601. - Laura Snapes

All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Stateside with Kai and Carter, a new podcast from The Guardian. And they are using this podcast to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions that we all have about what's happening in the world. And they do it three times a week, Jason. Does that sound familiar to you? We don't really talk about, you know, a lot of international global news items and climates and cultures and sports and things like that. We do talk about fashion and wellness, but for everything else, Kai and Carter are a great place. All right, so who couldn't use more news? Listen wherever you get your podcast. or watch on YouTube. How long gone, Jason? The sun is set here in beautiful Denmark, and I am just kind of here by the Villa Copenhagen window. Staring out into the garden, ready to chat with you. How are you feeling? Well, I'm glad you finally doxed your location. I woke up to a rainy morning. It's raining, and it's cold and gray. The dogs don't know where to shit. Speaking of dogs, I just want to kind of... That was a Chloe Sevigny segue. A Chloe Sagan... Way? I want to talk about how Chloe Sevigny is team Chris when it comes to dogs. She told Rolling Stone that there's too many dogs and that people got to stop walking. The athleisure and the dogs are taking over and that's really unfortunate. Everyone's in Lululemon has a fucking dog and it's driving me crazy. I'm sorry, dog lovers. There are too many of you. And I have to say, I mean, I could have said it better myself. She has a bigger platform, so I'm glad that she's able to spread our message to the wider audience. Well, I mean, I hate to say that you have said it better yourself maybe hundreds of times, and it's sort of the backbone of our program as well as my revenue stream. Sure, sure, sure. So you don't feel any like, oh, wait, so you just get to show up and...

do this now you know what i mean it's like it's like travis barker's son just gets to show up and have a career now it's kind of like that oh now you hate dogs great i've been i've been i've been beasting in the underground of dog hating for years i'm in i'm an og of hating dogs and i i want to say yeah i i want to know if sorry and i'll let you speak sorry sway i'll let you speak but if if chloe 78 gets to become mother for one little sentence in rolling stone magazine however many issues they've got left, how come you don't get to be anointed as a father of some sort? It's an interesting question that you pose. And for me, Jason, I'm looking at this more as, like I said, a victory for our community. We're small but mighty. And I think the more vocal that some of our higher profile members can be, the more our message will spread. And hopefully it'll give kind of... confidence to the weak those unafraid to share those afraid to open up and i i think that's how i'm looking at it i think that is a dope attitude it kind of has a rising tide euthanizes all dogs kind of energy we know we're all the same team we're not doing it for credit yeah we're doing it to get this thing done yeah uh and but i i you said it is a small tight-knit community obviously it's not something that people want to scream from the rooftops i hate lovable dogs you know a lot of people are going to be pissed off by that at a certain point there's a tipping point where it's like guys we we have to do something it's very similar to the the trajectory of of uh congressman fetterman's clothing yeah with the with the release of his tuxedo hoodie with his dickie shorts A lot of people are like, you know, like the wall is here. This I have to say something. And I don't disagree. What do you think? No, I would. I think that's a great I think that's a great example. I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about being here in Copenhagen. I saw one dog the entire time I was here.

and and that is just you don't realize how nice that is until you experience it yeah and that dog has better health care than i do oh 100 but that dog gets paid to have children you know it's a different it's a really it's a crazy it's a crazy situation over here it's a crazy situation over here yeah i tried that over in copenhagen they didn't want my sperm You tried to have sex with a dog, or you're saying you tried to have a... I'm confused. I know you love dogs, but let's draw the lines. I too am confused. You said they got paid to have babies. It was just a sperm bank joke. Oh, I see, I see. I also need to correct something that many of you were happy to point out to me, that when we were talking about Valley Girl, obviously the singer is Jesse Rutherford from The Neighborhood, not Jesse Lacey from Brand New. I apologize for that mistake. All of you Brand New dorks, please leave me alone. There's nothing less cool than being a brand new apologist to me for some reason, even though they're not bad. They're not taking back Sunday, but they do what they can. I've never listened to that band. I went to a show yesterday for a brand called MF Pen that I wrote about a while ago. R.I.P. I'm buddies with Sig, the owner. I was taking some flicks beforehand, so I was there for the walkthrough, and the show was Black Flag X and Fugazi. Okay. Was the music. And I was just so excited to not hear some weird techno or an orchestra playing. I mean, you love Black Flag, so this must have been dope for you. I mean, I just think the punk spirit. actually adds some much-needed spice to a fashion show, which is normally kind of boring and overly dramatic. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here. I don't even know how to make fun of you first. You know what I mean? It's like I showed up wearing a tuxedo hoodie. I feel like I'm Conor McGregor, and you've left your face, chest, arms, stomach, legs, ear all open for attack.

I think you have this opinion just because you would rather hear music with guitars instead of this techno bleep bloop crap. Well, of course. Of course. But I think that historically, I haven't been to a thousand fashion shows. I've been to quite a lot. oftentimes the music is is bad and it's it's really labored over and thought about but oftentimes you don't like the music no no i could say i think i can say bad i feel comfortable saying bad sometimes i don't like it sometimes it's bad let's put it that way so you you mentioned that the maybe the labored over other types of music that you would normally hear are lacking you know like arca is doing a thing or something like that and that is lacking spice But you do like the spice brought to you by Ian McKay. Well, the spice of Black Flag is different because it's these... people don't know what to make of it. They know what to make of some weird ARCA stuff. I think that's more common, to be honest. So it hits them off guard when they're here sitting in their waiting room. Yeah, exactly. When the baseline kicks in, the staff from Elle and Marie Claire look around and get scared. You know what I mean? It's a different... Did they bring... Was Marie Claire front row at this? I didn't know they still had juice like that. No, I don't know if Marie Claire was there. I was just pulling that out of my ass. But yeah. I think that's part of it. I know what you mean. It is in a sea of wouldn't it be random if we played techno music at this fashion show. I guess it is a nice divergence to Zig instead of Zag. And something as, I guess, nowadays in 2024, I guess I think of Black Flag and Fugazi and all these bands. When you see them now and how they're just... these shells of their punk rock original self it makes me like it peaks my not my interest but it puts me on guard because i'm like what can i do to avoid becoming because john like

John Fetterman looks like any member of Fugazi now. Well, they're a little thinner. Thank God they take care of them. The vegan diet will do that. But, yes, I agree that that is part of my Fetterman issue, is that he does look like a guy that would be at the Unbroken reunion in the front row. Easy. Because he took a weekend off from his union plumbing job to head down to Orange County. But I do think that the – it must be a strange thing with some of these bands, especially the ones we're talking about, because they – I mean – They peaked when they were 22. You know what I mean? The highlight of your life is something that you kind of can dine out on. forever and it's you know usually one record or two records when you were very young so i think it does fuck up your your mind a little bit we're gonna put we're gonna put dining out in big air quotes so it's well i mean you can you can it changes the trajectory of your life you can you choose you can choose to be like i'm just gonna go get a job and it was cool to be in this band or you can kind of like make a career out of it if you would like to i was a contender yeah not not a even though i have to dine out at jack in a box yeah that's what i'm saying it's not well paying i'm just mean you can put it you can put it together something to tell the ex-grandkids ex yeah exactly exactly what i'm thinking jason exactly what i'm thinking good uh but yeah i was i i just i wanted to talk about that with you because i didn't want to offend the techno community but i just thought it was a nice change no it's fine i get it did you see the the ghani show no they they didn't they didn't have a show this this season no why does copenhagen have two fashion fashion weeks two different seasons i understand that but like you know copenhagen in january it's honestly nicer than we were when we were here so really yeah i mean it's cold but it's like the sun is out like you put a jacket and a hat on you're kind of good Some fucking bullshit. Honestly, I don't mind it. Obviously, it's kind of windy, which I don't love, but luckily I'm not riding a bike, so I'm not going to get blown into traffic. I guess I'm happy for Copenhagen that their fashion world is large enough where they can warrant more than one fashion week per year. Because not every city gets that, right? No, they do. I mean, the ones that do it, yeah, like Paris, Milan, London. I'm talking about Los Angeles.

