This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
All right, look, if this is going to be the music episode, this is all we need.
Hello, and welcome to episode 118 of the erasable Podcast. I'm your host, Andy, and with me are my co hosts, Johnny and Tim. Hey, guys.
Hey, Andy. Welcome back.
Thank you. Thank you for indulging me in my. My week off the other week. I had some planning and packing to do. So you.
You get a week sometimes, I get a month off sometimes.
Johnny, have you ever missed an episode?
I miss a couple. You know, I'll probably have another kid miss one.
Yeah. My track record just keep. Keep on going. Yeah.
Charlotte's horrified at the idea.
No, too many. So today we're going to talk about the music we listen to while we're writing. And we have some song recommendations. We have some just general chatting about, like, you know, what kind of music we listen to, if the kind of music we listen to changes depending on the kind of stuff we're writing. And we're also going to put together a little Spotify playlist with some of our music suggestions so you can. You can save and follow along. So let's jump into it. Before we do that, Tim, do you want to talk about your tools of the trade?
Sure.
Well, I am. So I just got into a true crime podcast called up and Vanished, which I know is like a household name with people who listen to true crime podcasts. I guess. I guess it's, like, pretty well known, but I just. Now I'm getting to it. Have either of you listened to up and Vanished? Nope. So it's. Yeah. So the season. Season one is about this. This young woman who was. Who went missing in Georgia somewhere. Some little town in Georgia. But it's. It's kind of a. And he says it in episode one. He's like, I am doing this because I heard Serial, and it was awesome. And I was like, I wonder if I could do that. And he. And he totally did. And so it's not nearly as good as Serial. The story is very good. And actually his, like, investigating is pretty solid as well. He's just not a very good podcaster. He's a filmmaker and so stuff. First of all, the one thing. Moments of it are kind of cringy, but I still think it's totally worth it just to listen to the story, like the case that he's looking into, this disappearance case, but he has his buddy, and he's like, I'm gonna let my friend, whatever, Jerry tell you about this part of the story. And then his friend Jerry comes In with a total. What's that show that used to be on, like daytime mysteries? Unsolved Murders. What was that show called?
Unsolved Mysteries.
Unsolved Mysteries, yeah. It would be like two days after the incident, she was. And it was like, it's super over the top kind of. And then he just comes back in and starts talking. So there's stuff like that. And also he. He has this really strange habit of he'll. He'll play an interview from somebody and they'll say something. I'll just make something up. But like the interview, the guy will say, yeah, but what they don't tell you is that two days after the shooting they found an old latex glove in front of the house. And then he'll come back in, like the host, and he'll say, jerry tells us that two days after the shooting they found a latex glove. I'm like, yeah, no, thanks for. Thanks for translating. His accent's not that thick, but I appreciate it. So there's little things like that that like, just make it kind of annoying sometimes, but it's still really good. And I've been kind of binging that over the last couple days. And I am reading another Jack Reacher novel because it is summer break. My summer break officially started today. So. Yeah, that's early, isn't it? No more pencils. No more pencils. To some parts of the country, it's late here. Actually, most schools have been out a couple weeks because ours is all. We start a lot earlier. So we start like August 3rd.
Oh, wow.
Oh, God. So we start way early, but we get done a little earlier. So that's good. But so we're done. I've got some, like, in service stuff I've got to go to, but summer was starting and I wanted something just fun to read. And so I'm reading Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child. And that one's really good. It starts out on a subway in New York City and he sees. It's like two o' clock in the morning or something, and he sees five people in the subway car with him. And one of them checks all of the boxes as a suicide bomber that the Israeli government came up with this. Like, if they check off these 12 boxes, then they're a suicide bomber. And it's this, like, young woman and she actually ends up committing suicide, like in that first part. And so it's like the list. She checked all the boxes. But then it was like a strange result. And so he gets interviewed by the police. And then of course, there's some sort of like, cover up and he's trying to. And of course he finds himself in the middle of it. So that's how every, the plot of every Lee child novel. But it's really good. I love it. I'm going to wait and let Andy bring this up because you know it better than I do, but I am also reading Good Omens by Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman in preparation for the series that's coming out on Amazon Prime. But this is the first time I've read it, so I'm really enjoying it. But I'm going to wait until Andy brings that up and we can, we can talk about it then. And yeah, I think that's it. So. And I am writing in a craft field notes graph notebook. So I, I. Because I just subscribed on that last edition and got some craft packs and just decided to bust one of those out and I'm enjoying it. And I am writing with. Gasp. A pen.
Dude, how dare you. Go. Get out.
You're taking next week off, bud.
Somebody's taking the next few weeks off. I am, I am writing with a. It's a pilot juice click gel pen, but it's in gray, so it's a, it's a gray ink. So it's, it's a very. I was, I was just kind of playing around with it and decided to write with it because it's, I bought it trying to get a pen that looked like graphite. It's a lot lighter, but it's, it's just, it's still, it's kind of fun to play with. But I've got that. I do have a pencil present which I should acknowledge. And I have a write notepads jumbo pencil here as well. So.
Dude, this is a performance. You should just lie.
Yeah, nobody can tell. This is the podcast.
Yeah, I remember we used to like make up drinks when we were just sitting there drinking water or coffee. Like, yeah, I'm hammered. I got another whiskey. It's like Tuesday night. I think every time I ever had alcohol, you probably could tell.
Good pencil. Good. But yeah, so that's what I am writing in.
Nice. How about you?
How about you, Johnny?
So continuing my, my streak of reading books about mental health, I just read a book called My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel, who you might recognize as like the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. So it's, it's very personal and like, you know, anxiety is sort of like an umbrella term for a lot of things and everybody experiences it. Differently. And his includes, like, crapping his pants a lot. So, like, I'm very thankful that that's not something I have to experience.
Yeah, that's a weird manifestation.
Yeah. There's. There's an article that in the Atlantic. I have to look up the link for it where he sort of condensed the book. And one of the stories he told was basically pooping his pants at the Kennedy compound in and.
Or.
No, he didn't poop his pants. He almost pooped his pants. He exploded the bathroom and there was poo everywhere.
Oh, wow.
So he escaped in a soiled towel.
Oh, man.
Yeah. But, I mean, it was. It was a good book. And so do you guys ever get a magazine and you don't read your new ones because you haven't read your old ones?
Every time I get a trial subscription to the New Yorker.
Okay.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So twice a year, I have, like, three and a half years of poets and writers sitting next to my bed. So I finally started going through them, which is cool. I happened across my sister alone one on one of those pages where they talk about what they're reading, which is pretty cool.
You just gotta. Just gotta declare magazine bankruptcy and just start. Start from the beginning.
But, like, Poets and Writers is such a pretty magazine.
That's true. That's true.
Like, that nice matte cover.
Yeah.
So, like, Writer's Digest is pretty good, but the photography in there is just bad. Like, you guys have all this money and your layout looks good. Why is your photography so bad? Like, did you take this on your phone drunk and then edit it badly? Yes, but. So I've been watching a show on Netflix called Hinterland. Have I talked about this before?
I don't think so.
It's one of those, like, British crime dramas, but it's Welsh. And apparently they. They film every scene twice, once in Welsh and once in English. So Netflix, of course, has the English one, but in the US they also condense them so that they're just one story for an hour and a half instead of splitting up the episodes like they do on TV in the uk. It's like. It's so dark. My dad's like, I don't watch a show. It's too dark. It, like, has this creepy soundtrack, and it's Whales and Wales is so pretty and also kind of dark. It's really, really good show. I'm about through season two of three, and I think they might be done, which sucks. But the lead is the guy who married Poldark's cousin on Poldark. The Captain.
So it's a crossover.
It's contemporary.
It's the most ambitious crossover ever.
Yeah.
I just found out that my father's mother's maiden name was Welsh. So I'm like, oh, this is a fitting. So now instead of Scotland 2020, we're talking about Wales 2020. So if there any listeners of Wales that want me to come live with them in 2020 and bring them on my kids, you know, you can have all my 211 stay quiet by 2020, they'll be worth a house.
Yeah,
but so I. I'm working on a post for Pencil Revolution about Ticonderogus that's sort of getting away from me. So I'm, you know, got to chop it back down to blog post length. But with that in mind, I'm writing with a Chinese Ticonderoga, which is so smooth and nice in a field Notes Confidential book. Those ones that they put out with Loot Crate, I guess like 2015, something like that. Nice. Yeah, I thought. I knew I had another one. I just found it today.
Yeah.
How about you, Andy?
Oh, man, I have a bunch of consuming this time around. I won't go into it in too much detail because you talked about the last episode, but I too have been watching Street Food and it's such a good show. Just beautiful, beautiful photography and just. Yeah, really some of the stuff, like I don't really want to eat snails or reef. Reef eels, but other than that looks really good. We watched not, not too long ago. It was on. I think it was earlier this week. Did you all see that? They were doing a reenactment, like a line by line reenactment of episode of all in the Family. An episode of the Jeffersons.
What? No.
Yeah, they got Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei played the Bunkers and Jamie Foxx played George Jefferson. Wanda Sykes was, was. Oh, what's the mom's name on the Jeffersons? Wheezy played her. It was. It was really good. I used to watch a lot of all in the Family and the Jeffersons on Nick at night. I'm not old enough to have watched it when it was. When it was on television, but they had Norman Lear there. He's like a billion years old. They just did this reenactment. I think it was. They were celebrating an anniversary of something. I don't remember what, but it was so good. Katie and I then went and found the original episodes and watched them too.
