker 1: an office there. Rick never came into the office and
Speaker 1: he basically worked out of the house. So there maybe
Speaker 1: three to three people for a long time. Then it
Speaker 1: kind of grew while then started getting bigger as more
Speaker 1: so how long did you work with UM? Twelve thirteen years?
Speaker 1: So how did it end? I don't know if it's over.
Speaker 1: I guess it's I mean, I think he just keeps
Speaker 1: he kept moving the label. I think he kind of
Speaker 1: got less. He started becoming more of a superstar producer.
Speaker 1: It's and I don't blame him, you know, it's much
Speaker 1: more fun to make a record with Platinum Max and
Speaker 1: and Mick Jagger and things like that, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think kind of the label stuff wasn't as important
Speaker 1: to him. And he just kept kept moving and it
Speaker 1: kept getting smaller and smaller. And then you will you
Speaker 1: do your own things or your wake up wake up
Speaker 1: one days the Holy ship. There's no company left. No.
Speaker 1: I was doing other stuff. I was like, Um, I
Speaker 1: started working on movies Zoolander, there was the first movie,
Speaker 1: or around with two thousand, two thousand one. Um, I
Speaker 1: did a few record I did a couple records other people. Um,
Speaker 1: you know this is okay. So if the record you produced,
Speaker 1: what are some of the acts you produced other than
Speaker 1: the Crows Jayhawks signed them to the label. A band
Speaker 1: called Freewheelers the time of the label, the record with
Speaker 1: Miriam McKee. Um uh, girl, Tiff Merritt, you know of
Speaker 1: then a bunch of English bands. It's a band called
Speaker 1: Reef did never really happened to have primal scream? Um,
Speaker 1: coolest shaker, Um, my favorite is this guy Dan pen
Speaker 1: you know he is of did a record in ninety
Speaker 1: three or four at Muscle Shoals with the Muscles rhythm section,
Speaker 1: and they were probably in my age. I thought they
Speaker 1: were old man, you know, they're probably the early fifties
Speaker 1: at the time. And that was probably that's that's that
Speaker 1: was one of the things that it was one of
Speaker 1: the best experience and one of the worst experiences that
Speaker 1: it kind of ruined me, you know, I mean it's like, Wow,
Speaker 1: these guys are great, and then I do this record
Speaker 1: for two weeks down and Muscle shoulds. These guys who
Speaker 1: were like amazingly listened to each other that you know
Speaker 1: that And then and I go back, who was It
Speaker 1: was Barry Beckett, David Hood, It was Hood and Roger
Speaker 1: Roger Um uh, Jimmy Johnson guitar, Reggie Young spooner who
Speaker 1: was amazing. Yeah, that was like the core group. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we cut do Right Women, which is one
Speaker 1: of the most amazing songs I've ever We had eleven
Speaker 1: people playing live at one time were like he Damn's
Speaker 1: playing acous guitar and singing, and two guitar players, had
Speaker 1: the bass drums, had a grand piano, electric piano and
Speaker 1: an organ all one thing, and it's just it's have
Speaker 1: you ever heard it? But it's the slowest, funkiest even
Speaker 1: though it's dead slow, it's just still a groove there.
Speaker 1: You can hear the air and it's like and it's
Speaker 1: the only it's the only time I cried. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about now I might cry again. It's the only time
Speaker 1: I cried at work and how to leave the room.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is just too much because it's
Speaker 1: like these guys all came up together. They were telling
Speaker 1: me the stories like they were teenagers. They didn't know,
Speaker 1: they didn't know what a world exis, didn't making this
Speaker 1: greatest music in the world. Wilson Pickett, reather Franklin, and
Speaker 1: they all come back together to serve this guy Dan,
Speaker 1: who was kind of like the arbor of cool. He
Speaker 1: was a James Dean. He's the first guy to have
Speaker 1: a song recorded by another round can we twitter? He
Speaker 1: recorded like a song. He's just like, he's so badass
Speaker 1: and he's the greatest. That's I love him. If you
Speaker 1: ever get a chance to meet him, he's wonderful. But
Speaker 1: um would they give you any respect? It's funny because um,
Speaker 1: so I get down there, and uh, I got Joe
Speaker 1: John Yqwen. So Joe my Cowen sends me down. He's
Speaker 1: working at Sire at the time. He signs Dan. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna signed Dan. I'm gonna We're gonna do this one off.
Speaker 1: You go meet him. He lives in Nashville. I'm like,
Speaker 1: happy to I got to Nashville. I go meet to Anne.
Speaker 1: How you doing great? I just finished the second Crows record.
Speaker 1: We do a little bit of like little dance kind
Speaker 1: of he has he's great alt text, voice of the theater,
Speaker 1: speakers in the basement, incredible. He's like, he's like, well,
Speaker 1: he plays me what he's been doing, and he plays
Speaker 1: me some demos. Yeah, I don't know. I'm Mackie got
Speaker 1: a mat Like everybody's like, it's so funny down there.
Speaker 1: He wants to just keep moving forward, you know, even
Speaker 1: though and when it was the easiest thing. So you
Speaker 1: play me a couple of cuts. I'm like, oh, he's
Speaker 1: a good I said, you know. They go, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta play Okay, what have you been doing? So
Speaker 1: I played him I just finished second Crows record. I
Speaker 1: played a couple of songs and I play of, um,
Speaker 1: what's the one my devil My Angel Thorn on my Side.
Speaker 1: That's the best song on the record. So I planned
Speaker 1: that because I like, this is a good sounding at
Speaker 1: least a good more devil my Angel. What the hell
Speaker 1: is this guy talking about? I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: He goes, he goes, he goes, that's I played some
Speaker 1: other thing goes. That's probably the best cut you play me,
Speaker 1: But I just don't know. This is ugly music, man,
Speaker 1: Like I played him like remedies, Like this is just
Speaker 1: ugly music. What else you got? I finished the first
Speaker 1: Jayhawks record. I played the song called Crowded in the Wings,
Speaker 1: which is like a soul ballad like Crank. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's got the thing, beautiful melody, beautiful story
Speaker 1: about it, you know, Crowded in the wing, Crowded in
Speaker 1: the wing, What the hell does that mean? I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 1: the guy who's been standing on the side of the
Speaker 1: stage all his life, you know, waiting to get it shot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, but I don't understand this crowded in the Wing,
Speaker 1: like he just kind of like this is going nowhere.
Speaker 1: He's got a fifty seven Chevy Nomad station way again,
Speaker 1: and like I'm gonna work at up Dan about fifteen
Speaker 1: years now. It's nothing's happening. You can tell. I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, we have a nice time. I go Damn,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be great. Your record is gonna be great. Um,
Speaker 1: so thanks for seeing me. You can't I can't imagine
Speaker 1: what it's been a thrill um. I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: go to Muscle Souls tomorrow, and I'm like, I'll see you,
Speaker 1: I'll see I'll see you down the road sometimes. What
Speaker 1: do you mean going to most shoals? I said, Dan,
Speaker 1: I don't get to this part of the world very often.
Speaker 1: If I'm three hours from Muscle Souls, I'm going, right,
Speaker 1: you know I'm going. He goes, all right, did you
Speaker 1: ever read Garlics book Sweet Soul Music. It's a must.
Speaker 1: But there's a whole Muscle Soult thing. He goes, all
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what do you come here? You drive,
Speaker 1: but we take my Cadillac. We'll go to Muscle Souls together.
Speaker 1: Like sounds good to me, Bob. So it's like basically
Speaker 1: it's like, uh, Chico and the Man, We're gonna go
Speaker 1: this road trip. You know. It's like green bodn't seeing
Speaker 1: green Book, but imagine like green books. So I got
Speaker 1: him next to me and I start pumping him from
Speaker 1: information even though I know the answers. So how did
Speaker 1: you write this one? And he's like telling me the story.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, that's great, you know. And by the
Speaker 1: time we hit the gas station for the first refill,
Speaker 1: we stopped and he gets an RC coal and peanuts
Speaker 1: he hands to me. He puts the peanuts in the colt, like,
Speaker 1: because I don't know what about peanuts and co col
Speaker 1: this is going to have a treat sensation with drinking
Speaker 1: Coca cola and peanuts. And he's telling me the stories.