Oh, a lot of fashion. Oh, sorry. You got it. I don't know if Los Angeles gets one. And let's not overlook, Jason, my favorite of all of the global fashion weeks, Miami Swim Week. Yeah, we know. Which is kind of focused strictly on swimwear. It's like, you know, it's not about the fabric of construction. It's about something else, which I think is an interesting way to kind of approach it. Yeah. It's about human trafficking. It's like winter music conference with good-looking people. To best explain it to you. I remember when I was just a youngster coming up and you would hear lore of Miami Swim Week. It feels almost like that's a time of entourage. Yeah, I was going to say. It feels like an entourage storyline. Like when sex tourism was still okay. When you could still take a nice scouting trip to a smaller city. When you would have things like scouting trips, which just means I want to go look at girls in bikini. I've never been, obviously, but I think it's kind of legitimate. I think it might actually do business, you know what I mean? So that makes it even more twisted. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, the consumer electronics. Yeah, true. CES in Vegas. I'm sure that real business happens there. More there than maybe any other conference in Vegas. The nerds with money, they're fucking more than these dentists from Minneapolis. All right. Oh, we do have a guest. And on that wonderful note, we have a guest today. Laura Snapes is joining us from beautiful London. She's the Guardian deputy music editor. We're going to chat with her about a ton of things, obviously, but also a little Grammy preview, Jason, because I'm missing the awards, obviously, because I'm going to be in Europe still. So I needed to get some information from an expert, kind of some predictions. How many awards can Olivia Rodrigo win and how many can SZA lose? Let's get into it.

I need to talk to her about my famous Brit's Awards. All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Quince. Jason, the temps are warming up. It's getting hot out there. Summer always changes how I get dressed. I need pieces that feel lighter, more breathable, and they're just easy but still put together. I don't want to look like a slob. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high-quality essentials that feel and look amazing. Breathable linen and soft organic cottons. Well-made basics, but without the luxury markups. That rare balance where everything feels elevated, but still effortless. Yeah, Chris, linen season is here. I wore a linen blazer to dinner a few nights ago in the warm California sun. But, you know, you got that Italy trip coming up this summer. And quality European linen pants and shirts. Upgrade that look starting at just $34. You know, if you get a nice linen suit, a little t-shirt underneath it, some chill shoes, you're looking good, but you're staying cool. The inside of your special areas are nice and dry as you turn up with your besties. So elevate that summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash how long for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, even on a nice holiday now available in Canada. That is Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash how long. That'll get you free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince punto com slash how long. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Squarespace. Obviously, Jason, you and I spend a lot of time on the World Wide Web. So do our peers, our listeners, our friends, our colleagues, maybe even your parents if they're freaky. And if you're doing anything in the world. writing, taking pictures. I do topless boxing. You need a website. Exactly, a website that works, that does what it's supposed to do, that allows you to be creative but also business-minded. Jason, there's one place to go for that, Squarespace. Yeah, Chris, I'm over here. I'm modifying calculators and putting Claude inside of them so you could cheat at school. And I just want a place where I could have everything all in one place. I can have the SEO tools.

So those future graduates can find me and, you know, I'm able to accept, quote unquote, donations for my services that might be gray area. You know what I mean? And then email campaigns. Hey, I got a new, you know, 2.3 version upgrade. Boom, boom, boom. Get the analytics going. Raise some money. You know, show your investor all of your cool analytics of what's going on. They're going to want to get in early and we can use Blueprint AI to make your website look as professional. as your competition, if not more. So head to squarespace.com slash how long for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code how long to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Thanks for joining us. First and foremost, I'd like to talk about banks because you have an iconic bang. And I feel like that's often a big choice or a big change. Is this something you've had for a long time? Where do you get off having a bang like that, Laura? Yeah, exactly. I was always made to have one when I was a little kid. And then as soon as I was a teenager and could choose my own hair, I wanted to grow it out. And I had these horrible like stringy bits down the side of my face because it was like 2002. And then when I got older, I realized that my mother was right and I have a huge forehead and I needed to get a fringe. Okay. So the fringe is, there's a purpose for this fringe. You think it's not stylistic. Quite big. I don't think, I don't think you have a five head. I don't think it's that crazy, but it could be the zoom warping it. Pardon my. Lack of intelligence. Is there a difference between bangs and a fringe or is that the same thing? I think it's the same thing. I'm not super up on hairdresser lingo. Okay. And when you say stringy bits, is that sort of like an orthodox kind of vibe or is it a little more flat ironed and a little more... electro clashy very flat iron sadly not electro clash very much of the era it was like it matched um eyebrows where you had literally like one eyebrow hair going along i think the look was like thin flatness like at break time at lunch time every day at school everybody would have their hair straightens out hair straight straightening their hair again having only done it two hours before worried about frizz which was the plague of british teenagers in 2002 we had a big frizz issue so everyone would bring a flat iron

in their backpack to school and then was it a mad dash for electrical outlets or was was there a generator brought in where children could all plug in or did we have maybe a portable bluetooth flat iron i think this is pre-bluetooth i think this is the early days of ghds i never had any and i also wasn't that into the hair straightening apart from the stringy bits But yeah, I don't know what you call it, but we call it break time. And it would just be a sort of parade of everybody getting to have a go. But yeah, if you got rained on or if you had to do sports, you had to do it again. Wow. Everybody has a go. That's a commitment, Jason. I think for the record, I think fringe is just the more charming British way to say bangs. As usual, they've done it better than us. But I think it's globally recognized as well. I was familiar with the word, but... I just wanted to quadruple check in case there were any slight differences. But yeah, Bangs comes out a little... Fringe is more pleasant to say, I would agree with that 100%. I guess there's a possibility for confusion of your cowboy outfit fringe style thing. Of course, of course. Orville Peck is going to have a tough time listening to this episode. Maybe less spotted in the UK. Well, actually, speaking of fringe and suede jackets and Orville Peck, What do you think it's going to take for country music to cross over in the UK? Oh God. I mean, they try, there's the country to country festival in London and like big country stars can play like one night of the O2, but then they're not playing the rest of the country. I don't know. I think it's a, I think it's a snobbery. We will never get over. Like there are some people who get a pass like Dolly Parton, but I think it's, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I just don't think it makes sense to people. She's been grandmothered in. Well, it's funny. It's funny. Country music is our football. Soccer will never happen in this country, and you guys will never accept country music, which is, you know, as an expert, as someone who writes about music professionally, country music is the only hope we have left for real songs. You know, they got a structure. There's a bridge. There's a chorus. There's a pre-chorus. It works.