What?
Jamie Foxx.
I missed this.
Yeah. I find a link and Maybe you can watch it online. But it's, it's amazing. Jamie Foxx just like channeled George Jefferson. Like he, he's much taller, much taller than, than the guy who played George Jefferson is. But he like got the body language down perfect. It was amazing.
I can see him nailing it.
Yeah. Oh yeah. So watch that. We've been watching a new show on HBO called Gentleman Jack. Have you either of you heard of this?
Oh, I thought you were referring to the whiskey.
So did I. We consume in a lot of Gentleman Jack. No, Gentleman Jack is a nickname for this. True, true. Like actual person from the 18, I want to say 30s in Halifax in England named Ann Lister. And she was kind of a prolific jack of all trades. She, she was a scientist. She managed an estate which is pretty rare for a woman back then. But then she had these, this big series of journals that she journaled in code into. And in the 1930s, like a hundred years later they, they were able to translate it and they found out that she was a, about as out of a lesbian as you can be in 1830. Like she had like female companions. She wrote a lot about like sexual encounters with women. Yeah. So she, for, for obvious reasons she wrote, she wrote that in code. But this, this story is just sort of a dramatic reenactment and it's very good. It's, it's really good. Just a big, big fan of, of that story. And then also, yeah, Good Omens. So I'm, I've been reading it again specifically because the mini, the BBC miniseries is coming to Amazon Prime I think tomorrow or Friday 31st, whenever that is. 31st. Okay. I don't know when we're going to release this episode, but June 30th or no, May 31st, there's going to be a six part good omen series and it is everything I've ever dreamed of.
So I first thing is so awesome.
So good. I first read Good Omens man. Probably like probably like 15 years ago I was just sort of learning about like British sci fi fiction like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Doctor who, things like that. And this book just kind of like, like I was a big Neil Gaiman fan and I just sort of stumbled on this book. Tim, I'm really interested to know kind of what your first impressions as, as an adult of this book are.
Hmm. Yeah, I, so I. A big Neil Gaiman fan. I've never read anything else by Terry Pratchett. I have what's the Color of what's it called the Color of Magic?
Oh yeah.
I almost said the color Purple, but I think that's a different book.
Somebody else.
Yeah, the Color of Magic. I have that one on my Kindle. I haven't read it yet though, so I was. So I'm really fascinated by it because it's. There are these moments where I'm like, I think that's Neil Gaiman. I think that's Terry Pratchett. You know, like, I want to know how. I don't know anything. I haven't read any interviews, like, and usually I'm somebody who dives into that kind of thing, but I've, I've avoided them. So I'm curious, like, what.
Oh, I have a do.
What did Pratchett do? All that kind of stuff.
I have a really good, I have a really good interview with Neil Gaiman. It's post, post training, Practice, Death. But you should read it. I'll get it for you.
Okay. That'd be awesome. Yeah, I'd love to read it. Yeah. But I, I think it's hilarious. I think it's. It's not what I was expecting it to be by any means because I sort of knew the premise. I knew the sort of good and evil end of the world kind of thing. But it pretty quickly takes you in a different direction than you were expecting. I'm trying not to give things away so I'm like intentionally being vague about it for people who maybe aren't going to read it and maybe are going to wait for the series or whatever. But I find it very hilarious. I find the relationship between Crawley and what's his name?
Aziraphale.
Aziraphale. Like their relationship is really amazing and I love just that, that kind of concept of they've been around each other so long, they're basically friends by now.
Yeah, they're like, you know, they're like Cold War era spies, like British and
Soviet or something like that. Yeah, that's such a good way to put it. Yeah, they're like, we're in this, we're in the same struggle here. And like, let's just, let's just both figure this out. So, yeah, I'm, I find it very entertaining. I've got it on audiobook as well. Um, I have like a mass market. What do you call it? Yeah, mass market paperback version of it I've been reading from. And then I've got the audiobook and the guy who does the audiobook is very, very good. I just got. Well, not just, but like Pretty recently I listened to the scene where they're, like, drinking together in the used bookstore and then they decide, like, wait, we need to sober up for this. And then just like, purge the alcohol from their system. And that. He did a really good job at on that scene.
So there was a. There was a BBC radio play years ago, maybe. I listened to it when I first moved to California. So I guess probably like 2014, 2015. And it was. It was also just really good. A lot of. A lot of celebrities there. But, yeah, it's. It's really good. It reminds me so much. I like, I love the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it reminds me a lot of that. And it's only later, like, after I read it again as an adult that I just really appreciated the. Just the mixture of voices in there. And I like, as somebody who. Definitely not a good Omens type book, but I'm trying to write a book with somebody else currently, and it's really, really hard. It's really hard.
Yeah, yeah. To keep it so, like. Because they keep it so smooth and I mean, you can't. Mostly the time when I said that about telling, like, who's writing, like, which part, the times that it kind of jumps out to me is in times of dialogue. Like, I can sort of feel it when. When Gaiman's writing the dialogue versus when Pratchett's writing the dialogue, because Pratchett is a little busier or something, and Gaiman's is a little more, like, shortened to the point. And he has that way of writing dialogue that is starting. It's like you pick the most obvious thing someone could say and then jump, like, three steps down the line.
Yeah.
And then that, like, the third most likely thing they would have said, but seems very appropriate. That's what Neil Gaiman writes. So it's like, that's where I feel like it comes across. But in the narration, it all seems pretty fluid and smooth.
Yeah. Well, I remember when I first heard about the show is being developed and I was just like, over the moon. And then they just started, like, one by one announcing cast members, and it's just like David Tennant is creating Crowley and Michael Sheen is a zero fail and John Hamm's in it and Benedict Cumberbatch does a voice and so good.
Oh, gosh.
The scene where he, the hellhound is showing up at the kid's birthday or whatever, and then he starts describing what the dog is going to look like. And the dog, it starts to Describe how the dog's like, shifting and changing colors and all that. Yeah, that sounds exactly like Theo when he's describing. It's like, kind of blowing my mind.
His dog just looks like a dog.
Yeah, it was like, the colors of the dog. And then like one year that's turned inside out and facing forward and one that's going the other direction. It's like I was like, oh, no, Theo's hellhound. Yeah. But so I will.
I will say one thing about this interview with Neil Gaiman. Like, so Neil Gaiman has been, like, very active on the set, like doing line edits and. And all this stuff, which he doesn't usually do. And he was talking about why he's doing it that way, and it's because, like, literally from his deathbed, Terry Pratchett said, like, hey, like, if ever they do a TV series out of this, I want you to do the script. Like, and so, like, how do you say no to that? Like, you. You don't.
No way.
Yeah. So such a good book. If any of you out there have not read the book and are somebody who wants to, like, read a book before you see a miniseries, like, definitely do that. It goes pretty, pretty quickly. It's a really good book. And also the miniseries. So it's just going to be. I have not seen it yet, but I imagine it's going to be excellent. So.
Yeah, that's cool.
Cool. And then I am writing with my A.P. sarah Pop, one of my various. One of my many Apsara pops in my James Brand, the bright green field notes, which.
Cool. Yeah.
I think I've talked about it before. Like, I don't really care about James Rand, but I really love this. The screen. Yeah.
Hey, yeah. Can I mention two things that I forgot to bring up?
Yeah, please do.
For Tools of the Trade. So for consuming, one of them is the new Vampire Weekend album. Have you guys listened to that at all?
Yeah, I haven't, but I've heard good things about it.
It's so good. You guys know I'm like a. Oh, did you say billboards?
Uhhuh. They have billboards.
That's crazy. Like, I'm just imagining a billboard for Vampire Weekend in East Tennessee. Like, that would be so jarring. I would probably crash my car and drive off the side of the road. All of ours are fast food, so that's the only billboards I ever see. And. Oh, this. And also one for. We have two rival trampoline parks here in town, and one of them is called Just Jump. And then the other one's called Quantum Leap. And Quantum Leap came out with a billboard that said don't just jump. Quantum Leap. No, I love it.
Your next student podcast awards, you should do like a, like a documentary of like a documentary of like the rival trampoline parks.
Yes. Yeah, it's gonna happen. That's right. We're pbl that we're gonna project based learning that next semester. So. But that album is really, really good. And you know, I'm a huge Paul Simon fan and I've and I the Vampire Weekend in this album. I feel like they are the heirs to the Paul Simon throne. It's a similar sound, but in an advanced kind of modern way. So I think it's a really cool album.
That is high praise.
Yeah, well, I think it's just especially like the Graceland kind of era where they're like bringing in music, like world music sounds and the fast lyrics and witty kind of back and forth stuff, so.
And they have a song about the Oxford comma, which is pretty cool.
Which Andy. Which Andy bought me a shirt. Remember that? I still have that shirt.
That's right.
That's right.
You got me the Nobody gives a typewriter bell about the Oxford comic.
Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, that was fun. That's awesome.