Speaker 1: We pull them to Florence, which is it's Florence Muscial
Speaker 1: Souls and Sheffield. We pull them through the first town
Speaker 1: and there was a on the main drag. There was
Speaker 1: a drug store which they used to write all the
Speaker 1: songs that this guy docks somebody or whatever. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I was at the drugs. He's like, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: drug store. I wrote more songs. And then I want
Speaker 1: to know we're doing this And we finally get to
Speaker 1: we get to Fame Fame Studios and Dan, what are
Speaker 1: you doing here? As it going? Oh? Well, you know what,
Speaker 1: thinking about maybe cutting a record, like, who's your friend, Oh,
Speaker 1: George Rakolakas you know you know that black he's got
Speaker 1: that Black crows Like, oh yeah, good record? Here he goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: because so you're gonna cut Here's like we haven't decided yet,
Speaker 1: you know, like he's at it all cool again, and
Speaker 1: we had a must the whole sound same thing. We
Speaker 1: drive back and then I started. Then after I could start,
Speaker 1: he tells about the the echo chamber. He starts talking about.
Speaker 1: Then you know, we're inside baseball and so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm getting all the information I dropped on his house.
Speaker 1: I said, Dan, this is the greatest day of my life.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I can go. You know, nothing
Speaker 1: else happens to me now I've lived it. Good luck
Speaker 1: with the record. It's gonna be great. He's like, well, George,
Speaker 1: if you can get down there on April. You know
Speaker 1: we're gonna start April seven, and if you can get
Speaker 1: down there, we'll do the record. You know. So I've said,
Speaker 1: how of course I'm gonna be there. We did the
Speaker 1: record like in two weeks. Everything was pretty much live.
Speaker 1: He was he wanted to do all the vocals again.
Speaker 1: But it just didn't work. He's like he he everybody
Speaker 1: wanted to please him so bad. They all were playing
Speaker 1: to him. We cut the record pretty fast. We mixed
Speaker 1: it and um and then he how I knew we
Speaker 1: respected He's that he mastered it in Nashville. He's like, George,
Speaker 1: I think I might have made a mistake. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean. He goes, I'm gonna send it
Speaker 1: to you. Send him the record and it was all
Speaker 1: squished and like, you have to hear it. I think
Speaker 1: you'll like it. It's called right, it's very open. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of dynamics, so it's a it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting it's an older it's not a young person's record.
Speaker 1: You know. I said, yeah, I think they stuck the
Speaker 1: life out of the record. Dan. He goes, I said,
Speaker 1: why don't you come out here. We'll do it out here.
Speaker 1: So we drove. He drove out here, We cut it here,
Speaker 1: and then it was you know, he he was happy,
Speaker 1: and I remember reading saying that he was just he
Speaker 1: felt that he could perform. He knew that everything was
Speaker 1: really taken care of in the control room. That's how
Speaker 1: I was. I was able to ease his mind I mean,
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna I wasn't gonna tell them kind of
Speaker 1: what the player had to play. I tried to in
Speaker 1: the beginning we were cutting something. I'm like, okay, great,
Speaker 1: so listen, why don't you uh if he catches that thing, like, George,
Speaker 1: you're gonna give me what you want. You gotta learn
Speaker 1: the song a minute, him a minute. I'm like, all right, cool, cool, cool.
Speaker 1: And this is engineer called Johnny Sandlin, who was the drummers.
Speaker 1: He was a drummer in the Hourglass. Were all brothers.
Speaker 1: And he's he's almost twice the size of me, drinking
Speaker 1: uh a Mason joff of die Pepsi's drinking that all day.
Speaker 1: And so we cut one thing and and David made
Speaker 1: a mistake on the basis and I'm talking to okay, cool,
Speaker 1: all right, second thing, and he's sitting next to me,
Speaker 1: go alright, great, so we can do a second chorus
Speaker 1: on the turnaround in and out okay and then boom baba,
Speaker 1: dude down back in, stay in and then out for
Speaker 1: the thing. Okay, cool, let's do it. I turned you know,
Speaker 1: he goes hear this. I'm sorry, George, I really wasn't
Speaker 1: paying attention. What was that It's the first day and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm like, look, man, I'm from New York.
Speaker 1: I eat fast, like I do it all fast, you know,
Speaker 1: like like I gotta slow it down. So I just
Speaker 1: kind of I had to like take the heat off.
Speaker 1: And then I was also a younger kid, you know,
Speaker 1: like so and then once I just kind of let
Speaker 1: it happen. You know, there's a couple of happy accidents.
Speaker 1: There's it's just great. And like I said, and then
Speaker 1: when we cut, like we cut two right, how to
Speaker 1: leave the thing? I came back in and like, well,
Speaker 1: what any think of that? When I said, you guys
Speaker 1: can play that all day and I'll sit here and
Speaker 1: listen to it. You know, So that one was better
Speaker 1: than the other. It was like a matter of just
Speaker 1: like catching the other thing. Was that kind of Also, Hey, Jimmy,
Speaker 1: has it got nice to meet you. He's got like
Speaker 1: a Scheckter guitar and a roll in cor like these
Speaker 1: kind of eighties and things like and then I see this, okay,
Speaker 1: like what's the that's my greatge that's I played only
Speaker 1: reason like does it tun not? Because like yeah, I said,
Speaker 1: should we try to use it? He goes, well, I
Speaker 1: could try, you know, like so like getting into the
Speaker 1: kind of like get back to the more you know what,
Speaker 1: more organic whatever reason, you know, kind of thing where
Speaker 1: the more old school he kind of things, getting the
Speaker 1: telecaster out, getting defender amps out. You know that that
Speaker 1: was like the first day of kind of like pushing
Speaker 1: it in that direction. And it was just this was easy.
Speaker 1: Now did day have like the final product? Loved it?
Speaker 1: You know, I think he really enjoyed it, but ultimately
Speaker 1: the record didn't. It wasn't was it supposed to. It
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to be a I think it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be like a cachet thing, and he was supposed
Speaker 1: to get out there, and you know, he went out
Speaker 1: and played some shows. He goes him Spooner play every
Speaker 1: now and then if you have you should catch it.
Speaker 1: They do like a two man thing. And then a
Speaker 1: project like that. How much is it cost to make?
Speaker 1: I maybe the whole thing was like fifteen rands of time.
Speaker 1: It really made. But I don't know what they paid him.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't even know what I got paid,
Speaker 1: to be honest. You know, And you worked with Tom Petty,
Speaker 1: work with Tom, so Rick got hired to do Tom's record.
Speaker 1: Well we didn't get hired. They were talking about it
Speaker 1: was the development stage, and he owed a record to
Speaker 1: he owe the greatest hits and a new song to Universal,
Speaker 1: which maybe in the fire and not who knows, but
Speaker 1: I think they kept all their tapes in a different place.
Speaker 1: But he's like, I have to go see Tom petty,
Speaker 1: you gotta come with me kind of a thing because
Speaker 1: he was thinking a little bit scared to be Tom Teddy.
Speaker 1: It's fine, so rick Um, He's like, I really love
Speaker 1: food Move Fever. Like you know, Tom has six seven
Speaker 1: records before with this band, the Heart rerecord. He goes,
Speaker 1: I don't care, Like, well, I think you should listen
Speaker 1: to I'm not gonna listen to him. I mean again,
Speaker 1: knew nothing of Tom's work. It's like, I love he
Speaker 1: loved food Moing Fever. We played that endlessly in the
Speaker 1: car constantly. I like Full Moon Fever. I bet Tom
Speaker 1: likes Full Moon Fever two. So like, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: you better you did listen to some other stuff. So
Speaker 1: he took me out to the valley and see Tom.