And it's catchier than almost... It's basically pop music with more twang, if you really break it down. No, it's pop music with black people removed. Yeah, I mean, that also. That also. And they also... Even more so. But, Laura, what I love about country music is that if you're good, they let you in. It's not about how you look. And that's something that I feel like we need to... Those are some values that I could get behind. It's true, though. It's like you watch a country award show and these motherfuckers... It looks like you're at a truck stop waiting for the bathroom with these guys on the red carpet. If you're good and you're a guy, they let you in. Maybe that's a condition of entry. Honestly... Snape says a good point. Honestly, I would... normally would agree with you but it's not totally true it's definitely more more that way but it's chris who's who's the female jelly roll okay there's no female there's no female you know what i mean jelly rolls fat ass gets to be a country star because he's got a voice of gold or whatever where's the woman version of him Where is a 400 pound big mama with face tats? Yeah, no, they're not going to do that. Making it in country music. It ain't going to happen. You know, Jelly Roll is actually going in front of Congress. Point Snipes. Going in front of Congress and talking about fentanyl. Because he used to be, he did some time. So he's doing good as well as making bad music. That's so awesome. He went to jail for fentanyl? I don't know. No, I don't think he went to jail. I think he was pre-fentanyl. I think he dealt with some other demons. He needs to go in front of Congress and talk about Dunkin' Donuts. Anyway, Laura Snapes, how the hell are you? Welcome to How Long Gone. Have you ever listened to this show before? I listened to every single episode for about 18 months. Wow. Really? Yeah, embarrassingly. I think my neighbors probably think I live with two quite loud American men. When you say embarrassingly, Could you expand on that, please, to us, the two people who do this show? I mean, I have paid to go to one of your London shows. How are we not mates, mate? Yeah, don't do that, Laura. You send me a text message or an email. We have friends in common. You shouldn't be paying. Shard wasn't in town. Our good friend Shard D'Souza, he wasn't around. But I was going to ask you some questions, and then Sam Fragoso asked you some questions, and so now it would just sound like I was jacking his shit if I'm like, oh, actually, I'm not.

something no no you you guys are both professional question askers and better at it than we are [redacted address] oh one of the things that i really like about the uh show is Like you don't ask people about the work. You don't ask people about the process so much. Like I was just writing a piece about this late music journalist called Tom Hibbert. He used to work at Smash Hits in the 80s and then Key Magazine in the 90s. And he was very irreverent. And he asked people questions like, like there's a really famous interview with Morrissey from Just Before Meat is Murder comes out. And everybody's taking it so seriously. And people like kids across the country are going vegetarian. And his first question to Morrissey is, what's the matter with you? And I feel like we need more of that. Actually, that's kind of our vibe. I like that. What's wrong with you? We had to do that with Jay Mascus just last week, actually. A question like, what do you do on an airplane? That's quite revealing. And this guy, Tom Hibbert, would ask people questions like, Does Your Mother Play Golf? Which kind of seems innocuous, but then in the 80s probably reveals quite a lot about your class background and whether you're posh or not. And there's one great interview in Key Magazine in the 90s. He had a column called Who the Hell? And the headline for all of them was Who the Hell does John Lydon think he is? Who the hell does Roger Waters think he is? And in the Roger Waters one, he says, Are you, are you not the grumpiest man in rock? And Roger Waters says, I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it is stupid. And it's like, okay, so that's a yes? Yeah, that's 100% a yes. I mean, I think that level of confrontation, I just don't know if it's allowed anymore. Like in certain arenas, you know what I mean? Where it's like a publicist is going to jump in, like they'll just hang up the fucking phone. They don't care because they have so much power now. Whereas in the 90s, you know.

There was only a handful of places that mattered. But the beautiful thing about what he did is it wasn't just straightforward combative. He wanted to kind of hold people to a high standard and have fun with them and see if they had a sense of their own absurdism. But especially in the 90s, you've kind of got washed up rock stars for the first time, but they're also fat off the boom of CD money. So they're really kind of complacent. Ringo Starr in one interview thinks that Tom Hibbert is being insufficiently respectful. And he says, don't you know you've got a bloody legend in front of you? And he storms out. I mean, that's good. the thing that's gold you can't i mean that's as good as it gets ringo's not wrong ringo's not wrong i mean just from having listened to this a lot i have been wanting to see your pet shop boys poster jason it's very nice um but they they also have a really that's great they have a very healthy sense of the absurd i interviewed them the other week and they were incredible and um they have um they put out an annual every year called annually and in the back of it they have a bit where readers can ask the questions and one of the questions in a recent issue was has either of you ever been on a horse And it turns out, uh, Neil has never been on a horse, but Chris has been on a donkey and he's been on Paul McCartney's horse. And it's like, damn useless information, but it like, it's brilliant. I'm so glad that I know that. Well, that, that reminds me when speaking of Jay Mascus, when we were just sort of hitting a wall when I was like, all right, I'm asking this person questions and the answers are not super satisfying. A lot of, uh, like I told Chris, it's a lot of yes, no, instead of yes, and going on. And for some reason, just in my head, I was like, have you ever had a themed birthday party? And he was just like, hmm. And then he revealed that he had a skiing themed birthday party, which then led us to learn that he broke both of his legs in the seventh grade. And then we got to learn a little bit about his class upbringing as well, a family, you know, often going skiing together. And like you say, it leads you down roads that you never would have gone. And sometimes you have to do that.

So that being said, we're going to have to do that with you, Laura. Or maybe you're going to do that with us. And Laura, we're not even obsessed with class like your people. Chris has never even thought about it. I've never thought about money once. I'm kind of above that, personally. I mean, you two are famously pictured laughing above an article about how British people have no money. I didn't love that. I did. I did because all British people. were like, damn, this is so right. This is exactly how it is. It was a really resounding yes to that line of thinking. I didn't like it that much because I know most people won't read because nobody reads those thingies anymore, so they just see that headline and my laughing face, and I wanted to say... Hey guys, I don't identify as a wealthy person. I've grown up poor my entire life. This is not me. I mean, it's more though, but why, why don't you guys get paid anything for your jobs? What do you think the issue is? No, I guess. I'm not sure what the difference in taxes is. Maybe it's like, I don't know, we have more of a safety net. You guys don't have so much of a safety net. I don't know. When I look at what's happening in, I mean, I can only speak to media because I have unfortunately been a journalist my whole life. When I look at what happens in American media, it seems maybe that the wages are higher, but the instability is huge. You never know when the iceberg is going to crack and you're going to be in the water, whereas here things are a little bit more. solid and traditional. I don't know if that's true. Everyone I know who has a nine-to-five media job with a company email address and maybe healthcare, they almost are living a glorified freelance lifestyle. It's just you're freelance, but you also have at CondeNast.com email. You know what I mean? You don't go to an office. There's no culture. There's no real security, like you said. Shout out to our family over there, Conde. I mean, I saw that you're not very happy about the pitchfork thing. Well, before we get to that, I think maybe because music journalism doesn't make very much money, then the people that do it don't get paid very much money. That's probably definitely true. I mean, I cannot discount the fact that I have a full-time job as a music journalist, and I'm aware of that's very rare and very lucky. I listened to what you guys said about the pitchfork thing, and...

yeah like nobody needs music criticism that kind of thing um and i you know what you were saying with um sampragoso as well about like you know people expect to be able to make it in something and that's not necessarily always going to be the case and you might have to accept the kind of hard truth of that um yeah i'm aware of the absurdity of being able to do this and i think the pitchfork thing is sad because like um me and a lot of people have fundamentally been able to like make a life out of just paying attention to nerd shit and kind of like how you guys have. And that is like, it's ridiculous and kind of, you know, a weird blessing where it's like, I'm just getting paid to think about stuff that is not like, that is not necessary, but also the fact that it's not necessary kind of makes it feel like something that should exist even more when everything's so geared towards like productivity and hustle culture and blah, blah, blah. So yeah, I mean, I'm sentimental. It's called art guys. It's called art. I'm sentimental about pitchforkers. um like i think it kind of saved me a bit getting a job there and you know i made friends in america and it made me a better writer and um but yeah obviously i understand why people don't care for it no i don't even think but no i mean i think that what you said is completely valid that makes total sense i don't even think i i think the people that are upset about it that are like they were mean that's stupid because the that shit that was the best part that was fucking funny i think people care for it but i i it's just not a business that seemed to work right like i mean obviously they got a lot of click through and traffic but if it was a really successful business they wouldn't have done that i'm assuming right i yeah i don't know about that i mean i saw that thing from somebody who worked internally saying that it had like the highest amount of traffic of any one of their sites because i guess it's probably one of the only condo things that's not pegged to a print publication and you know it's just sort of like the more immediate offshoot of like a more sclerotic side of things um but i think you could