I actually promised since I would wear it to school on the last day and then I forgot and then the last one. And this is a fresh point that I actually have not or a consuming that I haven't consumed yet. But I'm so excited to because I just discovered it last night. And Andy, as a recent Oakland Athletics devotee, you should. You should look into this. Andy Samberg. The Lonely island came out with a Netflix special called the Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience, which is billed as a visual poem about Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire. And those two are played by Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaefer are playing those two. And so it's like a 30 minute, like rap video that's all about the Bash Brothers. These two, like baseball players from the 80s who took a bunch of steroids and hit a bunch of home runs. And it's on Netflix. And it just like blew my mind last night when I saw that it was there. And there's like Sia's in it and like the sisters from Haim are also in it. And gosh, I'm so excited. I can't wait to watch it tonight. It looks ridiculous.
Yeah, I saw that. I spent a lot of time on Spotify today because, you know, for Obvious reasons. And I saw Topher was listening to it.
Oh, really? Good, good. Topher.
Wait, you can see what we're listening to?
Oh, yeah.
Crap. I listen to some embarrassing music.
I just added you as my friend on Spotify, so.
What? Uh. Oh, all right. So sorry. I forgot those two. I just wanted to bring those up, so. But we should get on with it.
Yeah.
Fresh points. Tim, did you have any. Any fresh points?
I barely. Okay, so the only one I have is that today I went to pick up my son at my in law's house and Henry came out super excited and he said, dad, I got a new pencil. I was like, oh, man, that's awesome. And then he pulled a B mechanical pencil out of his pocket. Like one of like basic ones that's like, clear. And I literally like. And I'm not like, saying this just for show on the podcast, but I. I had to hold myself back from saying mechanical pencils are bullshit, son. Like, like the David Rees quote. Like, I had. I had to literally, like, stop myself. I almost just said it. Just kind of promise me, son, not
to do what I have done and use mechanical pencil.
Because it came to my head. I was like, mechanical pencils are bold. Yeah, I almost, almost quoted David Rees to my son. And I, like, I actually had to stop myself. So that was basically it. So that's. That's that. Those are my fresh.
What does that mean, dad?
What? Yeah, but nothing else has really crossed my path, so that's all I've got. So, Johnny, why don't you go for it?
I mean, it says something on here about build a bear under years.
Don't talk about that. I don't know.
If you want to talk about that. We'll talk about it later.
Later. You're in a state of denial on that Build bear addiction.
So I only have two fresh points, neither of which are related to pencils. Sorry. So you. Have you guys seen Box pen company? Box is spelled B A U X for bauxite. So they did a Kickstarter a few years ago where they made this, like, basically a metal Bic pen that you would put a Bic pen refill into, which was like, pretty cool. I don't know why I didn't back it. I don't know. You know what? We just had a kid. I was probably being good, but they did another Kickstarter where they did a second version where they did different colors and different metals and different grips and different end plugs. So now they have a website. So you can go in there and order, like, you know, anodized blue with a red grip and pick your ink color and put like a, you know, lime green plug in the end or something wacky. They're like $9.50. Something.
They're not.
They're not expensive. And for like $11.50, you can get the fancier versions. And if you buy one for five bucks, they'll throw in, like, a mystery pen. So I picked up one that's raw aluminum with a brass grip and a brass plug, and it's like the world's heaviest Bic pen now, and it's really awesome. So I'm, like, super excited about this. And if turns out Brian is the guy behind Spoke Pen company, so. Yeah, he's already famous. Huh.
Wait, what's. What.
So have you guys seen these before? Spoke Design, they make pens and mechanical pencils and stuff.
No, not seeing that either.
Yeah, they're kind of spidery looking. I think Brad talks about them.
Yeah.
But, yeah, they're. They're like, really cool. I'm like, I don't really buy mechanical pencils, but this is pretty awesome.
So do you. Do you have one of these box pens in your hand?
No, not in my hand or.
I mean, did you get one?
Oh, yeah. Mine came yesterday. I got the brass. One of them. I. My mystery pen was red with a. I think it's a titanium grip and a black plug in the end. It's like, red. And the finish is so pretty. Like, I could see many of these in my future.
So this is pretty cool. This is the question I asked in the. In the group. But, like, it. The thing I. I'm kind of struggling to understand is, like, what. What value it provides. Because to me, you've just taken a 25 cent Bic pen and turned it into a $10 Bic pen, which. Which is good. Like, it feels to me like it defeats the purpose because, like, the nice thing about those Bic pins is if you lose them, it's fine. You can just get another one. But now if you lose it, you lose your, like, bespoke metal. Metal backing. Yeah.
Well, John Ruiz was talking about them in the. I think it was the RSVP Facebook group. So, like, I. When I saw somebody whose opinion I trust get them and, like, really like him, I was like, ooh, I'm pulling the trigger. Yeah. So he had the good point that, you know, Bic is already a really good refill, and if you add some weight to the pen, it just like, that much smoother and darker.
I've never touched it, but that's kind of my. That was what immediately appealed to me is just that I don't usually write with those just because they're like, too light. And I guess I'm used to using, like, when I'm writing with a pen, something a little heavier. So that's, that's what appeals to me. But I also. It makes me nervous because by the looks of it, you still use the cap from the Bic, right?
Yeah, I mean, I haven't even been using it. The cap.
If I put that on there, like, I'm just afraid I'd lose it anyways. Like.
Yeah, you can just get any old cap from a Bic round stick and stick it on there.
It's a cool. I really like the concept just because, like, you know, so many custom pens use like, fancy refills that are hard to find.
Right.
Like, like the Baron Fig Squire. But I like this because you can just like, you know, find a Bic laying on the street and pull it out and, like, use the refill. So I like that idea. And he sort of acknowledges that Bic is actually really good quality for, like, you know, the price and the ubiquity. Yeah. But I just, it reminds me a lot of like, those stainless steel covers you can get for your Sharpie. And I'm just like, I lose Sharpies so fast. I'm not gonna pay $30 to. For a Sharpie that I'm gonna just lose.
Yeah, yeah. You can put like any refill from any bit crystal or what's that called? The round stick. So like all my fancy Bic crystal fines fit and the new colors of the bit crystal bold fit, but it's really, really comfortable. Like the grip section that I was using, it's brass, it's ribbed, but then it's machined to be like, really flat. So it's not like, like a piano string. Um, it's really, really grippy, but not sharp, if that makes any sense. And the diameter is really good. I don't, I don't always like a fat pen, but I'm like, totally loving this. The weight is sweet. Just like swings around, but it's not like, heavy.
Yeah, I, I really like the.
On the.
I'm on their website right now. I do. I really like that, that little detail that when you're ordering your pen, you're deciding what you want, that you can decide if you want the logo printed right handed or left handed.
Yeah, that's great.
Yeah, that's awesome.
That is. That is Cool.
Yeah. And they have a nice website. It's simple, easy to navigate, and there are a lot of parts. Like, you can pick what color refill, what color. I forgot what they call it. The collar, like, the thing that holds the refill and what color cap. But then there's a nice diagram where they lay it all out like, this is what we're referring to. And the pieces fit together really well. There must be, like, a billion threads on them. They're, like, probably way stronger than they need to be.
Yeah.
But, like, I'm really digging them, so,
like, I'll check it out.
Yeah, I'm, like, totally gonna order one tonight.
So you could get one and go to a bank and steal all their, you know, crappy, crappy custom Bic pens, steal the refills, and, like, you're writing for a year. Can you get style?
Can you get matte black? Can I get a tactical Bic?
I think they do have matte black.
I get, like, a flint tip on it to start.
Okay.
Can I get something I can put on my revolver?
Something I can start a fire with?
Yeah, I mean, it would be cool if they did, like, full brass, but the brass grip makes it bottom heavy, which works really, really well. It's really nice. So, yeah, I'm really stoked with these. They're really, really sweet for Moleskins, because Moleskins like a ballpoint and, you know, not a lot else. And. Yeah. So, you know, there'll be a link into the show notes, so that's awesome. And I'm trying to write for Medium more because I miss having a blog. So it turned out that I had a Medium account that had, like, a bunch of followers, but I didn't know that, and I started a new one. So I have, like, four followers or something. So, like, go follow me on Medium, please. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
You say you started writing a Medium because you missed having a blog? You do have a blog.
I mean, I missed having a blog that wasn't about pencils.
Oh, okay.
Or I could use the F word if I felt like it. So, yeah, the one thing that I posted on there last week, I think I had the F word in a couple times.
Yeah.
Because, you know, why not? But it's behind the paywall, so I think I need to use a special link for that thing. How that works, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was about obsessive compulsive disorder. So, yeah, if that afflicts you, check it out. If it doesn't, good for you.
Yeah,
yeah. It's at John Gamber Jr. Because my other account, which is at Johnny Gamber, I didn't know I had, and I think it's like a merge them. Yeah, but they. They ignored me and haven't answered my question. I know where they're there for me.
I know where their office is. I can just go, like, pick it outside if you want me to.
Yes. Yeah, I'll send you about box pen.
Yes.
I want to say bow. Every time I see it, I'm like, it's not box, but it's from a box site, which is the name of aluminum, which I did not know, but now I know.
Oh, cool.
That makes perfect damn sense. And I should mention they package stuff, like, really nicely, and then they include a sticker and their logo is really cool, so I hope this takes off. And I asked them if they would do any plans to do something like a pencil extender, because, like, if they used their grip on a pencil extender, that'd be pretty awesome. They said no plans. But, you know, that's when I found out they own the other pen company, so of course they have lots on their plate. Yeah, those are all my fresh points.
