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Episode 402: The Stentorian-Voiced Dudely Bro-ness of Rob Harvilla
1.1k Plays1 year ago
Rob Harvilla (@harvilla on X) is a staff writer for The Ringer and the host and creator of the long-running 60 Songs that Explain the 90s. His first book is 60 Songs that Explain the 90s.
We talk about the end of the podcast, the evolution of voice, and the maze he purposefully escapes each episode.
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Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Social: @creativenonfiction podcast on IG and Threads
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Transcript
Introduction and Partner Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
Real excited about this CNF for promotional support for the Creative Nonfiction podcast is provided by, for a short time, the Power of Narrative Conference out of Boston. It's a craft conference focusing on the genre near and dear to my heart, narrative journalism, taking place March 22nd and March 23rd at Boston University. I attended it a few years ago and it's a great time.
00:00:24
Speaker
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00:00:47
Speaker
This year's keynote speakers include former New York Times editor Dean Baquet, NPR White House correspondent Ozma Khalid, The Washington Post, John Woodrow Cox, former WAPO editor Marty Barron, and the team behind the Boston Globe's Murder in Boston, the untold story of the Charles and Carol Stewart shooting.
00:01:09
Speaker
Not only that, but there will be 15 breakout sessions worth attending, including crafting climate change stories, writing a braided narrative, and the power of empathy in reporting. Learn more at combeyond.org.
00:01:25
Speaker
and use the narrative 25 code for 25% off. Again, narrative 25 to save 25% off at combion.bu.edu. Repairing, restoring, reconnecting through true storytelling. I like the sound of that.
00:01:42
Speaker
When I get to like the fourth adjective in a sentence, you know, the fourth adjective in the third adverb, that's when I'm like, I'm doing the rock critic thing again. And that's when I get the urge to just go, and that's, you know, I'm so relieved that that is amusing to even one other person.
Host Introduction and Guest Reappearance
00:02:09
Speaker
Oh, hey, CNN4S is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan R. O'Mara. The R stands for Reprehensible. Rob Harvilla, staff writer, staff podcaster for The Ringer, is back on the show. He first came on the show during the mighty early run of his hit podcast, 60 Songs That Explain the 90s. It's still mighty, where we talked about the stealth memoir of it all.
00:02:38
Speaker
This past holiday season you see where nothing if not punctual Rob released the book 60 songs that explained the 90s and it's a great companion with some pretty amazing artwork inside it's published by 12 who also published the ringers Claire McNeer's answers in the form of questions book about Jeopardy and I'm starting to think there's a connection
Podcast Evolution Discussion
00:03:00
Speaker
there
00:03:00
Speaker
The show started with 60 then went to 90 and it will end with its 120th song this week or next week or last week or today or tomorrow or yesterday. I don't know when you listen to this but either way it ends.
00:03:16
Speaker
In the timing of this interview that I recorded back before Thanksgiving, it's been a tough year. Seems apropos. I've always wanted to be the kind of person who could use apropos and not fuck it up, and I think I did. Who died and made you the grammar police? Rob Merries, the personal with the rock critical. In his podcast, I had reached out to Rob for a revisit.
00:03:40
Speaker
about a year and a half ago and I got kicked down the road somewhat and then I got wind of the book and that seemed apropos yes so I wanted to dig into the maze like quality of the later episodes at times it takes
00:03:57
Speaker
Rob upwards of 20 minutes for him to one reach the title song an artist and fully announced who he is as if you already didn't know and I love Following him as he navigates the labyrinth like I rub my hands together and I and I'm like, okay, Rob You're starting here and you gotta take us to there. How
Listener Engagement and Sponsorship
00:04:16
Speaker
are you gonna do it? It's a great joy for me Courtney love reached out to him and
00:04:22
Speaker
sometime after she got wind of his doll parts episode and she called him a stentorian voice doodly bro you didn't think I made the title up to this episode by myself did you be sure you're heading over to Brendan O'Mara.com for show notes and to sign up for my monthly rage against the algorithm newsletter it's a toe-tapping good read first of the month no spam as far as I can tell you can't beat it probably can
00:04:47
Speaker
For now, keep the conversation going on Instagram and threads at Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
00:04:52
Speaker
and consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash cnfpod. I get it. Don't I get it? Money's tight and the joy you get from say, I don't know, spending $4 on a coffee often is far more gratifying than say $4 a month on your favorite podcast. But if you can, check it out. And I just put out a call for office hours to talk about whatever you want to talk about, one on one. That's for the $4 an up crowd.
00:05:22
Speaker
Okay, but listen though, here's my semi-requisite shout out to Athletic Brewing, my favorite non-alcoholic beer out there. If you use Brendan O20 at checkout, you get 20% off your order. If you visit athleticbrewing.com, they are not a sponsor of the show.
00:05:38
Speaker
And I don't get any dough. I just get skeeball tickets. And I love celebrating what they do. Alrighty. Here's Rob Harvilla. One more song to go.
From Podcast to Book: A Creator's Journey
00:05:49
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Stay tuned for my parting shot at the end. And this is it. Rob is gonna be sanding off into the Grey Havens. Starting now. Riff.
00:06:11
Speaker
No, we're good, man. Yeah, it's a trip. This has got to be just such a wild time for you, the fact that this podcast has been really a multi-year project, and it's kind of culminating in the souvenir book.
00:06:33
Speaker
What is this experience been like for you of like the last you know as as the book became something came on your radar I guess.
00:06:42
Speaker
I really like the phrase souvenir book quite a bit. This is the giant foam index finger of the podcast. And I'm really digging that image, honestly. OK, sorry. Yes, it's very straight. It feels like several decades since the show began in the depths of the pandemic. It started in October 2020. I was thinking about it, talking about it all through the summer.