Even before this GQ thing, you could tell that maybe the feature side of it was slightly hamstrung from being within Condé because maybe big superstars weren't coming to them in the way they once were. And, you know, maybe there was the idea of conflict with what celebrities meant to bigger brands at that company. And also, I guess if you are. Anna Wintour or whoever, looking at Pitch Rocket through the perspective of like, well, you should be getting bigger, shinier things. I don't know what that, I don't know if that is what that website is for. You know, once in a while, they'll do a really interesting interview with somebody like Mariah Carey, where they get something really great out of her because they're asking her about being a producer of her own music and not just like diva celebrity bullshit. But a website like that, I think, shouldn't be dependent on likes. Star access? Stars, yeah. No, I mean, I would agree with... And maybe that's a conflict. No, I would agree with that, but I think star access is what drives kind of everything in that, you know what I mean, whether we like it or not. And I mean, I read all this stuff and it's crazy what everything that was indie has now become. That just doesn't really exist anymore as far as what they're talking about. Financially, there's plenty of independent businesses. So if I'm looking at Pitchfork as like a startup business, it could be a social media platform. It could be a beer company. Eventually, most people ask you the question like, are you going to scale or is your goal to be bought out by a larger thing? And most places eventually just get bought out by a larger thing. I worked my ass off my whole entire life. Of course, I'm going to get the check. I'll stick around for a couple of years and then it'll fizzle out and die and I'll be retired with a hundred million dollars. And then it begins again. A new beer company comes out, a new app comes out. Is there runway in 2024 for a new fully independent version of Pitchfork or something similar to Pitchfork to come out and succeed independently now? Well, maybe I'm really cynical, but I don't think so. That website started out of somebody's basement with people being paid $10 for a review, and you can't do that now. And I have no idea how things like venture capital or applying for funding works, but I can see how it's maybe not the safest bet for somebody with a lot of money, unless it's just a pure pleasure project to go, yes, we will back this. Well, I think often things like this are bought by...

a rich person who romanticizes it a little bit and i i but i just think this is something that's so it's so small it's not rolling stone you know what i mean it's like no one i mean there are people that grew up with it you know what i mean but they're on this zoom right now and it's like we can put our money together but i don't think we would i don't think our bid would get accepted that's my issue i wouldn't bid but i mean just like art is is is this art form going to only subsist on patronage from from wealthy patrons oh this is huge for me personally this episode of how i'm gone is brought to you by task rabbit oh baby let me tell you something this is this is not a joke i use task rabbit a lot because i can't do anything you need you need some art hang hung task rabbit you need you need a you need a fucking something put together a cabinet gotta reach reach that cheese grater on the top shelf task rabbit anything anything you need TaskRabbit can take care of it for you. And I mean, how it works, TaskRabbit connects you with skilled taskers in your area. They can help you move. They can assemble furniture, repairs, yard work, mounting, and more. You can search for a tasker based on cost, skill set, availability, and past client reviews so you know exactly who's showing up and can have confidence that they know what they're doing because taskers have assembled over 3.4 million pieces of furniture, completed 700,000 home repairs. handled 1.5 million moves, and the numbers are just going up, Jason. Yeah, throw a little money at the problem. It's not so expensive, and that job that you really don't want to do is something that another person out in the world is very good at doing and would gladly do it in exchange for a little bit of money. So when life happens, your to-do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get $15 off your first task at TaskRabbit.com or grab the TaskRabbit app using promo code how long taskers book up faster, especially for same day tasks. So book trusted home help today. That is $15 off your first task using promo code how long with the TaskRabbit app or at TaskRabbit.com. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by a new podcast from The Guardian stateside with Kai and Carter. This is covering a lot of our bases, Jason. It's trying to slow down.

The news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's happening in the world. And I know you particularly have quite a lot of questions. A lot of questions. But how often? Because we do this podcast three times a week and that's a sweet spot. How many times do they do? Three times a week. And I have a feeling just based on the platform and these talking points that they're maybe going to be covering different stuff than we do. That's just a guess. The Guardian is not some billionaire owned. They're not afraid to say what they want to say, brother. Yeah, Rupert ain't sniffing around in what journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman are up to over there at Stateside. But yeah, listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch it on YouTube. It's three times a week. And who couldn't use more news? Especially when it's not from here, let's say. Give it a listen. Give it a listen. No, I don't think it will subsist on patronage from wealthy patrons. I guess what happens after something like pitch, I mean, pitchfork, I don't think it's going to die. I think it's going to stay as a standalone website, but by the sounds of it, like the features will be run out of GQ or whatever. But I think that a moment like this sort of pushes people back into the underground. And rather than there being some big pitchfork-style thing that comes and replaces it, maybe we'll see more zines and kind of niche websites and that kind of coverage. It will be a hobbyist thing. I mean, you guys – but I say this all the time. I mean, I can think of five British websites that do that now that are pretty good. Like, you know, and I think that that is – it still exists, and I think some are better than others. But they all started like late 2000s. Did they? Like Quietus, Line of – Best Fit, all that kind of thing. Yeah, they've been around probably like 15, 16 years at this point. Oh, Christ. Well, it felt new to me. You know what I mean? It feels new. The only way they can make money is from their podcast. Yeah, no. I mean, I think that people choose to spend their money in interesting ways. I think the best jobs are the ones that you have. Like a newspaper is going to, this is something they are going to do. Like they're not going to abandon arts coverage. That's just too much of a backbone of the business. But you working at a proper newspaper like that, are you able to say everything that you want to say? Like if you had your own zine with no editorial control.

Are there things that you wish you could be saying that you are not able to say because of? No, I don't think so. I mean, like we have a chief pop critic and so he writes the main review every week. And so I might disagree with what he says or he will cover an album that, you know, I might have been interested in writing about. But no, like I am very lucky in this job being deputy. I can kind of do a lot of whatever I want. Like I spent the whole week writing. 2000 words about a smash hits journalist who died in 2011 that's not sure progress the news agenda yeah no sure sure i i i i think that's true and i'm glad that you recognize that that's important that you recognize that enjoy enjoy that deputy role yeah um do you miss twitter uh no um the i have not let the account die i think i'm nearly like four years clean you used to only have to reactivate it like once a year but then under elon musk now you have to reactivate it every month so smart that's my that's my guy that's why it's thriving that's why it's thriving he's trying to make you forget but i set a reminder and then go in and sort of like grandpa simpson it like you know take your hat off put it back on again leave and it's slightly like walking into like a building that I left when it was on fire and it's still on fire and people are there and most of what people are still there and most of what people are talking about there is the state of being there. I did pop in after the pitchfork stuff because I wanted to know what was happening. Well, people were really letting it fly. But I think that you're right. The amount of talk that people do on the platform about how bad it is is kind of baffling to me. I mean, joining Blue Sky is the lamest thing you can do. You're either on Twitter or you're not, let's be honest, but the amount of complaining on the platform is similar to I'm taking a social media break announcement on social media. But if Twitter is really a drug like it has affected Chris and my brain so much with the hours spent on it, that's where we mine all of our content for the show and repackage it with ads for McDonald's.