I just ordered one.
Wait, what did you get?
I got the sandblasted matte grip, the black aluminum barrel with no logo with the red plug on the end, and I chose the gray. Translucent gray plaque or. Sorry. Translucent gray cap and collar with blue ink.
Nice. Did you get the five dollar, like, mystery pen?
The what?
For five bucks extra, they'll send a mystery pen.
I gotta go back. I was about to. I was about to put. I was about to hit complete order, but now I gotta go back.
Yeah, I got. I got mine, like, delivered with two pens for, like, $20. I'm like, square. Sweet.
All right,
going back.
Gonna have to check these out.
Cool.
What do I have on freshpoint? The big thing, which I should have, like, asked one of you to talk about last time, but I completely forgot, is that we are accepting submissions and pitches for Plumbago issue six, which is really exciting. This issue is going to be about travel and nature and writing or tools, you know, for. For said travel in nature. We've already had a lot of really good submissions, Tim. I think you were one of them.
Yes. Well, you got. You got the tease.
Yeah.
Get the pitch.
Yeah, we have a couple. I'll tease out one submission right now, even though, like, we don't have it in hand yet. You know, our friend Gary Varner, who's been on the show before has recently. Oh yeah, kind of packed up his house and started just driving around the country in a like camper van. Hashtag vanlife. And he, he's gonna write something about basically what art supplies and stationery do you take with you when you live in a tiny, you know, what is it, like 30 square foot space and.
Oh, that's awesome.
Like, what is his, his writing and like Internet process, Like, how does that work? So, yeah, I can't wait. It's gonna be really good. We would love, love some pitches for some people with visual mediums. If you're a comic artist or an illustrator or something like that, like, I would love to hear, hear your ideas for it because we have a lot of really good poetry and fiction and memoir. But I would love some more visual stuff. So yeah, if you go to Plumbago xyz, click on that first sort of like post down there about accepting pitches for issue six. It'll give you instructions on how to do that. So we'll be collecting pitches through June 15, so about two weeks, two weeks more. And then we'll be accepting then submissions themselves until July 15th. And then after that, I'm hoping a month after that we get, we get this thing out the door. So yeah, should be really good. Second thing I'll mention is the reason I was gone last episode was I was getting ready to go to Los Angeles for the weekend, for a long weekend and had a really good time. One thing where we went that was really fun is we went to a stationary shop called Shorthand. If anybody here is familiar with Iron Curtain press notebooks, they sell them in CW pencils. I think there was one that was included with a pencil box maybe like a year ago. They're printed in the back of this shop, which is really cool.
Oh, that's cool. Did you get to check out like the machinery and stuff?
Yeah, they have a big old Heidelberg back there and they, I think they make a bunch of business doing, making like custom like letterpress cards and stuff. But they have really good like checklist paper and spiral bound notebooks. I dare say their spiral bound notebooks rivals the quality of these other spiral bound notebooks on the East Coast. But I won't, I won't say who.
Fight, fight.
Fight.
Fight, fight.
But, but LA is not Baltimore.
Yeah, it's true, that's true.
I mean, I don't know if that's a bad thing.
Right.
Good or bad thing.
As I see. Yeah, the climate's amazing.
Yeah, it's already hot. Disgusting here.
Yeah. I mean, still plenty of, you know, race riots and stuff. But
they have Mike Trout, though, playing baseball. Yeah, they've got that going for.
Which is nice.
Not the Orioles, which is nice.
The. The only thing I bought from there was this little Tombow mono eraser that is like the size and shape of a chapstick. And instead of like a chapstick end, it's a little eraser the width of a pencil eraser. It's that really great PVC plastic Tombow eraser. And you twist it and the eraser advances like a chapstick. So it's really small and really nice. I'm a big fan of this. I'll put a link in show notes.
But that looks so awesome. Yeah, I don't want one of those so bad.
I've never seen one before. If I could figure out where to get them, I'll send you a link. But there's a little, like, place to put a string on it. And I'm like, I could wear this as like a necklace and just always have my eraser with me.
You should totally do that.
Nerd.
Yeah, Hashtag nerd life.
Yeah, hashtag erasable life.
Nerd life.
Cool. So, yeah, that is. That is fresh points. Let's jump into the main topic. So we have a couple ways we could go with this. We have some points of discussion, kind of framing. Framing the way that we listen to music when we're writing. And then also we have some. Just some short playlists. Like, we originally kind of went for five songs, and I just had five songs which I'll kind of get into. But we sort of. One of the things I'll disclaim is we mentioned that, like, often this is very album based on. Because when you go into a writing session, you're probably listening to kind of like an album length, like, session. And we tried to pick a song that's the most representative of the album that we're talking about. Johnny and Tim, you both had quite a bit more than I did. But are we. Do we just want to talk about five here on the show and just include more for the. For the playlist, but.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we. Yeah, we did more than five. Or Johnny and I, I think added 10 each or something like that. But I think, yeah, for here, let's just cover like maybe the top five and maybe even if you don't get to all. All five of them and just to just kind of give a sampling and then people can go to the playlist as we go or playlist afterwards. And I was also, I was going to mention that we're going to try to play some clips, not for all 15 of the songs we're going to discuss, but try to play some clips in a very low tech way, but just kind of using.
Shut up. Super high tech.
Shut up. Yeah, but, but also the playlist is already made. So if you're listening to the podcast right now and you're listening to us mention these songs, you can absolutely pause and go to the Spotify playlist and listen to the songs that we're talking about as we go. And that would probably be the way to go. And the playlist is already made and it's going to be in the show notes.
I'll have a link in show notes, but if you just search Spotify for erasable episode 118, you should find it. And it has a little, very, very classy album art that I made. It took me a very long time to make this.
I love it.
It looks fantastic.
Seriously.
Thanks.
Thanks.
My next tattoo.
Yeah. Oh, nice. Spotify is great. I think you can listen to this even with a. Even on a free tier.
Right.
It just may be ad supported and I think you just have to. You can only shuffle play it, right?
Yeah, it'll shuffle play and I think it'll throw in some similar songs now and then or whatever. Cool.
How do you guys want to start? Do you just want to just do some quick discussion about like, you know, how we listen to music?
Yeah, sure.
Yeah. So the first question, I guess the broadest one is like, in what context when you're writing, do you listen to music? And also does the type of music change depending on that context? Do you listen to different music when you're writing creatively or when you're writing emails or what have you?
Yeah, I think for me, when I'm writing, if I'm writing anything other than just creatively, like emails or whatever, it really doesn't matter at all. But if I'm writing creatively, it has to be instrumental music for me. And also, and this is, I'm not going to put this on my playlist, but just to put a shout out to some really cool like white noise stuff that's out there. I really like listening to that. Like my favorite. I'll see if I can find a link I think I might have mentioned on the podcast before, but I'll try to find a link to this YouTube video that is just a train in Siberia for like 12 hours. But, but it's just the, it's just the sound, it's like snowing and there's a. So there's a visual just going out the window. It's just like 12 hours of a train going through, like, the depths of Siberia and it's just like the most relaxing sound ever.
Yeah.
But as far as music goes. Yeah, I. It's always. It's got to be instrumental. And I think it does change depending on, like, the mood. But I have a playlist that I've made before that is kind of like, no matter what, that's going to work. Like, this playlist is going to fit because it kind of jumps around in style.
There was an app, it was a little thing you could put in your toolbar on a Mac where it just plays, like, coffee shop sounds and like, clinking of glasses and, like, you know, general conversation.
Yeah, I've seen that.
You could, like, turn up and down rain and storms and busyness and things like that, which is cool.
Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, I'll look for that, too. I have to say, I. It was hard for me to come up with this list because I am really bad. I can barely listen to music when I write. Like. Like, definitely nothing lyrical, but I like. And even sometimes I can't listen to music at all. Like, Harry Marks, I think, weighed in at some point and said, like, he just can only write, you know, with silence. And I'm most of the way there. Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Johnny?
So I guess for me, it usually depends less on the context and more on, like, what kind of mood I'm in. That makes sense. Like, frequently could use a little bit of a mood boost. So I don't usually listen to my usual mopey music when I'm writing. That makes sense.
Yeah.
Like, I don't really listen to, like, Tool or Alice in Chains while I'm writing because then, you know, I write my teenage poetry again and nobody wants to read that. But, yeah, so I used to really need silence. And then when I started working in coffee shops, I realized that, you know, I'm not going to get silenced, so at least I can control what I hear. So I have various playlists on Spotify that I'll put on if, like, I'm, you know, doing some sort of not creative work or, you know, a NaNoWriMo thing or journal writing. So, yeah, I mean, it kind of blows all over the place.
Yeah. That's interesting. So does. Does the type of music that you listen to change depending on. On that context? Like, I like, for my. This book project, I'VE been working on. I have a lot of, like, browser tabs open and a lot of, like, research that I'm doing. And, yeah, for that, like, I just can't have anything else in my brain except that. But then if I'm just, like, doing some morning pages or writing an email, like, I'll just listen to something light. Yeah.
Yeah. If I'm on the computer, I type faster than I write, so I tend to listen to faster stuff.