Speaker 1: We go to his house and he was just the
Speaker 1: coolest from from the even meet him any time, the
Speaker 1: greatest from the get go, and um, you know I was.
Speaker 1: I was kind of took a little while too, but
Speaker 1: then you know, it's kind of a I've always been
Speaker 1: a little bit of a wise a and he loved it.
Speaker 1: You know, he's he had a great sense of humor
Speaker 1: and he was so generous. So yeah, I worked with Well,
Speaker 1: so Rick's going in, how do you end up doing
Speaker 1: the record? Well, I wanted to do a record, couple down,
Speaker 1: a couple of records down the road. Rick goes in
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm basically I'm his Ed McMahon. I'm with
Speaker 1: him the whole time. You know, they go every time
Speaker 1: they go to the studio and there, you know, um,
Speaker 1: there's a song called Girl and LSD that I make
Speaker 1: that I kind of kind of nudgement to writing, Like
Speaker 1: he started this thing like, oh you should just finish
Speaker 1: that one, keep going, keep going. Um, and so I'm
Speaker 1: just around, you know. And then when they started they
Speaker 1: took they made it a lie of thing, the greatest
Speaker 1: hits whatever that kind of and they start it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a solo record, and they do most of it
Speaker 1: in my Campbell's house. They cut a couple of things,
Speaker 1: a cello whatever, um, and then I got like I
Speaker 1: was doing another record for a minute, so I had
Speaker 1: like or I was working on something else, so I
Speaker 1: would get there a little later. And they started always
Speaker 1: putting the song wild Flowers on wild Flowers every time
Speaker 1: I pull in. That was whooping me up. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: what why are you guys always like and they were
Speaker 1: kind of punking me like they were just two it
Speaker 1: so they knew. I was like, why isn't this one finished?
Speaker 1: This is done, like, you know, well maybe we should
Speaker 1: add you know, you know that I'd be out there
Speaker 1: playing a click clock thing or I played something on it,
Speaker 1: you know, but um so then yeah, so I stayed
Speaker 1: close to Tom and uh and then he called because
Speaker 1: they did this box set. The box set. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he called me. He's like, we gotta do this thing,
Speaker 1: and you know, doing this box set when you go
Speaker 1: through my archives and finished what's not you know, finished
Speaker 1: a few things, clean up a few things. And that's
Speaker 1: when I really bonded with him. And then um, he
Speaker 1: was just I think they made another record and he
Speaker 1: was just sitting around and Tony's manager dem was like,
Speaker 1: go go up and see Tom, Like what's going on?
Speaker 1: He goes, he should be making a record. I'm like okay.
Speaker 1: He's like, let's just go out and see Tom. You
Speaker 1: can't tell me. So I would go out to Malibu
Speaker 1: and visit with him, and then you play me, like
Speaker 1: what have you been doing? He's got a couple of songs,
Speaker 1: like play me this one? He played me the last
Speaker 1: DJ the song. I'm like, oh, that's great, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna record. He goes, yeah, I'll get to it whatever
Speaker 1: I said. Well, and I was obsessed with Boom and
Speaker 1: Fever as well. It's like, how did you do those
Speaker 1: things with Jeff? I remember? You tell me? And Mike
Speaker 1: was there like like, well, we would do two guys
Speaker 1: who play the guitar. Then we'd switched guitars, move around,
Speaker 1: and we'd stack them and like why don't we try
Speaker 1: to do that with this one? And then that's that
Speaker 1: was we were off and running. That's what it became.
Speaker 1: Them teaching me how they made the record became making
Speaker 1: the record. Okay, so then how do you switch board
Speaker 1: of movies? Um? So, being out here, all my friends
Speaker 1: are directors mostly now bands break up, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like one guy wants to be a chef. This guy
Speaker 1: you know, this band breaks up. They hate each other.
Speaker 1: And Ben Stiller, who I knew just from being in
Speaker 1: kind of you know out here in l A. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm making this movie, you should do music. Like what
Speaker 1: does that even mean? He goes, You'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, so I just you hired me
Speaker 1: to do the music for this movie zoo Lander. I
Speaker 1: had no idea what I was doing. And it was
Speaker 1: a comedy. I want to make it funny. And we
Speaker 1: put some song and he loved it. We had a
Speaker 1: great men The first thing they had this remember zoo Lander,
Speaker 1: they have the walk off and so they're an editorial
Speaker 1: and I send them beat It by Michael Jackson because
Speaker 1: it's funny and it's you know, it's referenced whatever and ever.
Speaker 1: This is great, so great, thanks, this is great, keep going,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. And I got a call from the
Speaker 1: studio did you get them beat It? And like yeah, why?
Speaker 1: He goes, do you know what? I go no idea.
Speaker 1: Why it's gonna be expensive? Like, well you can't have
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, said is it funny? You know? I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: then it's worth x amount of whatever it is. If
Speaker 1: it's funny, it's funny, you know, it's it's worth it, right,
Speaker 1: And like I'm like, well, if you think it's a problem,
Speaker 1: maybe you guys, you know, maybe I'll tell Ben you
Speaker 1: guys think it. Oh no, no, it's fine, it's fine,
Speaker 1: just don't do it again. And then the next thing
Speaker 1: there was like was call me like you know that
Speaker 1: just completely stuff and that I thought would make us
Speaker 1: laugh and have fun, you know, And that was that
Speaker 1: was the beginning of it. And I've worked on all
Speaker 1: his movies since. Okay, so what's your we look like
Speaker 1: these days? I who knows, you know, Like like right now,
Speaker 1: I'm working on a Nike commercial and it's changed directions
Speaker 1: eight times. You know. I've been in the studio working
Speaker 1: on pieces this and it's a minute spot and who
Speaker 1: knows what's going to be um um. I'm working on
Speaker 1: a couple of TV shows that are interesting. It's a
Speaker 1: little remote because they're shooting in Canada. A lot of
Speaker 1: it's done in posts. So I'll start seeing it. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: I've seen a few episodes. Is I'll get up, have
Speaker 1: breakfast and which way for the phone calls? You know?
Speaker 1: I start making calls or whatever. Is okay, So if
Speaker 1: you're working on a Nike commercial, what exactly are you
Speaker 1: doing creating the music for this spot? Okay? So they're
Speaker 1: not licensing something, so you're creating it from scratch. How
Speaker 1: do you do that? Um? Well, it's again this things.
Speaker 1: This is kind of boring, but it became It was
Speaker 1: supposed to be one thing in it turns of another.
Speaker 1: It supposed to be a girl drummer playing live and
Speaker 1: this guy called the v digs, who is um so okay,
Speaker 1: so the video has people playing in it. That was
Speaker 1: the idea. They're gonna shoot. They're gonna shoot this girl
Speaker 1: drummer and this guy kind of it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: conversation between the drums and the and the vocalist and
Speaker 1: with with clips from sports. It's the fourth of July spot.
Speaker 1: And then it just kept changing until like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna use her, but we're not. We're gonna do
Speaker 1: it live, but we're not gonna do that. We want
Speaker 1: we do want music. We don't want to drum beat.
Speaker 1: There's like, well, we'll just do a breakbeat and we'll
Speaker 1: do something. So it's just they really put it through
Speaker 1: the okay, though they have money, that's one thing, unlike music,
Speaker 1: but they don't want to pay and nobody wants to
Speaker 1: pay anything. That's other thing. It's it's so funny as
Speaker 1: I am not complaining, but I make much less on
Speaker 1: a movie now than I did when I first started
Speaker 1: um and nobody wants to pay for anything. And what
Speaker 1: happened was in order to get these movies made, this
Speaker 1: is the first thing they do is they slice the
Speaker 1: music budget and then it's like, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: And then you get to the part we're supposed to
Speaker 1: figure it out, it's like we want led zeppelind Well
Speaker 1: guess what you you you you threw that away when
Speaker 1: you you know, kind of a thing. So it's that's
Speaker 1: the one thing that's that's that's a kind of a
Speaker 1: drag is talking about like talking about money. It's boring.