It's the same way that people, you know, like you see a heroin addict and they're like, I don't like that I have ruined my life because of heroin. I don't like, it sucks that I have to give all of my money to my drug dealer because I can't stop doing this thing. So the control over it is so strong that we hate it. but we still do it yeah i was totally addicted and kind of breaking point was when i realized that i really had no self-esteem without people saying nice things to me on the internet and if they said bad things it was just like oh the spiral here we go and so i left and so i had been highly addicted and for a long time though people would ask me like oh i can't believe you got off it how did you do it i would really like to quit but i can't do it and i'd be quite sympathetic but then i reached this point of zero tolerance where it's like if i quit and i was so addicted like just quit like the especially journalists stay on there because they think that they need to be on there for work but like i can see from the back end of our articles like twitter drives no traffic whatsoever it's just journalists talking to each other about their work and um yeah talking about the state of being on twitter and like the word hell site or hell state like fuck off i have no time for that it's all it's all voluntary that's the thing this is voluntary this isn't you're you're not this isn't government sanctioned like we're choosing to be here and you're choosing to experience the way you experience it and that's the thing like obviously you know elon musk has fucked it up and done whatever to it but also people are indignant about that as if it's some sort of like public service not a privately traded company which you accept terms and conditions to obviously without reading the thousands of words of terms and conditions like you're supposed to read that yeah it's it's quite bad what's happened to it and what it's become a platform for but you know yeah it's not a public service but also for for our generation of maybe the elder millennial side of people who grew up around like a 4chan style situation where it's sort of a badge of honor or, like, it's your internet toughness persona of, like, I grew up looking at gore and murder and porn and all this shit, so, like, Twitter is nothing to me. Like, it almost is like I need Twitter to have some bad shit on there just to feel alive because I was born in the flames of...

you know, pre-social media internet culture, which was a dark place. Oh yeah. I spent so much time on like terrible indie forums, getting into fights and like, you know, somebody once said that I looked like Lily Allen's gangrenous older sister. And for clarity, she is older than me when I was about 15 or 16. And it's like, well, my height has just got thicker and thicker and it's fine for the most part. I need to work gangrenous into my insultery vocabulary. Yeah, that is quite nice. I mean, I think that there's, but I feel like your job and our job in many ways is like kind of right for people to have issues with, you know, and that's the, I think that is Twitter is a place for people to express that. I mean, I think with newspaper, like some of my friends that write for newspapers, like they get, because the email, they get emailed, you know, like. this is so fucking stupid. Why on earth would you write about this? And it's just like hundreds of emails telling you something is stupid. That's worse than Twitter, I think. I don't know. I think it's kind of the price of admission. I think I'm probably sounding really cynical, but any writer who's like, oh, I can't write this because I'm going to get doxxed by young fans on the internet or Taylor Swift fans are going to say kill yourself or whatever, that is not a real threat. It's the price of admission at this point. If you are scared of writing something because you're worried that that's going to happen, then I think at this point you're kind of not qualified to be doing it because it doesn't mean anything and you can just switch off. Talk that shit, Snape. Talk that shit, baby. Let's go. I agree. A 15-year-old saying kill yourself on the internet is just how you say fuck you now. They do not seriously mean that. It should beat off your skin like one of your prized ducks. Exactly. Do you have a problem, Chris? You okay? Somebody just opened the door to the hotel room. It's okay. I was just confused. If you guys got to drop something off, you can drop something off. It's all good. It's all good. No, don't worry about it. Thank you. I apologize. In America, if somebody opens my hotel room door, they're getting two in the chest. It was a dude, too. That's a real problem. It was a fella. And you're like, I told you to come at three. What are you doing here right now? Exactly. This is not their time. But, Laura.

no i laura i just want to say i think i think you're right i think i think you're right and i think that like the way people talk to each other has changed partly because the internet and everything is kind of meaningless and you're absolutely right like kill yourself is is just another fucking you know no one's no one's buying a gun and coming to find you easy easy chris famous last words if you can't deal with bb rex of fans photoshopping something onto your face then you know No, that's good. That's good. It's the price of putting yourself out there. Universal Music Group just pulled their entire catalog off of TikTok. Why do you think they did that? I have not read the full story, but money, I guess. But also, surely it's just going to be like a stalemate situation because there's no way that the artists... who are on Universal are going to want this state of affairs for so long. You know, it's like they're calling their bluff, surely. Well, I read a little bit about it. They claimed that TikTok only drove 1% of their sales, so it wasn't worth the headache and the trouble and the maintenance and the staffing and the teams to maintain all that information. So they pulled out, but a friend of ours, David Cho, was arguing that it's kind of foolish to just say, like, the binary. trade for money in exchange for you know whatever like it drives so much more than just one percent of sales oh yeah like cultural awareness yeah i think it's just i think it's just i think it's our boy i think it's lucian you know i think he's just somebody had to do it i think it's just like anything it's like streaming shit they're just gonna fight about it until somebody gets more money do you do you like it do you like that they pulled their music off of tiktok chris No, no, I don't like it, but I do think it's definitely just a move to bargain. It's not like it. I think they are aware of the... the effects and how positive it is beyond monetary gain so this is sort of a digital picket line in in many ways i think that yeah 100 do you not laura do you think it's a bargaining thing or do you think it's like yeah definitely like somebody's gonna blink first because tiktok can't survive without all that music universal music group own what is it like more than half of the of the music in the world like it's them doing that huge if they stick with it is basically saying like we're done with tiktok the music industry is done with tiktok now yeah it's it's a problem i don't know i don't

I don't see them abandoning that quite so soon. Okay. Another music and money question. What do you think about the talking heads turning down $80 million to reunite? Where were they supposed to have had this offer from? Like Coachella or something? I think it was a tour. I think it was a whole, I think it was maybe like a live nation or, you know, whatever. Someone. I was thinking I could. Get me in a boardroom. I could reunite the Beatles for $80 million. And the talking, you know, the fucking talking heads. They're not that big, are they? No, there's no way a talking head store is going to make $80 million back. And I don't know, you only have to watch that very awkward, was it like Spike Lee interview before the reissue in cinemas of Stop Making Sense? You don't want to see that. Like, it's going to be a sorry rep. I just feel like it's one of those things, though, where, you know. One guy is very rich, and the rest of the guys and gals ain't. And maybe you do it to throw him a bone after all these years. Everybody's going to take home 15 mil. Of course. David Byrne doesn't seem like that kind of person. He does not seem like that kind of person. But that's what I always think about with stuff like this, when there's one person that's clearly so much more rich than everyone else. How bad can it be, dude? Do a month. Is it another situation where David wants to, but everyone else hates him, and they're like, you know what? I could really use $17 million, but I hate this motherfucker so much that I'm just going to try my luck at GameStop. That's possible. I mean, that's possible. That really might be. One of them out of memoir where he's incredibly scathing about David Byrne, and it would be irreparably frosty, I think. Yeah, I mean, but I just feel like that's, I don't know, man. Money is money. I'm like, I don't care what you, if it's that kind of money on the table, I don't really care what you did to me 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Okay, what about Johnny Marr and Morrissey then? Is that more likely to happen? No way. I think politically that is not solvable given what, I don't know, like Americans seem to perceive Morrissey very differently. Like there was that one of the last records he put out had quite a lot of like.

left-leaning kind of indie stars on it whereas over here he is perceived as quite racist and beyond the pale because the comments that he's made yeah well laura let me laura let me tell you something racism in america is explicit you know what i mean it's bad and i think more i also think morrissey is just i didn't i mean also all of that stuff is it all seems to really be wrapped up in like british politics a lot of it obviously racism is racism but you know what i mean like it's wrapped up in stuff that i think people are like I don't even know what that means. Yeah, my rockabilly Mexican homies have no idea about the inner workings of Brexit or any socialist reform programs. Program with an E at the end. Also, Trump was just saying, please, please, let me get what I want. So, you know, maybe there's a different audience here. Hey, look, that was not sanctioned. That was not sanctioned. Do you think that was pure coincidence or do you think... There was an insider somewhere on his campaign team who snuck that in as a wink to us. No, I think it's part of the current vogue for the most literal music syncing of all time. Like every music syncing Salt Burn is just like, where can we find a song with the lyrics that describe exactly what's happening in this scene? Please, please let me get what I want. They've gone, great, this is what we want. It is perfect when you look at it that way. That's true. I mean, he just canceled. He was supposed to play. uh a show in la like last week two shows in two weeks at stadium at like arenas and he canceled the like two days before i was speaking with my barber about it yesterday who said that he apparently or he had extreme fatigue at a at a hospital somewhere in in europe i forgot where and he canceled them but also the rumor is that he had low ticket sales and that's why they canceled that is a real true kind of sign of the times i guess Where Morrissey is just like that thing where wherever he plays, whenever he plays, it's always sold out, full of rabid fans. It's like a convention, basically. Leading up to that show in L.A., apparently they were doing two-for-one tickets for the week before the show because the sales were so low.