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Like, lately it looks like Grimes. I don't know if you guys have heard Grimes before.
Yeah.
But stuff like that. Or old Metallica. I mean, like, if you listen to Master of Puppets, you could write a novel in, like, 10 minutes. Try it.
Seriously, I would write three words because I would just. I seriously get so obsessed with. With, like, words on, like, anything I'm hearing. I just, like, start picking it apart. Yeah, but I definitely. I mean, I definitely do the same thing, though, like, with, like, upbeat music versus, like, chill music. But one thing I actually think about when I'm making a playlist for writing, if it's something that I don't like, if I'm writing fiction and I know the scene, then I try to. And this kind of can be a bad thing sometimes is I try to pick the perfect song for the scene. And often I'll pull from, like, film scores and things like that to play as I'm writing it. But if I'm just writing and I just want to see where I go, and I'm not trying to. And I don't know where I'm going is what I'm trying to say. I actually kind of like a playlist that jumps around. Like, got a happy song, like a song that's a little more upbeat, and then a song that's, like, way down, and then a song that's, um, kind of somewhere in the middle so that it kind of leads me in a direction, like, subconsciously, I start sort of writing to the music. And it just kind of takes the. Takes the steering wheel out of my hands a little bit, you know, for a while.
Spotify, take the wheel.
Spotify take. There's our title. There's our title.
How do y' all listen to music usually? Are you using headphones, or do you have the stereo going or.
Definitely headphones.
So headphones. But when I'm in the shower, I have a Bluetooth speaker that's sort of waterproof. And my shower is, like marble tile, which is really, really bouncy. So I tend to have, like, my own little Dance party in the shower,
say, sort of waterproof.
It's splash proof, so.
Okay, cool.
I mean, I dropped.
For your. Yeah, okay.
I've dropped it in the toilet before and a clean toilet and it was fine. I mean, I drop it in the shower all the time. It slides off because it's, you know, too much bass. It knocks itself over. But. Okay,
cool. And how do you. How do you usually find music? Do you just hop around on Spotify or do you. Do you look through records at a record store, then find a Spotify version of it? How do you usually find what you're going to listen to Everywhere?
So you guys don't use Android, but I'm sure there's something like this on Apple. But if you open the search bar for Google and press the microphone for you to talk, if it hears music, it'll say, what's this music?
Oh, yeah.
So if you hit that, it'll pull it up and you can link. I mean, open it right in Spotify on your phone, which is pretty cool.
Nice.
So I find a lot of stuff that way and just letting Spotify float around. But like, most of the people I know either like the same music as I do or music that I really don't like. So I don't get enough friend recommendations from enough people, I think.
I think Tim should. Tim should just have a running kind of like Spotify playlist because I've heard from so many people who listen to podcasts that they get their music from him. From you, Tim.
Well, that's really nice.
You're a music thought leader.
Yeah, I think it's like a fault, like with how I find music because I spend way too much time on it. So we're talking about finding music to listen to while we write. And I think often I end up just searching for music to write to without writing enough, you know, I have
to find the perfect, perfect album.
So, I mean, I absolutely will find like a song I like. I'm like, oh, this is cool. And then I'll. First of all, I'll see if I can start a Pandora station on that one song. Like how you can, you know, if there's. You can start a station that's just based on one song and then like, see how it does. And then on Pandora, it's really cool how they. And this is fairly new. I don't remember when they started doing this, but your station can either just be like classic Pandora or you can have it go to crowd favorites, which is like the ones that got liked the Most on the station. And then you can go to Discovery, which is like a little like more out of the box, and then Deep Cuts, which are just like all over the place. And so that's a really good way to find music through Pandora and then just kind of keep track of those songs. But most of the time I feel like it's on Amazon Unlimited or on Spotify or whatever. I'll find somebody I like and I'll listen to the album and then I'll just pay attention to the related artists that show up at the bottom of the page, you know, and just start making playlists, like dropping albums in there. And I usually end up dropping the whole album, not song by song most of the time. And then that playlist that grows from that, I'll play on a. A shuffle. And if a song shows up that if it has lyrics, I'll usually delete it immediately. And then if it, or if it just has like a sort of too weird kind of avant garde, it needs to have like a rhythm to it for me. And so if it's something that's like oddball or changes a lot or too staticky or jarring, then I'll delete it from the list. But yeah, usually like the related artists or, or Pandora or some sort of like radio function is how I end up finding most of the music that I, yeah. Listen to, but definitely like write to. Nice.
I usually like what's great about Spotify is that, yeah, it's really easy to just like collect and share playlists from, from people. So I, I sometimes will just like get in the search bar and type like, you know, concentration music or soft focus or writing or something. And you come across so many interesting playlists that way. And of course you come across a lot of crap too. But there's. Yeah, that's a good way to do it.
I switched to Amazon Unlimited like a year ago and then like three days ago because of this switch back to Spotify and realized how much better Spotify is. And the main thing with Amazon is that the playlist game is crap. It's like off, like they have terrible, like they don't have as many playlists, but also they don't have the public playlists where you can make them and share them with other people. Yeah, and that's, that's, that's a real bummer because that's, that's one thing I definitely miss. I'm glad to be back using Spotify a little more now for, for streaming music. Yeah.
And it, it integrates in this stuff. Better, too.
Yeah.
Like, if you have a Google home, I can just yell out, you know, hey, Google, Play, Blop Enter. It'll yank it off Spotify. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I'm so lazy.
Except for. Except for integrating into Skype because.
Yeah, we tried that.
We're trying to figure out how to do that to play it today, and that did not work.
There will be episode 118.1, which will be us rapping along to Beastie Boys once we figure out Spotify. Oh, yeah.
Good.
We didn't tell you about this yet,
Tim, you gotta sharpen. Bonk, bonk your pencil, bonk, bonk box to ride with. Well, all right. Johnny's going to serenade us with his mouth harp. Well, we. While we listen to this. Cool. Do you want to. Do you want to jump in and maybe, like, do. Do trade offs? Like, Tim does one, Johnny does one, I do one.
Sure.
Yeah. So. So maybe. Maybe we can introduce it and just talk really briefly about, like, what kind of inspires us about it, and then, like, you know, pick a. Pick a short, short sample, you know, that we can play from, just to inspire people. Does that sound good?
Yeah, that sounds good. And I'll. And I'm not. So we got five. We picked five to. To sort of highlight
you're hearing.
What am I hearing?
I assume, Johnny.
Sorry about that.
Whoops. I thought that was, like, you're trying to put, like, a little hint into the episode.
No, I. With my. My headphones on for recording. I didn't know that my phone was making noise.
Okay. Yeah, so we have five here. I don't know if we'll have time to play a clip from all five, but. Yeah. Yeah, so. So the first one I'm gonna mention, which is kind of like, I'm gonna start with the best first. And so my favorite guitar player on the planet is named Bill Frizzell, and he's a. He's a jazz guitar player, but he plays. It's. That's a really, like, a pigeon. That's pigeonholing him in a way that, like, I don't know a better term for him than jazz guitar player, but he does everything, and he's really fantastic. And so he has this album that I found in high school, and I really wish I knew how I found it in high school, because I did not think I was this cool in high school to find this thing, but it's called east west is the name of the album. It's the Bill Frizzell Trio. And so it's him and a bass player and a drummer, and they play these songs live on tour. And then they made like a best of the tour kind of album. And some of the songs were covers of, like, Americana tunes. And the one that I love the most is called. Is the song Shenandoah, which is a classic American song. And this is a like a. It's like a 12 minute instrumental version of Shenandoah that he plays using lots of, like, delay and looping kind of stuff. And it has brought me to tears multiple times in my life. Not just. Not when I'm writing, I'm not like writing and falling into. But, like, it's a really beautiful song. And so I'll play a little clip from it.
I assume it's a tribute to those Greenfield notes.
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Oh, my God.
Just a little. A little taste.
So
it's a song. It's very subdued at parts, but it kind of builds to a pretty fantastic climax in the song where all of the loops and all the things that he's doing with his guitar kind of build up and then just kind of fall to the ground. It's absolutely wonderful. It's maybe one of my favorite songs I've ever listened to. I've listened to it so many times, but it's. I find it really inspiring when I'm writing, but it also isn't kind of like over the top, where it can be. If you're writing something that's sad, the song can feel kind of more. If you're writing something happy, the song can seem like ecstasy. So this is. I'm starting with my strongest recommendation, which is east west by Bill Frizzell. And there's also a. Like, a year later, he came out with Further East, Further west, which is from the same tour. So I encourage everybody to check out Bill Frissell for writing music. It's just absolutely gorgeous stuff. Yeah. So that's my first choice. How about you, Johnny?
So for my first choice, I'm gonna go with the song called Infrared by the band Placebo, that apparently is not that popular, even though they've been around for like 25 years or something. So my favorite tattoo artist listens to really good music. And I don't know why, like, you know, there's like the shop iPad through the sound system. He usually gets to pick the albums, so he always puts on a place for us to dream by Placebo, which is sort of a 20 year retrospective. They did. So this song is on another album. But if you aren't Familiar with placebo. Check it out on this album because it's long and it, you know, it goes from the mid-90s to a few years ago. And they're really cool because they're. I don't know, they're really outspoken about a lot of social issues and mental health issues. So, yeah, they're not your average crap rock band. So I'm gonna see if I can get this to play.