Speaker 1: It's just sport. It's like, we want this, but we
Speaker 1: can't afford it. Every every conversation I get is hey man,
Speaker 1: can you working to say? We really don't have any
Speaker 1: It's like that's that's every no matter what it is,
Speaker 1: come make my record. I don't have any money to
Speaker 1: do this. I don't have money, so it's just what
Speaker 1: do you think accounts for that. I think people don't
Speaker 1: value music at the end of the day. I think
Speaker 1: it's been devalued. Well, let's say you're you're working on
Speaker 1: a movie. They just figure they can get it from
Speaker 1: somewhere else or something else is good or what. It depends.
Speaker 1: That's why I like to work with a good like events. Eventually,
Speaker 1: if you stand your ground, you'll get what you know,
Speaker 1: you'll get you want. And that's not to say that
Speaker 1: I haven't worked on small movies with but we still
Speaker 1: wind up getting it. We get the other people to comitulate,
Speaker 1: you know. You say, hey, this is a special kind
Speaker 1: of movie, and everybody's doing it for this, you know,
Speaker 1: So that's all we have, you know. So it's just
Speaker 1: different levels of it. Okay, So you say, okay, you
Speaker 1: wake up, you're receiving phone calls, You're making phone calls.
Speaker 1: Are you working it? Working in looking for gigs? I
Speaker 1: don't really do that. Okay, So let's say your phone call,
Speaker 1: let's just say the Nike commercial. So you've got a
Speaker 1: certain number of calls from that. Will your other calls
Speaker 1: be about the Nike commercial? Or there are certain people
Speaker 1: you check in with it on a regular basis. My
Speaker 1: friends and people, you know, like people that are in
Speaker 1: music or film. People will talk talk every day, but
Speaker 1: like the any there's a movie being finished now, this
Speaker 1: Joker movie that Todd Phillips directed, I'll go to the
Speaker 1: I'll go after this. I'll probably go to the sounds
Speaker 1: that they started mixing. So I'll go and listen to
Speaker 1: what they're doing. And but you didn't work on it,
Speaker 1: yeah you did. Think it's been along, it's been in progress.
Speaker 1: You know, it's went out the end. So the stuff
Speaker 1: has been the score has been recorded, the music has
Speaker 1: been picked. It's just a matter of mixing it for
Speaker 1: the final for you know, they do it in reels,
Speaker 1: you know, they makes it really so I'll go check
Speaker 1: that out. Um I just got another episode of the
Speaker 1: TV show. I'll watch that and see what's in there,
Speaker 1: what they need. Um uh no, I do know the
Speaker 1: No Bound Back movie. We're doing a soundtrack. We're doing
Speaker 1: a four you got divorce ones, right, you'll love this one.
Speaker 1: The new one is it's brutal. I'm not to and
Speaker 1: I had to leave the it was like it's incredible,
Speaker 1: it's really This new one is great. Um So we're
Speaker 1: doing a record for that. We're also doing ahead of it.
Speaker 1: We're doing a forty five vinyl like special. Brandy Newman
Speaker 1: did the score. That was amazing working with Randy Newman. UM,
Speaker 1: So I'll make a call about that. It's got the
Speaker 1: mastering from that, I'll checking on the artwork. UM. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you to what degree are you busy with
Speaker 1: work in a regular week. It's always something, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say. It's seven o'clock at night, eight
Speaker 1: o'clock at night, you're parking yourself in front of HBO,
Speaker 1: or you still work. I'm watching The Eleventh Hour with
Speaker 1: Brian Williams, having dinner in my underwear out of a bowl.
Speaker 1: Probably I don't go as now as much, that's sure,
Speaker 1: and and just I'll be I'll maybe listen to music
Speaker 1: after I've had the time. Okay, are you not going
Speaker 1: out as much because there's not as much to hear
Speaker 1: or because you think it's a function of your age
Speaker 1: where you are little? Both? I think, I mean, how
Speaker 1: much is I don't know if there's much of a
Speaker 1: scene right now. I don't think there is either. But
Speaker 1: you know, I discussed this with a lot of people okay,
Speaker 1: so you're heavily into the political thing. It's it's it's weird.
Speaker 1: It's kind of ruined my life. It's all t I
Speaker 1: mean totally, it's it's it's you know. I just remember,
Speaker 1: like just after Trump got elected, I was with you know,
Speaker 1: people who run the live business. They don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about music. They wanted to talk about politics. It'sact
Speaker 1: I don't even care about. It's just it's just so whatever,
Speaker 1: he's terrible. I don't know. Maybe. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: all you listening to Sneak easterile so we're not again.
Speaker 1: But it's just it's this thing you can't turn away from.
Speaker 1: It's worse than a car wreck. You know. It's funny.
Speaker 1: I went, I went especially. I made a record in
Speaker 1: England during the election, specifically want to be out of
Speaker 1: the country. I voted earlier. I was about I went
Speaker 1: to bed over there Hillary Clinton's head great, no problem.
Speaker 1: I get up in the middle night to go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom. I'm like, it's gonna check in. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like four in the morning now and five in
Speaker 1: the morning there, and I see it. I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is not good. You know, It's like, oh, God, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, how bad it be? And it's worse,
Speaker 1: and I think anybody thought, and you wake up every
Speaker 1: morning it's like what do this asshole say? Oh? God?
Speaker 1: And now you're addicted to it and I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's making me feel better or worse, but like
Speaker 1: if I do love, I love Nicole Wallace, I love
Speaker 1: Chris Matthews, you know, and I love Brian That. Those
Speaker 1: are probably three shows I want or listen listen to. No,
Speaker 1: it's too it's I don't. It's too exhausting. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the hell she's talking about. It takes too
Speaker 1: longer to get to the point, you know. I love
Speaker 1: I love all the reports like it's so funny. I
Speaker 1: love all the reporters. Now I love Ashley Parker a
Speaker 1: big crush. Uh uh, Casey, you know what's the case?
Speaker 1: All the I just it's okay, do you check out
Speaker 1: the competition. I'll watch Fox for a few minutes and
Speaker 1: then I'm just like, I feel like you're taking crazy pills,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's just Hannay's evil. I think
Speaker 1: it just doesn't like And I started thinking like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe am I wrong? Am I can No? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I waxed away. I check in on the satellite. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm serious. You can listen to all those stations on
Speaker 1: a regular basis. Is there any hope for music impacting
Speaker 1: the political scene? I don't think so, then why not?
Speaker 1: I just don't think people are gonna rally behind the
Speaker 1: song on the way they used to do. Do you
Speaker 1: mean no, I don't, but I have many Differently, when
Speaker 1: we went through the Iraq War, music had a chance.
Speaker 1: I think the main problem now, which people this is,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of stuff in the entertainment
Speaker 1: business that people in it I don't want to admit. Okay,
Speaker 1: It's like, if you look at the chart, they say
Speaker 1: how big. This first came up to with Randy Phillips
Speaker 1: was running a g and he was going on about
Speaker 1: jay z uh you know, New York state of mind.
Speaker 1: You know what I said, that doesn't mean ship in
Speaker 1: l A, you know. And then they're not even playing it.
Speaker 1: So now you have the I don't want to even
Speaker 1: judge these records, but the biggest records they don't have
Speaker 1: the mind share of the sixties or the MTV era,
Speaker 1: So unless and the type of music they're making is
Speaker 1: not universal. I mean, this is what I find fascinating.
Speaker 1: The last album wasn't that good, But the only person
Speaker 1: with universality was Adell. Okay, but no one else is
Speaker 1: making those records. This is a big leg Why did
Speaker 1: somebody else go there? She'd be on you know, she'd
Speaker 1: be on the cabin and she'd be on those kind
Speaker 1: of if we had variety shows, she'd be like, it'll
Speaker 1: be one of those things, and everybody was Your mother
Speaker 1: would see it, your grandmother and say, you'd see it.