So it's looking grim out there unless you're a DJ like me where the emails keep rolling in. And he's got that record on the shelf as well that they're apparently not letting him put out. Really? Yeah. Why? Bonfire of Teenagers, I think. He left the old label or they dropped him and maybe they own it, something like that. Oh, I see. It was like done and they own it and they dropped him and he can't. I think so. Well, I'm sure if the record was good, which it probably isn't, somebody would have wanted to put it out. It would have found a way. It would have found a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Forgot hasn't made a good song since 07. Sorry, I just don't care. He's the best. And I just can't. I don't. I just don't. There's just certain things that I think if you got into it at a certain age, it's just. too it's almost impossible to deprogram you know what i mean it's almost impossible like you can not publicly flaunt your your choices but it's like r kelly people are listening to r kelly in their car they ain't tweeting about it but they're listening to it and that's like that's just i think that's human nature to yeah michael jackson is completely back now michael jackson's r kelly not so much r kelly's live performance at pitchfork fest very interesting pitchfork what a show you know what i mean brought the house down I mean, it wasn't that long ago that, like, Phoenix brought him out of Coachella, and it was like, wow, what an incredible cross-cultural moment. Wait, Phoenix brought out R. Kelly at Coachella? Yeah, they did, like, the mashup of Ignition, and maybe it was, like, 1901? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that is so sick! Well, it's funny, because I remember Googling, like, when the Pitchfork stuff came out a couple weeks ago, I was like, wait a minute, who played Pitchfork? Didn't R. Kelly play Pitchfork? And I was looking up the, you know, And all the Google headlines are just like, Pitchfork apologizes for having R. Kelly. Coachella apologizes for having R. Kelly.

apologizes for it's just it's just dozens and dozens of different artists who have apologized for ever being in the same room that's really funny i love the people but a voice of honey feel the need to apologize for that where it's like guys it like you didn't know like it's you know what i mean like what what do you what do you who are you groveling to yeah like i think phoenix have that french perspective as well i did a book with them a couple of years ago and like we talked a little bit about it in it and they're like you know to us he's just like the funny guy who does a remix to ignition and trapped in the closet and that's like all they know and also as well France doesn't really have a problem with that kind of thing, as we know. No, for sure. I was in Paris in December, and you can go to the Serge Gainsbourg house now and walk around it, which is incredible. And then across the road, you go to this little museum, which is full of Serge artifacts. And some of the stuff that is in there is absolutely eye-popping. There's a display downstairs of all of the international covers of J'étais moi non plus, which was banned in all of these different countries. And one of the South American releases does not say Serge Gainsbourg or Jane Birkin on it. red filtered. It's a photo of a topless woman and it just says porno record on it. And then there are magazine covers. There's a magazine cover with Serge Gainsbourg after he's done the reggae cover of La Marseillaise where he is laying on the floor and a man has got a machete and they've like stabbed him in the throat so he's bleeding out and he's surrounded by topless women or like you know in very sort of like trashy like lacy negligee what a way to go damn this this this guy killed me while i was with all these women this sucks man damn yeah it reminds me of when you see all those movie posters that have been reinterpreted in in thailand and africa and they distill it down to some but really hard to beat porno records instead of just saying, you know, especially if they charge by the letter, Serge Gainsbourg, that's a lot. But it's like, yep, France is pretty chill with this. When I saw that magazine cover, I was like, oh my god, like, the shit Matt Healy gets in trouble for, and you compare it to what Serge Gainsbourg was doing 50 years ago, like, we need more.

Men pretending to be dead surrounded by topless women on the cover of magazines. I want to go to the media. I wanted to go to that. I saw it because it's pretty recent that they announced. It's like in the last six months, right? Yeah, only like in the last six months or so, yeah. What is the vibe? Is it like a $20 and you can just walk around or is it like guided? So I think it's 25 euros and it's a very small apartment. It's got very low ceilings. All the walls are painted black. And your guide is, you listen to a guided audio tour by Charlotte Gansborg and she's got that very whispery voice. Oh, I like that. I like this. And it's very intimate. Like she tells you like, look at this thing, look at this thing and now turn around and now we'll go through here. And she talks about like. you know being in the bath and she's like she says that there's a one bit where she that you're in the bathroom which is really beautiful sort of like wood clad and very dark and she's like my father was scrupulously clean but he did not like to take a bath he did everything in the bidet and it's it's very intimate and like in the kitchen you see all of these um he collected bottles of wine from the year of his birth and they're all lined up on top of the shelf it's this tiny little kitchen and they've got like dregs of wine left in the bottom and it sort of veers between amazing intimacy and then being really confrontational like you go in his bedroom and there's a tube of old smarties like this British candy and she talks about how like you know this was their palace and she wasn't really allowed in there and then she's like and this is where my father died and then we spent days lying in the bed next to his body and we had his body embalmed so that we could spend longer laying next to his body and so it's this really strange mix of intimacy and confrontation almost because you know it's been shot since 1991 and she's the custodian and loads of people have wanted to see it and the vibe was a bit like okay you want to know what it was like this is what it was like um but it is whoa that's the most surreal cool thing i've ever done i think imagine taking the edible and going in there oh god you might never make it out what is the percept what but he is perceived as a he's just kind of like an icon and all of his transgressions are just part of the lore

Am I wrong in saying that? I think that's right. My theory on why he's got away with it is there's so much self-loathing within him as well. He does do terrible things. You must have seen the clip where he's on an American talk show with Whitney Houston. Have you seen that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know it? I don't think I do. He's on a talk show. I can't remember if it's American or British. He's next to Whitney Houston. He mumbles something in French. She's like, what did you say? He goes... I want to fuck her. And she's like, huh? And the host is like, no, we won't repeat that. But then that's a very famous clip of him on television. But then there's this other incredible one. I think it's towards the end of his life. He's being honored for some kind of French award. And he's sitting in the audience. There's like a review show with other people doing his songs. And then they get out. This I have seen. Yeah. This like choir of little boys who have all got like stubble painted on and fake cigarettes. And they're singing one of his songs. And you see him just like head in hands. crying you've seen this right no i've never seen that oh it's one of the greatest videos on the internet crying crying out of sadness or happiness everything sadness because i think you can tell that his life has gone very wrong i think it's only a few years before he died he's you can tell he's drunk on the thing on the show and he's smoking and yeah it's just too much for him and so i think those those clips are kind of the duality of your emotion somebody who's very cocksure and like not not proper but then also pretty broken and how'd actually How did he die? I don't even know how he died. He fucked himself to death. I think just alcoholism, yeah. He drank and smoked so much. Yeah, okay, just regular stuff. Regular cool stuff. Okay, no nefarious activities. But it's cool because you see a Roman Polanski kind of person where, not a great person, but the output of his films and production and direction is so good that people still fuck with him. But was, I don't know, I mean, Serge Gaines, he's a great musician, but he wasn't...