Yeah.
And also he has a really nasal voice. He sounds like the guy from the Decembrists, but much less pretentious. So this is the song called Infrared. That's from the 90s, I think. Oh, is that loud enough? Okay, so, like, you can't really hear any of the bass because this is my phone, but.
Yeah, Come on, Johnny, you. If anybody should realize how important the bass is to that song.
I know to get on my acoustic. It's a really easy song. But yeah, they're. I think they get a lot of crap for being sort of androgynous and going through drummers. Like, some people go through pants, but, you know, drummers are disposable pants.
Sorry.
Yeah, okay. You know, keep them for a while, but not forever.
Okay. Okay.
Okay. Like, yeah, it's enough. We got a new one now, but I think now they're just officially a two piece. But, yeah, they're, you know, a lot of the stuff tends to be kind of darkish, and some of their older songs are about drugs in a recreational fun way. But, yeah, so that's my first choice. How about you, Andy?
All right. My first choice is from. It's interesting. It's from a band that. So the lead. The lead of this band is somebody I know in real life. They're from Fort Wayne. Um, over the years, he's had, like, various bandmates, and one of them was my child. Best childhood, best friend growing up. And other people kind of from Fort Wayne. But they've. They've gotten a little bit. They definitely haven't gotten famous, but they've gotten. They've gone on tours, they've gone on international tours before. So they're like.
They've.
They've picked up momentum over the years. It's called Metavari. And I honestly don't know how to classify it because they've changed a lot over the last 10 years. I have all of their albums and I think I like their earlier stuff the best, but I still like them a lot. He. So that they have a. They have an album called Be One of Us and Hear no Noise, which Is kind of like ambient, kind of like synth but with a beat. And sometimes he overlays like audio clips on it. It's very like some of the ones that have. Are especially full of like dialogue and stuff are hard to write to. But he has a few that are just really good and have a really kind of upbeat beat and just sound really good. So the.
They're really like atmospheric. It's like. It just sort of feels very full and very like wide. Like I listened to through our playlist earlier today and it's just. Yeah, yeah, I really like them. It's really good. It's like part of the electronic music. But also.
Yeah, there's.
He incorporates a lot more soul to it.
Yeah, he incorporates a lot of like real life samples into it. So I'm. I'm gonna play just part of this. This first. This song here if I can get it. Can you guys hear it?
All right.
Yep.
So I'm gonna skip.
Sounds good.
Little loud.
So yeah, a lot of the songs are like that. They're just a. Just a really great band. They have. Some of the newer stuff is a lot more kind of abstract and kind of like hard to get into. But still. Still really good. So that is metavari. Tim, do you want to jump in with another one?
Yeah. And I've got one that kind of pairs really nicely with that one, which is a. A tune by Brian Eno, which we know. Brian Eno, you know, he's a fairly recognizable fellow. But this song I actually found it from. This is. Was apparently one of the favorite songs of David Foster Wallace. And it showed. And it showed up in the end of the tour, the movie about him, you know, at the very end. And he loved the song. It's an instrumental song as well and it's kind of in a similar vein. So let me just go ahead and play a clip. Yeah. Sa. A really nice melody and then the. And then I should say the melody kind of comes in right there where you heard it was kind of up high in the higher register. It's similar to. And I almost put them on the list. But Cigaros band for my. Yeah, I was thinking that yeah, they would be really. They're really good writing music a lot of time and especially it helps because it's like a different language slash a made up language. And so it doesn't get in the way of. Of what you're. Of what you're writing. So I mean Cigar Rose could easily be on here as well. But it's just absolutely beautiful. It's about three minutes, and it's just this big, wide sound, so I really, really love that one. So that's. That's my second pick.
Nice.
So what about you, Johnny?
For my second pick, I'm going with a classic, the World Just Turned and Left Me Here by Weezer from the. I guess you got the Blue album Now, the 1994 release. Because A. That's a really, really good album to write to because there's a pretty constant vibe, but it's not too slow. And because I've been in bands where we've covered like half the album before and at the end they sort of start layering the vocals in a really, really nice Weezer kind of way. So this is that part.
Okay.
There we go. So, I mean, I can't imagine anyone that hasn't heard this album, but people born.
People born after 1994, probably.
Yeah, I was, you know, I was the right age when it came out. I was 14 or 15. And there's a song on their bed hanging out in the garage and playing in rock bands and playing Dungeons and Dragons and stuff like that.
So, yeah, my students today really like Weezer. They know Weezer. And so, like, they'll come into class and I'll have say It Ain't so or some song playing and they'll be like, oh, I love this song. Which is. Which is pretty cool. Like, I mean, these are kids who are. Who were born like after 9, 11.
Oh, man.
For context.
Yeah, this is like classic rock now.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So I used to. Full disclosure, I used to get Weezer and Guster confused. Not because they sound. Not because they sound anything alike, but because the names are so similar.
I was never able to get into Guster.
Yeah, I can't. I don't care. I like Weezer much better than Guster.
Same.
Yeah.
Even though there's our two episode title. The episode where the three. The three hosts agree on not liking Guster. We don't like Guster.
Yeah, I don't dislike them. But, you know, Weezer's got a lot of albums. They just put out, like two this year. But, you know, the first one is the best one.
I just love that they just, you know, redid. Just covered Africa by Toto and that was amazing. And then. And then Africa or Toto covered a Weezer song, apparently.
And they also covered Rosanna, but they didn't put it on the COVID album.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They did some good covers, but they didn't change them enough, I think.
Have you ever Heard the. What's his name? Rivers. Rivers Cuomo. Have you ever heard about his songwriting process? Yeah, he writes his songs in a spreadsheet. He has this. Apparently has this insane spreadsheet where he writes verses kind of like here and there, and he's like little bits and pieces, and then he just goes through and just kind of like, I'll take this and this and this and this and this and this and this, and then, like, tries to weave them together.
That's amazing.
Kind of, like, bizarre. Yeah, it sounds so cool. I love spreadsheet.
That explains the sweater song.
Yeah, it's, like, stuff he just has kind of nailed it on. Just the idea that it doesn't have to be logical. It just needs to be, like, sort of like, whatever, appealing to the year or something. It's. Yeah, it's so interesting. He just kind of, like, grabs things from random. I think it was. It might have been a song exploder episode or something where I heard song exploder where he. It might have been a Weezer song exploder where he talks about that process. But it was some. It was definitely some podcast I heard him interviewed on.
So.
Good. Awesome.
Cool. I'll do. I'll do one here. So sometimes I do, you know, just want to hear some words, and I think, like, I've discovered that, like, if they're in a different language, I can kind of get, like, you know, lyrical music, but I. But I won't focus on, like, what they mean and, you know, focus on the semantic meaning of the words. So in college, a friend played some Cuban music in the student newspaper office, and it was just so beautiful and so good. It was a Ibrahim Ferrer song, who is a Cuban musician, and he was playing at the Buena Vista Social Club. And so there's this really great song that is an old Cuban song. It's called Bruca Manigua. And I'm not entirely sure. I did a little research on what it's about, and it's about. It's kind of sung from the perspective of an escaped slave from, like, from Africa coming down, down south, or from the US Coming down south into Latin America. And I think Bruka Magnigua is something like, into the mountains, which is where he's running. And it's a really, like. There's many different versions of this song, and this is the Ibrahim Ferrer song, and it's just really. Just really nice and just pleasant. Try to skip to some vocal corners.
SA.
All right. So that the whole album is just full of just. Just really good. Just old Spanish language songs like that.
I have to tell you that that song earlier today made for the best four and a half minutes of Walking Theo that I think I've ever had. That was like the most pleasant, the most pleasant song to listen to while walking your dog. I was just like, oh man, this is a good way to end my afternoon. And. Yeah, I love it. Good.
I was going to say. Continue. I'm sorry.
Well, I was just going to say that it reminds me of like when you talk about like foreign language stuff.
Yeah.
Is that. I really like listening to the soundtrack for Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen. It's got a lot of French. French music and that's. That's a good hangout slash writing music as well.
This, this song or this album reminds me a lot of, um. I was, oh, I think it was 21, 22 and I was the editor of the student newspaper in college and I would often pull all nighters, just kind of like finishing up like layout of the newspaper and editing things and pulling it together. And I wanted like music that would like perk me up but wasn't just like, you know, super like iron maidening. I didn't want anything that was like just really. So this was, this was perfect.
Wasn't going to stress you out. Yeah, right, exactly.
Yeah. Should we do one more round where we play a preview and then after that just talk about our two remaining songs?
Yeah, how about list a few and then only play an example of one?
Okay.
Yeah, that's good idea.
Let's go through our last three songs and then, yeah, we can play one of an example. So Tim, do you want to jump in?