Speaker 1: It's I think there's the the part of everything being
Speaker 1: just poured out. Now there's no focus, you know, so
Speaker 1: it's hard to break through. I guess to what did
Speaker 1: we are you watching other than for work? To what
Speaker 1: you're watching? Television movies? So the HBO stuff, Game of Thrones,
Speaker 1: you know, the euphoria. Not really loved Saul, Better Call
Speaker 1: Saul right fast? I love it. I like, I would
Speaker 1: rather watch Better Call saulve than Breaking Bad. It's a
Speaker 1: slower burner. It's like a real weird it's like a
Speaker 1: weird energy and and Mike's great. I mean, all the
Speaker 1: all the perfulent people are really interesting. Um. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: watching some TV you know that not my wife likes Maizel.
Speaker 1: I haven't really sat down with that. First season was better,
Speaker 1: but there's an episode in the cat Skills in the
Speaker 1: second that's fantastic. Um Uh, you know we have every channel.
Speaker 1: We have HBO, Netflix, Just to be clear, because I
Speaker 1: used to believe. I remember I was reading the Only
Speaker 1: Times once and it was some you know, Live aid
Speaker 1: or something, and the critic they said, I don't have
Speaker 1: that channel. So you know, this is your business. So
Speaker 1: I made a big deal about always having every channel.
Speaker 1: And you know, so you have the Amazon, you have everything.
Speaker 1: Someone says Hulu, Okay, I had a free subscription to watch,
Speaker 1: to show whatever. But it's almost like an insult. It's
Speaker 1: not the ten dollars a month, but it's like it's
Speaker 1: like death by Ducks. I don't have Spotify. I have
Speaker 1: a family plan. I think the I think the iPhone thing,
Speaker 1: the Apple whatever, the Apple Music, I think it's terrible.
Speaker 1: The interface is just okay, just a little. Why do
Speaker 1: you think Apple Music is terrible? I don't understand. Do
Speaker 1: I own this? Am I listening to it? Am I
Speaker 1: looking for? Is it a radio? I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is this is where they left.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have all the services. And the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about Amazon is two things. One you can use
Speaker 1: Alex on your phone and too. They say they create
Speaker 1: the playlist on the fly. However, I don't find there
Speaker 1: are too many revelations there. These are I like for
Speaker 1: the high quality. Okay, these are early. They keep changing
Speaker 1: the high quality name, but it's HQ. If you have title,
Speaker 1: they're using that new Uh you know what is it?
Speaker 1: The new high level m Q and q A. Ostening depends. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I have these really good gentle x that they
Speaker 1: sent me. I mean, I get the big rig there
Speaker 1: too that I can run via Sonos. You're you're listening
Speaker 1: at home. But if I'm listening at home, if I'm listening,
Speaker 1: I don't do a lot of hiking. Okay at night
Speaker 1: and I'm listening on my I don't want to give
Speaker 1: anything away because now I'll be killed. But where I
Speaker 1: normally hiked the about fifteen years ago, we were talking,
Speaker 1: we knew the rangers, and he ever any crime here
Speaker 1: and he goes just boyfriend and girlfriend once and where
Speaker 1: I am listen every case. It's really weird because occasionally
Speaker 1: when it's really fucking hot, like over a hundred degrees.
Speaker 1: I've had a couple of experiences with a homeless people
Speaker 1: all right, start climbing up and they're on the trail,
Speaker 1: and it's like this is weird. Okay, but but that's
Speaker 1: when I listen. Okay, I listened sendaiserst never gonna listen
Speaker 1: to beats. I had a pair of Bluetooth sand Heisers.
Speaker 1: It also be the magnets went out and I just
Speaker 1: threw them away. I had for like six years. But
Speaker 1: the Bluetooth sound is just not as good. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: heard these um ribbon headphones someone's making. Okay, that's for
Speaker 1: the home though, Yeah, I mean for the home I got.
Speaker 1: They just updated them. But I have the Senderiser HD
Speaker 1: eight hundreds, which you know they said we're the best.
Speaker 1: I've got some odd disease which having a unique sound.
Speaker 1: I got two pairs of those. I think those are great.
Speaker 1: I mean what I listened to, it's it's I mean,
Speaker 1: I have got an A D system. I got some
Speaker 1: old j b L. I haven't an A D integrated.
Speaker 1: I got the old j b L S two, but
Speaker 1: I got another set of speakers because keep it honest.
Speaker 1: But when I listened to most I have this like
Speaker 1: audio engine, Bluetooth player and just you know, I just
Speaker 1: take a little take a little j B L flip whatever.
Speaker 1: It's just it's odd, you know, because I don't want
Speaker 1: to try not listen on the puter, at least listen
Speaker 1: off the computer. But most people just I almost brought
Speaker 1: those audio engranes. How are they cool? It looks cool,
Speaker 1: it sounds good, it's good, it sounds pretty solid. You know,
Speaker 1: how about how how expensive of the ones who watch
Speaker 1: your bucks? I don't know. So it was a gift,
Speaker 1: I think. And then uh and I'll just you know,
Speaker 1: I'll be in the shower, turn on whatever. And I like.
Speaker 1: I like the convenience of this. I think I don't
Speaker 1: think people know what a good record sounds like anymore.
Speaker 1: So he's pointing to the phone from the phone, but
Speaker 1: I don't think people know what a good record really
Speaker 1: sounds like anymore. It doesn't I don't thin get that
Speaker 1: matters it. I don't think it's you wouldn't know. And
Speaker 1: if you did, if you had a really good like
Speaker 1: say Dampen record, if you listen to Dampai record at
Speaker 1: home and you're teenager, you keep reaching for the volume
Speaker 1: button and down wait because it has dynamics, you know,
Speaker 1: nothing really, and where are you on the vinyl thing?
Speaker 1: I got a bunch of it, I know, listen to it,
Speaker 1: to be honest, you know, I got it. I got
Speaker 1: all my vinyl, and I got a couple of turntables.
Speaker 1: They're right there. I rarely listened to it. But the
Speaker 1: reason you're bringing up, you know, I don't I think
Speaker 1: unless you were cutting logue, it makes no sense to me.
Speaker 1: But if it was an analog original master, but I
Speaker 1: remember a c d C the original c D which
Speaker 1: was pretty good, and the second CD on Epic really good,
Speaker 1: and I got a lot of power. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't turn it up halfway and if you creep cranking
Speaker 1: the c D your ears bleed, but you crate the
Speaker 1: vinal you can feel it like the show. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm really I think it's like the whole final thing
Speaker 1: is like Civil War reenactment. I don't get it whatsoever. Well,
Speaker 1: they said c D are back. Did you see that
Speaker 1: they take a censer back. It's like really crazy because uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I've gotten rid of a you know, I
Speaker 1: had you know, a ten thousand of d C d s.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were you know, CD singles that
Speaker 1: never made it. But I have probably two or three
Speaker 1: thousand CDs left, and yeah, so do you. I mean
Speaker 1: the vinals worth something. The c ds you keep owning
Speaker 1: them or you just throw them away, you know, I have.
Speaker 1: I haven't bought one in a long time. But I
Speaker 1: think that's also why I'm not as connected it sounds,
Speaker 1: but not as it sounds important to me these new
Speaker 1: things that come down the pike, because I don't really
Speaker 1: have the same relationship. You know, I'm not holding in
Speaker 1: my hand. I'm not reading about it. I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not well. The difference was when we had to buy
Speaker 1: it and I don't want to. You know, the future
Speaker 1: is here. It's like those guys in Nashville is that
Speaker 1: you couldn't afford everything, and if you bought it, you
Speaker 1: played it to death. Man. That's true. Whereas now you know,
Speaker 1: i'll hear something he goes, oh, you know, that's kind
Speaker 1: of good, But unless it's revelatory, I'm onto the next thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As like I said, they only have you don't have.
Speaker 1: You don't have a tactile relationship with it, so it's
Speaker 1: not it's not as important, you know. But as I say,
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with some of this now, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to get rid of some stuff to to move to
Speaker 1: another location. And on one hand, I could throw out everything.