like a a-list huge star was he or maybe he was well i think in in france yeah in france and like um histoire de melody nelson i think i don't know how big it was here at the time but it's definitely had like a big appreciation in the past 30 years i think another reason that he i don't want to say gets away with it but that you know people have sympathy towards him is he had so many great female collaborators and i don't think any of them have anything bad to say about him like from jane berkeley to france gall and like bamboo his later wife like um and you know he just weird shit with his daughter. Like, you know, that song Lemon Incest is so utterly strange. They sing about the love we will never make together. Wild stuff. Wild stuff. She's always said, like, nothing untoward has ever happened and she purely loves him. And so you have to believe those people, I think. That really does. bode well for someone. If all the women in your life after you're dead don't slag you off to the papers, then you're kind of good for the rest of the time. That means your dick game was really mean. Exactly. Your dick game fantastic. Well, speaking of sad music, Laura, and then I want to get to your questions that you've prepared for us, if you have any. When you park your car in a car park and listen to music to cry, what do you listen to? Oh, boy. I mean, when I go home to where my family live, there is a specific car park I like to go to to cry if I need to cry. It's by the sea and you've almost got like a 360 view. One particular instance that time, one particular instance, I felt like it was finally time that I might get into Phoebe Bridges, having not really liked her. So I went and bought some tissues and a bottle of water and I parked in the car park and I listened to Punisher. So much that my car pinged and said it was going to run out of battery if I didn't stop. And it worked. It converted me to Phoebe Bridgers. I quite like it now. That sounds like that was like government mandated. Like you have to like Phoebe Bridgers. This is not a choice. We're going to get this thing done today. One way or another. You never have that where you feel like, wait, I think this thing might make sense to me now. I'm going to give it a go and I'm going to try and create the optimum conditions for it. Crying in my car. But otherwise...

the national is my favorite band so i would cry to the national in my car probably i know you're i know you're a national head i am as well um and i i've never seen them actually which is like what is their fan is their fandom called a nationalist it should be i've never seen them either okay so that is so you really did work at pitchfork okay yeah i'd like to say i like them before that yeah i've seen them 34 times i once saw them five times in six days i thought you guys interview with matt was really good like quite often when they do press they come across a bit boring or people don't ask them interesting questions, but like you brought out the funny side and the kind of irreverent weird side, which you don't get to see a lot. He's one of those guys though, who. You know that he's like a comedy fan. You know, a lot of these guys that come off as like really serious, like their interests are not serious. And I don't know why. Like if you see this guy kicking it with Zach Galifianakis all the time, like he probably likes to laugh. You know what I mean? It's like, why would no one explore that? A guy who's like, usually I like to smoke weed and ride my bike around Venice Beach. Like, yeah, you're probably like a silly, funny guy. Yeah. Take long drive. drives with his daughter like listening to taylor swift in the car like pretty good i want to know if he's ever been on a horse oh yeah great question i'm gonna say i'm gonna say yes and i feel like it could have been you would know this though but i feel like it could have been for like a music video i i could see that somehow uh i well i saw that story you wrote about um kind of like you're you were saying that that artists should be allowed to play like deep cuts and i completely disagree with you and i don't want to hear any noodling i don't want to hear any fucking b-sides i want you to play only the smashes and then the like second tier fan smashes you know what i mean like a a motorcycle drive-by by third eye blind never a single but an important song to the fans. I only want deep cuts from bands where I really love it and where I really love them and I actually know what those songs are. It's the worst thing when you go and see Built to Spill at a festival and you're like, when are they going to do the one song I know? Because the rest of them all sound exactly the same. Built to Spill is a great example. I had that exactly last year.

Even the 1975, I really like that band, but I do think they kind of have four songs and then about 15 variations on each one of them. And you'll watch them and think, oh, it's the one I like. Oh, no, it's not the one I like. It's just a mid-level version of that. Did you go to the show? I saw the one around this time last year where Taylor Swift came out in the middle, and then they're playing again in a couple of weeks. Yeah, I know. It's like... It's kind of crazy. It's, it's cool to me that bands can still do like a world tour. Like we're doing this for real. Like we play in Jakarta, we play in London, we play in New York. It's like, there's only a handful of people that can do that. Like, I don't know who can do that anymore. That's like truly global. It's, it's interesting. And also kind of like reinventing the show kind of over the course of that, um, of that massive tour as well. before they were playing reading and leads they were headlining reading and leads in august i was trying to get like a cover feature off the ground being like you know there's been a lot of chat for this year a lot of conversation maybe it's a good a good time for him to kind of set the record straight um and they thought about it and then they they sent back this very somber answer which was like We really appreciate you reaching out, but Matty has decided, Matthew, they always refer to him very formally, has decided that he's going to integrate his response to this year's events into the new iteration of the show. It's like, okay, well, I'll look forward to that. Damn, that's a great response. That's really funny. That's really, really funny. I mean, the show is, I mean, I saw it a couple times. I loved it. I thought it was really impressive. And I think that, like, it's just... I like to go to big stuff for that reason because there's so much effort and production put into it that it's always impressive. Chris likes the spectacle. I've seen enough bands in fucking bars in my life. I know what that looks like. Impress me. Spend all your money. Make no profit so that you can have moving parts on the stage. That's what I'm looking for. Big shows always make me cry even if I don't have any sentimental connection to the artist. I find something very beautiful about

all the effort of building something enormous which is purely for people's enjoyment like last year i saw the weekend for the first time which i truly only went to because i watched all of the idol in one week and i thought it was funny and i thought this might be entertaining to go and see him and then great show great great show i really enjoyed it i mean it was stupid but i don't understand why people got offended because it was too stupid to be offensive it was just you got it mad lives with some very enjoyable performances in it we have our new tagline for this podcast In case we ever get any hot water. Too stupid to be offensive. I know the feeling. I think I remember when The Weeknd played the Super Bowl a couple years ago. And I'm not a Weeknd fan whatsoever, but I remember watching it and feeling like I was watching a film on an airplane. God damn it, why am I about to start crying? Because the beautiful spectacle of, like you said, hundreds or thousands of people coming together just to make a nice thing for everyone to enjoy. this whole corrugated metal city kind of Gotham type thing, which had his musicians. Yeah. I saw this. I saw this show. I saw this show. I've forgotten the name of his producer. Who's also in the idol, but he would kind of come up on a rise. Oh, Oh, show some respect. So show some respect to the OG Mike Dean. No one doesn't like Mike. He's wearing this mask. And then there's a bit, the weekend this is, and then there's a bit halfway through where he takes off the mask and he's really looking at it very deeply. Like it's Greek tragedy and it's hilarious and ridiculous. But then the part where you could, actually see his face he's got quite a cute sweet teddy bearish kind of face he does and like you know from the kind of jumbotron thing he looks so genuinely moved that everybody was having such a nice time that i you know i don't i only know the hits really I also found it like crazily moving. It was great fun. That's I honestly, I like the, I like this. I like you're, you're open to it, you know? And I think that's a hard thing for me personally. Like I, it's very hard for me to go into something and not already have decided how I'm going to feel about it. Chris is closed to it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like if it's something I like, I'm going to like it. And then I might say it's bad, but I'm going to like it while I'm there, you know, but I don't know. It's, it's, it's a nice way to approach life. I mean, that's not uniform. Like definitely.