Yeah, sure. The first one is your Hand in mind by Explosions in the sky. And that's a band that's a really good go to for me. And they're an instrumental post rock band that. And when you listen to them, it'll sound kind of improvised, but I've actually seen them live in concert and they, they plan out every minute of that song. So it's all planned out and what you might recognize that song from is the movie Friday Night Lights, which a lot of people have seen. And there's a, you know, series, a TV series that was made as well, but they did the soundtrack for Friday Night Lights and so that's a very good song. And then the other one I'll bring up and I had to have a jazz song to, you know, put in the mix. And for me, when I'm listening to jazz while writing, it needs to be on the simple side, which is really what I like most of the time in jazz, which is a trio. So like three people playing either guitar, drums, bass or piano. Drums, bass. And so the one I chose was a cover of a. I think this is a Gershwin song, I Got It Bad and that Ain't Good by the Gershwins. And so this is a cover of it by the Oscar Peterson Trio, which. This is on an album that's called Night Train, which is an album that I definitely listen to very often while writing. So I would recommend that. That album. And it's just like. It's kind of like in the same vein as your last choice, Andy. That's kind of upbeat, kind of keeps you going, keeps you happy, keeps you thinking, but doesn't put you to sleep and also doesn't stress you out. And it's just some beautiful piano playing because Oscar Peterson is one of the masters. So that album, and so the one that I want to play though, and this is my last choice, is there's a guy I absolutely love, and I guarantee I've talked about him a long time ago at some point, but his name is Dustin o' Halloran and he's a piano player. And so what I found him, I found out about him through an album called Piano Solos, Volume Two, which it sounds. The best way to describe it is it sounds like he's playing a piano in the back of an old bar in Scotland. It's like slightly out of tune. He's self taught and you can hear that, but in a good way, you know. And so he is. He's just a beautiful composer. And so now he's gone from those piano solos albums to making, to doing scores for films. And so the one I want to play with, Play for you, and some people may have heard this, is that he did the theme for the show Transparent on Amazon.
Oh, yeah. It's a great show.
And so here I'll. Yeah, so I'll play. I'll play that. And the orchestra will come in eventually and it'll, you know, gain complexity through that as it goes. But it's a really beautiful theme and it just sounds like it's just somebody in the back of a room that you're just hanging out in playing piano. It's absolutely beautiful. So anything by Dustin o'. Halloran and he has a. He has a band also that's called A Winged Victory for this, for the Sullen. I think it's called A Winged Victory for the Sullen, which is a very hipster name for a band. Um, but it's also really beautiful. And the. The only other thing I have to mention, and I cannot not mention this, is that if you are looking for music to listen to, all writing, look for Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. So Nick Cave is like a sort of rock God, like underground rock God. But he did the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Oh, that's a good film.
That, that soundtrack is incredible. So check that out. It's mostly like piano and violin in kind of the same sort of out of tune kind of mode that Dustin o' Halloran does. And it's.
It has the same as like a Victrola, except without all that, like, poppiness and like, flatness of a Victrola.
Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Yeah, that's a. That's a good observation. And, oh, he also did the soundtrack. Those two. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis also did the soundtrack for the Road, the movie based on the Cormac McCarthy novel. So definitely check them out. So I seriously could talk about this for like a nine hour episode. So that's why I'm like. I keep sneaking things in and I kept like, saying, why don't we just say all three of them and then just play like one of them? Because I could just talk about this all day long.
So you're just. You're so much better at talking about music than I am. Like, I. I just. I often just don't have the, like, articulation for talking about music. And you. You're really good at it.
Whatever.
You're also great at taking a compliment.
Whatever. Shut up, Andy. Next. All right, well, thank you, Andy. That was very nice of you. Okay, Johnny, what about you?
So I'm gonna go with a song that's called Heaven Hell by Churches, but they spell churches with a V instead of U. Yeah, they're a Scottish band, so they did that so they would show up and search engines better, which totally works. But they put out an album last year called Love is Dead that could be like, you know, the B side soundtrack to Stranger things. It was really 80s ish. And I don't think everybody in the band was alive during the 80s. At least not potty trained.
Johnny, do you want to hear real quick my church's story? Yeah. So back when I worked at Facebook, there was like a big. It was the big developers conference. So like a big party that Facebook threw and like, with a keynote address and all this stuff. And they. For the employees, they just had a. They had this big, like, party on the roof of one of the buildings. And they were like, hey, come up. We're going to have a band. It's going to be lots of fun. So everybody's, like, gathering around and get guess who the band was that was just, like, randomly playing for the employees. It was churches.
That's awesome. Yeah, that's very cool.
Just, like, completely randomly. They didn't even announce it. They were just like, yeah, we have a band. Come listen.
You think it's going to be like a cover band? Like Oakland or something?
Yeah, like Mark Zuckerberg's like, you know, sisters band or something. I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah. The whole album has a sort of, like, end of the prom feel, like, oh, it's over, but. But, you know, a lot of the stuff gets a little melancholy. But this one was a lot less, like, dance hall beats and more like 80s glam. And when it came out, I remember I sat outside and wrote for, like, three lengths of the album until it got dark, like, oh, I really like this. And another song is called Boredom of Frustration by the band James, who everybody only knows because of that one song from, like, 93, 94, called Laid, where, you know, he sings in falsetto and talks about sex. And it was before he went bald. So he. The lead singer of James was in the Batman movies. He played one of the Arkham Asylum inmates. Like, the bald guy with a goatee who looks terrifying. That's that cuddly guy from James. But Born of Frustration is a song from Seven, which came out, I think, 91. So a lot of their stuff has sort of an early U2 vibe. But they came out and they came up at the same time as U2. Like, by the time Laid came out, they had been around for a long time. And they broke up for a while, got back together. Now they're making music again. But Born of Frustration is a really cool movie or movie a song. It reminds me of the idea from the philosopher Max Shaler about world resistance that, like, you know, life just sucks because everything you want isn't gonna happen because, you know, hell is. Other people in the world is a cruel place. But it's upbeat and has trumpet.
It sounds upbeat.
Yeah.
But that album is, like, really, really good. You can just listen to the whole album. That's just not true of all their albums. And some of their stuff gets a little experimental because they are all actually really good at their instruments. But you wouldn't know it by listening to that one damn song everybody listens to. And I have to have an honorable mention for Speed of Pain by Marilyn Manson from the Mechanical Animals because it's such a good concept album. But moving on to saner music, my last song is a really long title called Hold on when youn Get Love and Let Go when youn Give it by Starz, the Canadian band. Have you guys heard stuff by them?
No.
No.
So I think they came out in the late 90s with the reputation for being kind of dark, but they're sort of like Arcade Fire but poppier and with more interesting lyrics. And then they had a second singer as a guest, and now she's a permanent member of the band. And then they had to take time off because she and the bass player got married and had kids. But this song is from an album called the north, which is obviously by Canada, but it's probably my least favorite album by them. But it's my favorite song and a wedding that I'm going to in a few weeks, you know. In the RSVP card, they asked for a song request, so I requested the song. It's got a lot of nice 80s flavor, and it's like, really just a good song. I think the video was. You know, a lot of their stuff is sort of activist. This was 2014. I think the video just had a lot of trans folks having fun and dancing in the band. I don't think the band was in it, but yeah. So this is. Hold on when you get love and let go when you give it by stars. Yeah, that's. That's. It's super lush. And their last album was called, like, There is no love in a Fluorescent Light. Like, you know, the writing is really, really good. Yeah, that's my last song.
Nice. I like that.
Leave it on a positive note.
And I was gonna ask you, Johnny, like, with hearing music that, like, has lyrics, because I keep, like, mentioning that, but, like. So when you're writing, do you notice them at all, or does it just kind of, like, not compute? Or how does. How does that. Like, how does your brain work when you're. When you're writing?
Sometimes, you know, you'll. You'll be writing a word that also, someone sings at about the same time. And that's kind of weird. That sort of tunes it back in. But a lot of it is. I think when I'm writing, I'm not listening to the lyrics. I'm just listening to the music part.
Okay.
You know, playing in the rhythm section and bands. I guess it's easy for me to tune out the lead singer because, you know, ego. But, I mean, I'm in a band now with a very egoless lead singer, which is awesome.
That's. That's interesting because. Yeah, like, that's the. The opposite for me. Like. Like I can't actually. And this is different than the one you had mentioned, Andy, but like, those things that play the sound of coffee shops. So part of the reason why I can't listen or I can't write in a coffee shop is because all I want to do is listen to everything everybody is saying. That's all I want to do is eavesdrop. Like, kind of for the sake of, like, mining for material. But then that, like, is counterproductive because I'm not paying any attention to my writing. So that's just. That's. That's interesting to me because I can't figure out how to do that. I wish I could.
Yeah. And sometimes there's, like. Especially I've been discovering with this book, I can like, basically only write from a coffee shop. Like, I. I've. If I'm writing at work, I'll just go up to our, like, cafe upstairs at the building and like, do it there, which is. Which is interesting.
Yeah, that's. Yeah. Because like, these songs you're playing Johnny, like, I can. I can get the vibe of him, you know, I'm like. I could totally imagine writing to this because it's just. But it's just like my brain is imagining how to. How to not pay attention to the lyrics. But like, the. The sound of the song is like. Yeah, totally.
Yeah. Stars gets you because their lyrics are usually really good. Like, they have a song called I Died so I Could Haunt yout. That is what it sounds like. That's really good. Yeah, but I mean, also when you listen, their music is really nice and layered. So after a few lessons, you can tune out the lyrics a lot.
Cool.
Nice.