Speaker 1: You're of that age. I just wish everything was virtual.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, the DVD the DVDs you haven't watched,
Speaker 1: so that's plex plex. You can load stuff off the plex.
Speaker 1: What's les. I got a friend I want his name,
Speaker 1: is obsessed with plex. It's um, it's a service. It's
Speaker 1: like your own. When you talking about a home only,
Speaker 1: are you talking about the cloud? It's home only? But yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it's it's it's it's your own server. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. I mean there's a number of companies wherever
Speaker 1: you wanted. So he's at about ten tho movies on there.
Speaker 1: He's just Adam and Costello, shorts, Laurel and Hardy, uh
Speaker 1: you know, uh, some buddies. You know. That's the problem
Speaker 1: I have. And I don't know. I don't know what
Speaker 1: would be like a teenager risk you have. I have
Speaker 1: no time. It's like I used to enjoy alphabetizing my
Speaker 1: albums whatever, and it's like, you know the amount of
Speaker 1: time you never I'm busy seven. I'm not complaining about it,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to be able to on demand, okay,
Speaker 1: because like you know, I'm sitting there with like twenty
Speaker 1: DVDs sub documentaries and I say, okay, well I can
Speaker 1: only play this at because otherwise computers don't have a
Speaker 1: DVD player. And I know the problem is they go
Speaker 1: from service to service. If I knew they were a
Speaker 1: hundred percent available, I would toss something. But then of
Speaker 1: course there's an other thing. Well how many years have
Speaker 1: I owned this and not watched it? I mean, Jim
Speaker 1: Garrett know he blew everything out, which I can't imagine,
Speaker 1: because you know there's certain ship that is never going
Speaker 1: to hit the services. But the thing you learned, like
Speaker 1: when this thing with the Universal fire, you don't have
Speaker 1: a hard copy of something something some day maybe gone,
Speaker 1: you know, may not be may not exist anymore. What
Speaker 1: what did we learn during the Napster era? Somebody it's
Speaker 1: like eBay when it's occasionally and I'm afraid of throwing
Speaker 1: out and somebody said, you go on eBay. Everything you're
Speaker 1: looking for somebody is selling it. And the other thing
Speaker 1: what we know in the fire, which is a tragedy.
Speaker 1: Those are all the masters. The music itself is never
Speaker 1: gonna disappear. How many steps from the real thing is
Speaker 1: something else? That's true? Oh yeah, But but just making
Speaker 1: records for example, Now, so I make a record and
Speaker 1: I use this, I'm on pro Tools eleven. We're up
Speaker 1: to now. But say I made a record on protal six.
Speaker 1: It's a fucking hassle get that drive or you gotta drive.
Speaker 1: It's a different It's not a FireWire, it's a thunderbolt.
Speaker 1: It's it's like I've been going through that recently myself,
Speaker 1: because yeah, it's like, how may we're freaking a daters.
Speaker 1: I have to get well, you know, it's like I
Speaker 1: wanted to connect Thunderbolt two and Thunderbolt three hard drives.
Speaker 1: You gotta buy two connectors, and I end up being
Speaker 1: on the phone, which you don't. I always think that
Speaker 1: there was a problem, which I didn't expect whatsoever. And
Speaker 1: then my girlfriend's got a FireWire drive Thunderbolt to computer
Speaker 1: and wants to get into a hard drive. But in
Speaker 1: order to transfer from one hard drive to another, how
Speaker 1: many adapters you need? It's just crazy, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: At least with a master tape it's you always have
Speaker 1: a tape machine. You can always clean the head and
Speaker 1: put it on and it will play a thing. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that it's not a tragedy. We shouldn't keep
Speaker 1: the masters. What I'm saying is the music is not
Speaker 1: going to disappear. Well, we can sit here and bs
Speaker 1: about all these topics, but before we start, I want
Speaker 1: to hear about your things. So I saw I didn't
Speaker 1: ever knew you played at all when I saw you
Speaker 1: on this picture. You're playing with dway, So is your thing?
Speaker 1: Are you failed? Is that what it was? We say
Speaker 1: we were like a singer songwriter. No no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm older than you. Okay. So in the early sixties
Speaker 1: there was always the folks scene. Okay, everybody had a
Speaker 1: ninline guitar in the house. You took lessons from somebody
Speaker 1: in the neighborhoods he can say, you know the the
Speaker 1: not even that toplicated d whatever, you know whatever. And
Speaker 1: then the Beatles hit, Beatles hit. Everybody got an electric guitar,
Speaker 1: I mean everybody. So I had a cheap, no name
Speaker 1: electric guitar, didn't have an amp for like a year.
Speaker 1: My father found an ad in the paper. He bought
Speaker 1: a Gibson to Bam for like twenty dollars. If I
Speaker 1: only had that amp today exactly. So the way I
Speaker 1: tell the story, because you started laying in bands and
Speaker 1: you start to get up tight because they say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this, we do that. Then I was
Speaker 1: at my friend's house, who was really talented, because now
Speaker 1: we're gonna change key, and I said I'm out, okay,
Speaker 1: But then I got a Gibson s J. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you went to Manny's whatever, and it would like you
Speaker 1: go there with the money in your pocket and then
Speaker 1: you know they want to sell it instantly. I saved
Speaker 1: this money all summer, but I ended up going to
Speaker 1: you know, Manny's and cmatch. But this guy to this
Speaker 1: place way downtown Silver and Horland, and I got this
Speaker 1: Gibson s J. Really sounded good. The only problem with
Speaker 1: my mother put in the fucking crawl space and it
Speaker 1: has some uh what mold on it, and the people
Speaker 1: first the people give them. Of course it's a seventy
Speaker 1: or sixty. Yeah, I know, I knew some people gives them,
Speaker 1: but then those people gives them with somebody trouble, they're
Speaker 1: not there anymore and it wasn't a priority. Okay, but
Speaker 1: I played that like the beginning of college, just for on.
Speaker 1: Then I never played again. So no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I never had a dream. Well, the law school thing
Speaker 1: was a different thing. So I went to college very
Speaker 1: different from you, and that I just knew I had
Speaker 1: to go to college. I didn't want to study any
Speaker 1: of these particular subjects, okay, And I went and exactly
Speaker 1: and I went to the wrong school because of very
Speaker 1: conservative academically. But there were good things as Middlebury College
Speaker 1: and Vermont. This is a dark pre internet, you know,
Speaker 1: one fuzzy TV station. I went from seventy seventy four.
Speaker 1: But the people were prep school people such that I
Speaker 1: could I learned what real rich people were, early rich
Speaker 1: people then and how they because I grew up in
Speaker 1: the melting Pets, you know, suburbs, I never knew anybody
Speaker 1: like that. And I was the guy who had the
Speaker 1: most records, okay, by far, I would live to read
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone. Oh yeah, that would be a big thing,
Speaker 1: because you know, I remember first they would all fit
Speaker 1: on a shelf in one of the rooms we had.
Speaker 1: The shelf was bound, you know, but oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I had more records anybody on campus. You know,
Speaker 1: by when you're in college. By time you're in college,
Speaker 1: how many hundreds of records is that? But I either
Speaker 1: wanted to like right for Rolling Stone, or be a
Speaker 1: professional skier. Okay, so I went to professional skier route,
Speaker 1: and I only went to law school. I signed up
Speaker 1: for the l s A T when I was in
Speaker 1: college and my friends came to my front to I said,
Speaker 1: we're going to Montreal. You're not going to take that test.
Speaker 1: And I said, you're right, And I didn't take it.
Speaker 1: But then I was in l A and I broke
Speaker 1: my leg before the ski season. Professional skier though Sean
Speaker 1: Claude at the time. First I just wanted to go
Speaker 1: skiing the most guaranteed snows, little Cottonwood Can in Utah,
Speaker 1: which was out in snowboard. So I went there. Little
Speaker 1: did I know that was the epicenter of freestyle skiing.