Sometimes you get dragged to see the Strokes at a festival with friends and then they're so bad and you've gone in with bad preconceptions that the worse it is. Or even like minuscule things that they will do just kind of drive you to a state of like, I'm vibrating with rage and I have to leave this place. It's nice to hear that about the Strokes, because I thought they sounded great, but I think it is very boring. Yeah, I saw them at one of these awful London Wonderland festivals last year, and my friend described them as sounding like a cruise ship band, which wasn't far off. They were so mulchy and bad. Mulchy? Mulchy. Oh, I like that. What does mulchy mean exactly? When you think of the Strokes, you think of those kind of very pristine guitar sounds, but this was just tramping through mud and leaves. Okay. Not unlike a stodgy, perhaps. yeah yeah stodgy yeah oh okay jason touche bitch damn i watch a lot of bake-offs so sue me uh laura did you have any questions for us as we're as we're closing things out um i wanted to know like when you're trying to get celebrities to come on the show how do you pitch it to them because they can't come on and talk about their like wonderful new project because you're not going to ask them about that and do you think it's a high stakes encounter for them uh well usually it's i mean a celebrity It depends if it's like through a friend or, you know, something like that. It's a different thing versus oftentimes like an email will come in and it'll just be like a pitch, you know, and I'll just be like, hey, we want Paul Reiser on how long gone. They're like, shit. All right. Yeah. And that's it. You know, it's not really I think it's like. I also think those people are so used to doing stuff that nothing is high stakes to them except maybe live television at a certain point. Yeah, but not all celebrities. If you're a professional comedian celebrity, then you're like, what are these jokers going to do? It'll be fine. But if you're a celebrity who's a singer or something like that where you're not... So media train. Like Nathan Lane. Nathan Lane was one of my favorite ones. Nathan Lane was just like, are we done yet? What the fuck is this? That's what he said every 10 seconds, which I love. But I guess like I think some people come into it with preconceived notions of like this is going to be intimidating or it's a little bit of a nail biter. Like I need to be on kind of thing. I think everyone approaches a podcast guest appearance like that.

But I think people usually now will warn, they'll ask a friend who listens and be like, what's the vibe with these guys? And they'll listen a little bit and they'll figure out the flow. But we've had instances, we've had an instance where the vibe was not explained to someone and it did not go well. And I was just kind of like, what, what? I don't understand. Like, this is what we do. There's no, we didn't deviate from it. Did you run it or did you cancel it? No, we canceled it. That was Duff McKagan from Guns N' Roses. But some people like that where they're like, I'm a busy person. I'm doing a billion things. I hired a PR company to push my new album or my new book or whatever it is I'm going to sell. I'm going to do 50 podcasts and I want only to do this because it will drive sales. And if you don't talk about the book or the movie or the thingy. Then they're like, why did I do this? This is bullshit. It's a waste of my time. It's not wrong for Duff McKagan to think that, to be fair. I'm just like, yeah, bro, if this ain't for you, that's okay. You can't be mad at that because it's like this guy has done it all. He's seen it all. Yeah, but you should know that in 2024 on a podcast of three dudes talking about what city you recorded your record in. and the bass player that you got to do it like no one's gonna be like wow this sounds amazing i can't wait to go to the store and buy this on vinyl you know you but if somebody is like i really liked jay mascus i never listened to dinosaur jr he was really funny and weird i'm gonna look for him on spotify and check out his music that's pretty sick i'm gonna follow him on social media versus just like okay this guy made an album cool what else well musicians I think musicians like that die, though, if they don't, if they if they they have to think it's good and important to talk about or they would be maybe they wouldn't make it or they would at least not want to promote it. Yeah, I think that's sort of like personality color that you bring out and people like talking about the decline of music press. That's something that magazines used to do really well because you would have, you know, your kind of main feature. But then you would have the goofy stuff around the side and, you know, being asked, like, does your mother play golf and stuff? And I think maybe today as well, like proving that you can hang is very important as a celebrity.

Like there's been a couple of shows where I felt like somebody had come on and they were trying to outmaneuver you because they were worried that you might get them first. Yeah. Proving that you can hang and the importance of that is very true. And I guess a lot of similarities in the political races of like, we're just going to vote for somebody who we can have a beer with, quote unquote, or whatever. But if a person's a bad hang, it tells you everything you need to know. And if somebody surprises you and ends up being a good hang. a converted fan for life. I had, you know, I'd never heard of Simone de Puri and I probably wouldn't have read an article about him, but that was one of my favorites. What an amazing guy. Amazing guy. My other question was, do people ever ask you to take stuff out afterwards and if so do you do it and also have you had people say stuff where you're like this is too near the knuckle we're going to take this out because otherwise they're going to get in trouble and it's going to be a shit storm yeah like your friend matthew healy no it does happen to us it's usually never like an inflammatory insane thing it's more so like oh i wasn't supposed to say that we're playing coachella yet because it hasn't been announced or like yeah oh i accidentally called this author by this name instead can you just take it out so i don't look like an idiot yeah it's more i usually do it mistake driven than like oh my god what did i say you know yeah you've guided me into laughing at a bad joke yeah yeah well we've we've we've the trend we see that pros that know what they can and can't laugh at they do a visual laugh So we see it, but they pull back from the microphone so we don't get any audio of that laugh. And that is, I have to respect the professionalism. I mean, that at least makes it fun for us. Or sometimes we'll get, like, some crude sign language where we'll ask them a question that they can't answer, and they'll be laughing, and they'll say, like, ooh, a little bit. They'll just do a little thing here. They'll do it, yeah. Or no, or a classic, you know. That's definitely happened before. That's definitely happened before.

I don't think people, I think because of the way that our world is right now, I think people are really, are thoughtful about what they say, even in this environment. Like I think people are, everyone, if you're coming on a show or you're promoting something or whatever, you're very aware of what you can and can't do, I think. And maybe more than ever in history. And I think that the peer-to-peer aspect of a podcast where like, I need the guests just as much as they need us. It has like a nice communal feel to it versus like I'm going to go be interviewed by a newspaper or TMZ or something where if they get a gotcha moment, they are absolutely going to run it and fuck up your life. Whereas if I get Maddie Healy saying some shit that I'm like, that's not going to be good for you. or for me or for anyone i'll do you a favor cut that out and didn't need to be in there i'm just using him as an example this didn't actually happen but um it's like we want to preserve that relationship and our goal is to have everybody listening like this guest as much as possible not dislike because then you're like well that was stupid that sucked we want the final product to be good yeah there's a there's a gotcha there's plenty of gotcha opportunity minefields out there and this is not one of them because that's not i don't think that's fun or cool we're a reverse z way yeah exactly yeah we're the opposite my new favorite sex move maybe that's kind of the secret of the show because like i i confess when i you had people on that i liked which was when i first started listening like a couple of years ago and i was like my god this is so brash i don't know if i can get on with this but then the more i listen like I would just listen to the guests that I like. And then I started listening to all the interviews. And then I started listening to every episode is the one where it's just you two as well. And I think maybe that's the secret of it. Like, it seems we break you down. It seems kind of brash, but actually, like you say, it is about making people look good and everybody having a nice time. I think that's kind of like the secret thing that bubbles up when you spend a lot of time with it. Oh, that's that's great. Thank you. I mean, that's that's kind of the idea. And I think they're, you know.

Having fun is what it's all about. A lot of people are fluent in brash. Laura, thank you for joining us. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. People can follow your work at The Guardian, obviously. Not on Twitter. Not on Twitter. When are you coming back? When are you coming back? I might pop in next time something disastrous happens to pitch forward, don't I? Okay. Okay. No problem. There'll be some disasters. Follow her on TikTok, then? Follow you on TikTok? Yeah, we'll find you on TikTok. Follow me nowhere. Follow me nowhere is the best sign off I've ever heard. Thank you. And we'll see you soon. Bye.