Well, let's see. My remaining three, the rest. The couple of these are, like, pretty well known, so I probably wouldn't even need to play them in general. But one of them is that, like, you know, movie soundtracks. John Williams is just a really good, like, just. Just really good music to listen to. Like the theme from Jurassic park, specifically. Like, I think we all kind of know that. Really good. And if has this really great, like, emotional swelling and it's just kind of grand and it's really great.
It's also one of those. Those themes that. I don't know how he does it, but, like, it can seem totally familiar but also totally new at, like, the exact same time. So it's like, you don't listen to it. You're like trying to write and you're like, I'm listening to the Jurassic park theme. I'm listening to the Jurassic park theme. I'm listening to the, you know. Yeah, totally feels like I don't know how he does it because that's. That's one of the best movie. Movie scores or movie themes out there ever.
Yeah. And. And even like, you know, I tried. I was just like looking up of some of John Williams other stuff. And of course, you know, like Star wars was in there. And I think for me, like most of the Star wars music, unless it's like incidental or background music, is just too iconic.
And I just get Harry Potter.
Yeah, yeah.
Like Lord of the Rings. It's all. It's like, it's like, this is Lord of the Rings. This is Lord of the Rings. There's something about Jurassic park that makes it like.
Yeah, it's. It's grander or something. I don't know. Yeah, so there's that another one, which I. It always kind of like makes me feel embarrassed. Embarrassed. But I think it's because my dad is a big, like, soft piano fan. Like, he, he loves, you know, like George Winston. You familiar with him? He's a. Yeah, he's a pianist and composer and he wrote the music for the Snowman, which is that really beautiful, like animated movie, winter movie. But there's, there's one that's. That's maybe kind of similar to it. It's a really good, just relaxing, kind of introspective song. It's. It's a guy named Max Richter.
I love him.
I. I don't know any. Like, I've never heard him before I discovered this particular playlist. But yeah, he wrote a song on an album called a catalog of Afternoons. And it was just sort of like, just really great. Tell me more about Max Richter.
Well, I found him from, like, I had described my process of finding music to listen to while writing Dustin o', Halloran, the guy I just talked about who did the piano solos albums and then the Transparent Theme, he was a related artist to him. So I found him through Dustin o'. Halloran. And so I really love what I had heard of him. And even just that, like the title, A catalog of Afternoons is, just tells me that he's writing music that's supposed to represent the most normal times of your day. You know, like the afternoons. It's not, you know, late night. It's not late night jazz or it's not like, you know, it's supposed to. It's just the moments that are the most normal. And. And another one who showed up with him with Max Richter and Dustin o' Halloran is a guy named. And I'm going to totally butcher the pronunciation of this, but it's Olafur Arnolds. It's O L O L A F U R. And then his last name is A R N A L D S. And he has. And so I found them all together and Olafor has a album that's called Living Room Songs that's kind of in the same world and they sound very similar, but it's got that kind of, you know, back of the bar, piano kind of feel to it.
Yeah.
Soft piano, but not cheesy, just like Max Richter, you know. It doesn't sound cheesy. It doesn't. It's soft, it's. It's solo. It doesn't feel like you're sitting in a, you know, country club lobby or whatever.
It's a good way to put it.
Yeah, I love that guy, though. Yeah, that's a good choice.
And the one that I'll play for you, which. Which, by the way, I just realized that we are pretty exclusively dude musicians here, so we should do another one with. With women artists. But this one is no exception. It's an artist that I. I discovered just through listening to one of my favorite podcasts, which is 99% invisible, which is about design and architecture. I've talked about it a lot on this podcast. He uses this artist as a lot of his background music. It's called. It's OK Ikumi. It's a guy, Carl Jorgensen, or Jorgensen just from Salt Lake City. He plays a lot of like, kind of ambient, environmental music, but just really nice, just really good. And instrumental, I guess, a little bit electronic. Really good beat to it. So this particular one is from, I think his. One of his earliest albums called Alpine Scenes. And let me look for it here. Alpine Sequences. I'm sorry, that's what it is. And the. The name of the song is Pfeiffer Fifer Horn, which I honestly don't know enough about this music to really know what this is in reference to, but it's just really nice. So I'm going to play it and then just skip right to kind of a middle sequence here. It's really good focus music, I think, if you know what I mean. And there's.
When I. Yeah, gosh, when I listened to that today, I, like, immediately became obsessed with it. Like I was listening to the album. I. I love this stuff. It's like, it sounds. It almost sounds like old school. It's like if old school video game music was written today.
Yeah. That's a good way to put it.
It would sound like, like I, I love that stuff.
I.
Or I immediately saved that album, that Pfeiffer horn. Pfeiffer horn album.
So.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's. It's really good, all of it. There's like three or four Okiyakumi albums. They're all really good. I. I'll try to find a link to the playlist, but somebody made basically just a playlist of all the songs you hear in 99 invisible episodes. And honestly, that's a really good, like, writing concentration album, like playlist as well. So I'll track that down.
That's. Yeah, that's a good. That's a good call. And that's. There are so many, like, good playlists made on Spotify that you can already just like, jump right to. And that would. That. I mean, I'm already looking it up. That one you just mentioned. But there's also one. There's one called Late Night Jazz. That's a really good one because it's. It's jazz that doesn't get too weird and also doesn't get too cheesy. So it's like a sort of like a nice middle ground.
Yeah.
But. Yeah.
Cool. One thing we'll. We'll mention before we wrap things up is we in the Erasable group put in a. Put out a call for, you know, other people's favorite favorite music to write with, write by. So I stuck them all together in a songs from the Erasable Community album. There's a bunch in here that I added, but then also 34 songs so far, but I made it a collaborative playlist. So if you're in the Erasable group, go click the link and add your own songs.
Did you add all these? Oh, somebody. These were recommended in the group.
Yeah, yeah, these are. People in the group suggested them and then I just found them on Spotify and. And put them in this playlist.
But that's really fun, I think. So somebody recommended Iron Maiden, which you like, literally.
Yeah, well, that's what it was on top of mind, because I was just like, I actually don't know this. This Iron Maiden song. There's also one. I've never heard of this band, but there's a song called Chonks by the
artist Snarky Puppy and is from Elizabethton, Tennessee. Really yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He went to the school I teach at. Yeah. Snarky Puppy is. They're like local celebrities here.
Oh, I think you've talked about this band before.
That's really funny that you brought it up. Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say something, but yeah, Snarky Puppy.
It's called Chonks.
Chonks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Snarky Puppy is awesome. They're great. I've talked about them before. Yeah. From. They're from Tennessee or like a couple of them are from Tennessee.
So. Nice. Somebody. Somebody put this mountain in there, which rip our old intro music.
Oh, that's really nice.
Yeah, there's a.
Sweet.
There's a couple others that are just like pencil and rip.
This mountain too, actually.
Do they break up?
Yeah, they. They're not touring anymore, so.
That's too bad.
Yeah.
Yeah. Somebody else put just like pencil related songs in here. There's a song by they Might Be Giants called Pencil Rain. There's a Tom York song called the Eraser. There's another one I need to listen to that's called I Used to Write in Notebooks by Rhett Miller.
Rhett Miller. I know him.
Yeah.
So band was he in?
I don't know. This is just a solo thing, I guess, but.
Yeah, so old 97s. That's what he was on.
Okay. He looks like a country David Bowie.
That is a good description if that makes any Honky tonk David Bowie.
Honky tonk David Bowie. So I'll put a link to this in the show notes too. And if you're in the raceable group, go find that link and add one or two songs of your own. Love to hear from you. So. Yeah, anything before we wrap this up, guys.
Listen to stars.
Yeah.
Check out their older stuff too.
Yeah, I don't think so. This has been fun. Like I said, this is a topic that I could talk about like for days.
Yeah.
So I think I really want to see what people add to the. What people add to the playlist and. And you know, and tell us what you think of our playlist, you know.
Yeah, absolutely. And. And honestly, like you, Tim, I think you should have a. Like a spin off music podcast. I think you would be really, really good at that.
I don't got time for that.
Three.
Three podcasts where you could do four.
You could be like, how to not take a compliment.
That's what you. So I'll have a. So love you, Tim.
Ain't nobody got time.
I'll have a new podcast called Fresh Points of Erasable podcast in which I talk about music.
Perfect.
Oh, thanks, guys.
All right, so let's button it up. Tim, where can fit pipe?
Blah, blah, blah.
Where can people find you on the Internet?
They can blah, blah, blah @timwassom on Twitter and you can follow me imothywassom on Instagram.
Cool. How about you, Johnny?
You can find me on the Internet@pencil revolution.com on social media Ensolution and on medium at J O H N G A M B E R J r
J. Gambrger Jr. Yeah.
Cool.
And I'm Andy. I am@woodclinch.com or Andy. WTF? You can find me on Instagram and Facebook at awelfly a w e L F L E. So this is the Erasable podcast. You can find us at Erasable Us. And you can find this episode and show notes and a recording at erasable US118. We are on Facebook in our group, in a big great group called the erasable community that is facebook.comgroups erasable. And you can find us on Twitter and Instagram raceablepodcast. So thank you very much and we'll catch you in a couple weeks for episode 119.
Do you like our podcast?
Most people like our podcast, but if
you like our podcast, podcast, David will turn it off.
Boom.
Sitting there waiting. Perfect.
What if I just kept going on
and on and on and on?
Attention was killing me. Knock out my front teeth.