Speaker 1: This was in the renegade days, supposed to being in
Speaker 1: the Olympics. So I that up skiing with all those people.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the world champion, all those people.
Speaker 1: The next year, Okay, I'm gonna do that. What I
Speaker 1: did not realize because I could ski better than the
Speaker 1: you know, on an everyday basis in the world champion,
Speaker 1: the people who are true athletes. This is really the golfers,
Speaker 1: among other things. They turn it up when the pressure
Speaker 1: is on, and the amateur you freeze a little bit.
Speaker 1: And then I said, it's gonna take me like two
Speaker 1: years to get past this. Got the world's worst case
Speaker 1: of mononucleosis. And so I started to go to law school.
Speaker 1: Hated it. Southwestern and Los Angeles fully accredited, but not Harvard.
Speaker 1: So I was gonna drop out to go skiing. It
Speaker 1: happened to be until two thousand eleven and twelfth, the
Speaker 1: worst year you can look. They the worst year in
Speaker 1: the history of snow in Utah. So I called my buddies,
Speaker 1: they're leaving. Okay, well you're leaving, you know, for Christmas.
Speaker 1: That's unheard of. And then I fell in with some girl.
Speaker 1: That was my first real relationship. I never wanted to
Speaker 1: practice law, and if I went to law school for
Speaker 1: three years, I'm gona take the goddamn bar. So I
Speaker 1: took the bar. This is okay. So because I spent
Speaker 1: a couple of years in Utah in the bar, passage
Speaker 1: rate when I took was incredibly low, like twenty eight
Speaker 1: percent in New York. The worst California is the hardest.
Speaker 1: So I decided that, oh yeah, that was happening while
Speaker 1: I was there. So, um, in any event, you take
Speaker 1: the because I said, I gotta pass the bar. I
Speaker 1: went to law school. You take the bar, and you
Speaker 1: don't find that you take in July. You don't find
Speaker 1: out until Thanksgiving. So in the interim, I got a
Speaker 1: job with the lawyer. I did pass the bar, and
Speaker 1: I worked a little bit, and then I ended up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I could go on and on,
Speaker 1: and then I was the only guy I want to
Speaker 1: be in the music business who was working in the
Speaker 1: movie business. Now everybody else had dreams of reverse. I
Speaker 1: was working for a law from the guy ultimately was famous.
Speaker 1: He made a certain amount of number of movies, but
Speaker 1: he was famous for something else. He represented George Foreman
Speaker 1: with a grill, and he made money, but he was
Speaker 1: a sole practitioner, so he would literally do everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: it started off. I don't know if you know your
Speaker 1: rock history, but Cosa Blanca Records a kid, Okay, so
Speaker 1: Cosa Blocker Records. There was a California law issue because
Speaker 1: they were the manager the record label right right, Well
Speaker 1: that's not what they called it. But there was a
Speaker 1: law ironically started with Jefferson Starship where you couldn't be
Speaker 1: the age in the manner, so we represented people who
Speaker 1: had songs on the Bad Girls album. So there was
Speaker 1: a lot to argue about. And then I went to
Speaker 1: work for an independent movie producer and we put this
Speaker 1: band Wasp in one of our movies, and I, let's
Speaker 1: go back in the eighties, making a movie was a
Speaker 1: really big deal. Today you can make them. They literally
Speaker 1: make movies on an iPhone, and I learned not to
Speaker 1: make movies. For for a million dollars, you could make
Speaker 1: the movie, and most other people were not. So I
Speaker 1: worked for this guy, Charles Band. While I was there,
Speaker 1: the biggest thing we did was well, this isn't the biggest,
Speaker 1: but Jawnson three D came out with the Universal and
Speaker 1: we made a storm called an album called Metal Storm
Speaker 1: in three D. That followed that into the theaters, which
Speaker 1: wasn't good. But Charlie called me one night goes what
Speaker 1: kind of music can be licensed chief that people really addicted?
Speaker 1: I said metal and then it wasn't in there. And
Speaker 1: then we had a record with the me Moore's husband's group,
Speaker 1: because before I got there, Charlie had made a movie
Speaker 1: called Um Parasite and three D. That was Demean Moore's
Speaker 1: first movie. But we put this movie. Yes, But after
Speaker 1: I left, he was more he directs, sometimes produced sometimes
Speaker 1: and he did he produced re Animator and three D,
Speaker 1: which is really kind of a classic. And then when
Speaker 1: you know, I ended up working for this company, these
Speaker 1: these guys, it's basically Sanctuary Music. They've changed a couple
Speaker 1: of times the name and but no, that's the interesting thing.
Speaker 1: It was not a legal job. It's running the office.
Speaker 1: We were in a house above the Rainbow on Weatherly
Speaker 1: that Peter Sellers bought but never lived in because he died.
Speaker 1: And it was Iron Maiden in Wasp. Don't forget what
Speaker 1: was the guy's name, Ron Smollen exactly, Rod Smote and
Speaker 1: his partner Randy Taylor. Not that Duran Duran one. They
Speaker 1: could only be in the US ninety days, right right.
Speaker 1: So I remember we we had a very rich deal
Speaker 1: with Capitol Records, and we had enough money that I
Speaker 1: started the video. Okay, the video's budget was fort K.
Speaker 1: I was in about eighteen K, so I called Capital
Speaker 1: for the check. And he says, uh, Gary Culpepper says,
Speaker 1: we only cut checks on Thursdays. You only cut checks
Speaker 1: on Thursdays. So you know, I call Odd who's in
Speaker 1: the Bahamas, and I said, you know what should I
Speaker 1: do this? Well, this is why we hired you. You know,
Speaker 1: you call back and go, okay, I'm eighteen in. Either
Speaker 1: you cut the check or I'll bill you for the
Speaker 1: eight team. So they cut the check. You know, we
Speaker 1: had a lot of power, but ultimately I lost my
Speaker 1: job over a creative issue. Uh. Well, this is the
Speaker 1: type of thing. I can't believe I'm going on about this,
Speaker 1: but this is nothing. Okay, you know I was Linda Perry.
Speaker 1: I went through some of this. Otherwise I could go
Speaker 1: on for a whole day. I'm trying not to repeat myself,
Speaker 1: but um, we have this being lost. They wanted to
Speaker 1: produce themselves, Okay, they ended up using how come I
Speaker 1: can see this guy's name suddenly Metal not Metal Blake?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, that was the other one, the
Speaker 1: guy who found all the guitars. Now he was living
Speaker 1: in Sebastany. What party exactly? Good friend of mine. What's
Speaker 1: Mike Party doing today? He's a member of the oh,
Speaker 1: I read that. I read that he sold he sold
Speaker 1: it to Red One whatever. He sold the orchard. He
Speaker 1: lives in Vegas. I talked to him last night and
Speaker 1: get him on the phone right now. He's not up.
Speaker 1: He's still a vampire. He doesn't get up till any
Speaker 1: of them he wanted. He wanted to produce the record,
Speaker 1: and they didn't want. He knew that they hired Varney,
Speaker 1: they could boss them around. It was a good experience
Speaker 1: with Varney. Varney was a nice guy. The only problem, well,
Speaker 1: the two tracks we cut. One of them was the
Speaker 1: one that the PMRC cut went down on the animal
Speaker 1: fuck like a beast. So the problem was he had
Speaker 1: this engineer. He really didn't know what he was doing.
Speaker 1: So the mixes were just fucking terrible. So at the time,
Speaker 1: the A and R guy at the Capital was Carter. Okay,
Speaker 1: who was what is he these days? He's dead? Okay?
Speaker 1: John Carter was famous for right he was writing the
Speaker 1: He wrote the Lyricture in sze Pepperins ultimately brought Tina
Speaker 1: Turner back, but that was after So I say, you know, Carter,
Speaker 1: can I come up and play you this? You know
Speaker 1: these mixes? So I go up I blame him the
Speaker 1: mix on a cassette, turns it off in the middle,
Speaker 1: and he goes, I passed on this band three times.
