The week, Merlin and John talk about:
- Waltz No 2 (Music)
- Weird 1970:s cocaine music (see below)
- All the great shows
- John talks to Gillian Jacobs about the architecture of Los Angeles (Architecture)
- XOXO and meeting Dan Benjamin (Shows and Events)
- Giving presentations (Factoids)
- Tripping over the amplifier (Career)
- playing Threes (Currents)
The problem: John wasn't actually a big fan, referring to John's "All the great shows"-type encounter with Dan Harmon.
The show title refers to an encounter John had many years ago as a musician where he mistook a fan for someone else and in the awkwardness of the situation blasted out "All the great shows". It has become a major bit for the future of the show.
Merlin was listening to Born Slippy before he started recording and he was totally pumped. John listened to Elliott Smith's Waltz #2 on the way in and was as usual reduced to tears. "Never gonna know you now". They continue to banter about music.
John feels that the musical 1970:s folk thing has now been explored enough and he doesn't want to hear another acoustic guitar for the rest of his life. Merlin recently heard September Gurls by Big Star in the airport and he felt so old, because that song was old when he got into it.
They banter about 1970:s cocaine songs which create a strange environment. They are all sound, sonically weird, both comforting and enveloping, emotionally cold in a way that feels like home.
- Brother Louie.
- Baker Street and its psychic partner being the ultimate example
- Year of the Cat,
- Time Passengers,
- Sentimental Lady by Bob Welch,
- Ebony Eyes, the cocaineiest of cocaine songs, with Valerie Bertinelli.
- Devil Woman. They were chasing a combination of AM Radio songwriting chops and they had all the time in the world with the best equipment. If John knew how to do it, he would approximate it.
- All of that Fleetwood Mac weird shit.
- Cat Stevens maybe got the ball rolling on those things.
- Merlin was a lonely kid and listened to AM Radio all the time.
- Snoopy vs the Red Baron, that's how John got into WWI because he wanted to know more.
- All that Captain and Tennille stuff: That was the dawn of John's sexual awakening, where he just knew he wanted something, but he didn't know what it was, he didn't even know what lady parts looked like, but he knew that Tennille was expressing a thing.
- ABBA was too polished and there were too many people there.
- Close Harmonies and Lindsey Buckingham is intrinsically creepy.
- Bob Welch was in Fleetwood Mac for a couple of years. He wasn't on "Rumours", but on the rebooted Fleetwood Mac record and he is a real creepy guy.
- If Merlins name was Daryl Dragon, he would not call himself only Dragon, he would at least call himself Captain Dragon.
There was some friction in Fleetwood Mac because people were sleeping with other people in the band that were married to other people in the band. John has always drawn the line, because it is bad business. There had been situations where he said "I don't like that guitar part that you are playing" and the reply was "It's my guitar part, it is not your place to say" and if you could just say "Let's fuck!", that would have resolved the issue a lot of times. Imagine John could have done that with Mike Squires!
There is an emptiness in these tracks, but it doesn't feel empty. It feels impossibly full, but there is space between the things. That effect might be a little bit of a holdover from the restrictions of a 4-track-recorder. They would put the guitar part on the same track as the vocal channel because they didn't want to waste tape space. Later they had 24 tracks and they played 24 instruments all playing at once, just because they could. On those older songs when the acoustic guitar comes in and then goes away, it goes away and is not replaced by something. Everything does a little bit of work and then goes. John admires it so much and finds it is so evocative. Many of the songs are a little creepy.