Speaker 1: It was signed above me, do whatever the funk you want? Okay,
Speaker 1: How am I going to deal with Blackie? Okay? Is
Speaker 1: the lead Blackie Lawless, who is wasp Because I told him,
Speaker 1: he said I left part of the story. He would
Speaker 1: only remix the record if Carter said to Okay, And
Speaker 1: Carter said that. So I'm figuring out what I'm gonna say.
Speaker 1: But I get back in my office. Blackie comes back.
Speaker 1: I knew I love chocolate chip cookies, came with a
Speaker 1: big bag of Mrs Fields and said, I'll do it whatever.
Speaker 1: So we got this guy, Dwayne Baron, who was famous
Speaker 1: at that point because he had engineered and mixed the
Speaker 1: Quiet Riot records, and he the engineer, but didn't mix
Speaker 1: the No More Tears Azzi record. I don't know where
Speaker 1: he is today, but he now made the record listenable.
Speaker 1: The problem with bands is they have a vision of
Speaker 1: what they're gonna do. Okay, so suddenly it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a different single. So I said, no, it's got to
Speaker 1: be this single, okay, And ultimately Rod was in town
Speaker 1: and he goes, we got we gotta do this, you
Speaker 1: gotta do that? Goes, well, you know what difference does
Speaker 1: it make? It? The first album only sells a hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: That was the stiff, which I had the opposite thing,
Speaker 1: and I was supposed to fly to UH to the
Speaker 1: u K. And the Andy Taylor came back and said
Speaker 1: it's not working out because I was standing in the
Speaker 1: it really fucked what uh? I wanted a song called
Speaker 1: love Machine? Do you know that record? Okay? They wanted
Speaker 1: to go with something I want to know? But no,
Speaker 1: I don't need no doctors on that record. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's later. Do you think of the humble Pie version
Speaker 1: I was, you know, after the first record, I was done.
Speaker 1: I want to be something that's that exactly. That's the record,
Speaker 1: That's what that's all you wanted. No, that's not the one.
Speaker 1: Okay though that was the first. That was the first thing. Look,
Speaker 1: but if you go back to that record and go
Speaker 1: to love Machine, this is four okay. So the nature
Speaker 1: of those jobs, I say, I could go on for hours.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make it very short just to edify you,
Speaker 1: is that you can't spend a dollar you're working around
Speaker 1: the clock and the other thing. You know, it's sort
Speaker 1: of big. I said, the guys were going to the airport, okay,
Speaker 1: Andy and Rod and said, you got any got any money?
Speaker 1: I haven't even go to the airport that need like
Speaker 1: they go, you gotta need company money. This well, you know,
Speaker 1: I like a lot of money in the bank account.
Speaker 1: He goes, well you should have some money. They whip
Speaker 1: off four thousand dollars cash and I go, what am
Speaker 1: I supposed to do with this? And they said put
Speaker 1: it in your pocket. Good And then you find you
Speaker 1: need it because nobody has any credit card. Well, we
Speaker 1: want to rent a skeleton. They require a thousand dollar deposit. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's a thousand. So I was you know, I had
Speaker 1: worked on movies, I you know, worked as a music supervisor,
Speaker 1: did some other ship. But eventually the money ran out,
Speaker 1: and then I started the newsletter. When was that you
Speaker 1: monetize the news letter from Yes, let's okay. What happens
Speaker 1: is when I would read the stuff. When I went
Speaker 1: to Middlebury, there was one professor who wrote see stories badly,
Speaker 1: and when I read my ship, it was like screen
Speaker 1: time for hitlo. Okay, So I never wrote another thing.
Speaker 1: But when you're ten years later, you're working, you get
Speaker 1: all these bios. The buyers were just horrific. So the
Speaker 1: bios um I would have to rewrite them. And then
Speaker 1: I ran out of money and I went to a
Speaker 1: job counselor and they said, here's you have to write
Speaker 1: these six essays brag about yourself. And I wrote the
Speaker 1: six essays and uh, I got back in touch on
Speaker 1: Let be a writer. So you send stuff to magazines,
Speaker 1: Go wait a second, this is just like the music business.
Speaker 1: You got to know the people. So I'm reading Billboard
Speaker 1: one night. It's terrible now, but it was terrible. Then
Speaker 1: in between the Timothy White made it someone Okay, I
Speaker 1: said this is terrible. I could do a better job
Speaker 1: than this. So I started the newsletter and I said,
Speaker 1: I have a target number of people that if they
Speaker 1: do if they subscribe, I will continue doing it. I
Speaker 1: was really doing is an advertisement for myself to get
Speaker 1: into the job. What I did not expect is generally speaking,
Speaker 1: only the most successful people subscribe. The heads of all
Speaker 1: the labels, they could hear something contrary, and at the
Speaker 1: time it was all tips. I gotta do stuff, not
Speaker 1: tips about records. Nineties were very bleak. Just no, that's
Speaker 1: what I was doing. First. It was the full time
Speaker 1: effort to write it more times to day. I know,
Speaker 1: it's like you know, but the right the dark ages. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you had to print it, you had to
Speaker 1: put it in the envelopes, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But um,
Speaker 1: then the year I got very into the Internet because
Speaker 1: I had a free subscription to a well when it
Speaker 1: was right right even before that. And then of course
Speaker 1: we're friendly with Geiger. What we're friendly with at this
Speaker 1: then because he's you know, he's a big proponent early
Speaker 1: days adopter. Let's not talk. I mean, I'm good with
Speaker 1: Geiger and he's great at w M E. But that's
Speaker 1: a whole different job. But I have some artist direct stock.
Speaker 1: How much it? And then did you put into artist
Speaker 1: direct stock? I want to talk about. Okay, without obviously
Speaker 1: crashed soon after went public. Uh but when Napster happened,
Speaker 1: I was I was a lawyer. I knew what was
Speaker 1: going on, and I was totally Internet savvy. So that's
Speaker 1: what happened there. But now you know, have to tell me,
Speaker 1: you know, but how does this news letter generate? Well?
Speaker 1: At this point. I charge for the newsletter and then email.
Speaker 1: It's free, right, But what I found is, and I
Speaker 1: don't have enough time, and I want to board the
Speaker 1: audience with how I decided to make it free by
Speaker 1: being free. I was at the cutting edge of everything. Accidentally. Okay,
Speaker 1: I had this book. I go to this conference and
Speaker 1: Aspen first year, they sent an email contact list and
Speaker 1: it's like, also, did you get an interstant response? Then
Speaker 1: I had this David Geffen book, The Operator, a weekend
Speaker 1: before anybody, and I wrote about it, and then I
Speaker 1: got the response. And then I had a directory which
Speaker 1: had some email addresses from my subscriber list. Said it
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're experiencing, you know, virality. Remember
Speaker 1: Jefferson Holt, who was the manager. He starts email and go, well,
Speaker 1: it's fine, how did you get it? Well, I got
Speaker 1: it from Mark Williams. Well, Mark Williams wasn't a subscriber either.
Speaker 1: So that's when I started experience virality and this result
Speaker 1: of being free. This was before everybody said give it
Speaker 1: away for free. I was hearing from people all over
Speaker 1: the world and became, you know, an interesting thing. And
Speaker 1: of course music was a canary in the coal mine
Speaker 1: for this digital disruption for fifteen years we figured it out.
Speaker 1: They still think, you know, and then in the movie
Speaker 1: business they're going to counteract it somehow. But also I
Speaker 1: grew up in the era where music was everything, and
Speaker 1: music right now the politics is the thing. But they
Speaker 1: don't want to they don't want to own that. Well music, music, okay,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it's really about the politics thing. But
Speaker 1: as far as I'll give you more detail because I
Speaker 1: want to bore the audience at another time. But I
Speaker 1: love that you asked me. But we have to. We've
Speaker 1: come to the end of the feeling we've known. George,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for being on and tell these great stories.
Speaker 1: Hope it was boring either. Until next time. This is
Speaker 1: Bob Left