Challenges in Content Adaptation
00:07:11
Speaker
of initial lockdown, you know, my daughter was born on Halloween 2020, you know, so I can look at her as like a visual reference for how long I've been doing this show, right? And now she's like very tall and yelling at me and it's just so disconcerting that it's gone on this long.
00:07:27
Speaker
Uh, but when we started to think about the book, I thought it would be so easy, right? Because I write a script every week, you know, that some absurd quantity of words, right? It started out as 2000 words. Now it's much closer to 9000 per episode.
00:07:43
Speaker
I got 600,000 words of raw material. And I'm like, this book is going to be so easy. I'm just going to cut and paste. And then I had to distill literally 600,000 words into a readable, actually liftable book form. And how am I going to condense everything into an actual book that people can read and also carry around?
00:08:08
Speaker
Given that there isn't an easy way to cut and paste everything you've done, because then you structure it in such a way in the book, be it ending with, say, big feelings or starting closer with selling out or not. And so the diaspora of the show, it's like, OK, how are these all going to fit into these little boxes that make it readable on the page versus what we're experiencing through the ear?
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, explain in the title of the podcast was always my little joke, right? You know, because I did not come into this show and I am not going to exit this show with a grand unified theory of the nineties, right? Like I can't really explain it. I don't think there is a one sentence explanation. And I think that's
Exploring Themes of Selling Out
00:08:56
Speaker
what's beautiful about it is the chaos of it. And so the book, in addition to being this radical, you know, simplification of three years of work or whatever, it is also,
00:09:07
Speaker
trying to get these songs interacting with each other in new and unexpected ways, you know, and trying to figure out, you know, what are the different kinds of selling out? There's the Green Day type of selling out, there's the Metallica type of selling out, there's, you know, the Coolio, you know, concern that he had about selling out, you know, to suddenly have this suburban and largely white audience, you know, what does that do to his music, what does that do
00:09:33
Speaker
to him. You know, my friend Stephen Jenkins from Third Eye Blind, who so many of his bandmates and so many of his fellow rock stars seem to actively dislike, you know, he was just such a great villain for the late 90s, right? Like just a very popular but very punchable presence. And so it gets me thinking,
00:09:52
Speaker
about different kinds of adversity, like within bands like Oasis, the Gallagher brothers fighting with each other. You know, Brandy and Monica, The Boy Is Mine, you know, just there's just years, decades now of enmity supposedly between them based on this song, the popularity of this song.
00:10:11
Speaker
you know, that culminates with them doing one of those versus beat battles, right, which is like such a COVID era idea, you know, and that just sort of viscerally carried through from the 90s to now, like the journey that I've been on. Yeah, and in the acknowledgments, you know, right off the bat, you know, you write that I'm struggling with the finality of the whole book process, quite frankly. And take us to that struggle.
00:10:39
Speaker
Oh, I am living that struggle right now. That struggle is audible in my voice. I mean, the very, very, very funny joke of this show, right, is that 60 is in the name. And I approached 60 songs, and I was like, I can't stop. Yeah, there's too many other songs. Could you please let me do more? And they're like, fine. And so we go up to 90, but we don't change the name of the show because that would ruin the SEO. That would damage the brand.
00:11:06
Speaker
And that makes it easier for me when we approach 90 to be like, I still don't want to, can I do 120? And they're like, oh God, this is it. You cannot do more. I was like, fine. So now we're doing 120. But I have a huge issue with the finality of both the show and the book. The physical nature of the book and the finality of it is just tripping me out. There's something so fluid
00:11:33
Speaker
about the show to me in that it is week to week, you know, in that, you know, it also sort of encompasses like my dumb tweets or whatever for there to be a book that is like a body of work, quote unquote, that I cannot change now, even though I'm finding like typos in it, you know, like I just I'm really struggling with that idea. But I think that's a manifestation of the larger issue, which is that I don't want the show to end, you know, the show has to end.
00:12:01
Speaker
You know, I think it's to honor the show and the idea of the show and the idea that there is a number in the title of the show, even if it is now inaccurate, like the show has to end. There has to be finality, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
00:12:15
Speaker
for sure yeah that's uh... that's really well put in it is uh... a show that probably could go on for you know you say like with apologies to two hundred other songs that you would like to do this but at some point in service of the audience and probably your own sanity it's just
00:12:33
Speaker
having it in that order and yeah right yeah it's just like you know it's kind of like the Breaking Bad guys you know they're they could have gone for another couple seasons but they're like you know what five is good and this will tell the story and leave people there we go or that's exactly I want Breaking Bad and not necessarily like Seinfeld I guess if we want to want to make a 90s reference yeah
00:12:56
Speaker
I wanted to get a sense of the working relationship that you have with your producers, too, specifically Justin Sales, just in developing an episode in an arc of when you return after a hiatus of sorts. So what's the kind of dialogue that you guys are having as you're looking to bring more episodes to light?
00:13:21
Speaker
I mean, he's been there from the beginning. He's been crucial to this from the beginning. He had been my editor for probably about a year prior. My first editor, I've been at the ringer now since it launched. It's seven years, easily the longest I've been at one job. And Amanda Dobbins was my first editor and she was fantastic.
00:13:38
Speaker
But then I started working with Justin, and it's been great. He's there from the very beginning as we're talking through what the show is as we land on the 90s as the framework for the show itself. He's shared on the Google Docs where we have 300 songs that are possibilities. And as I start putting them in order, as I start getting guests,
00:14:01
Speaker
You know, and then editing, Justin Sales has read so many words that I have written. Justin Sales has read, it's approaching a million words. And that is just a terrible thing to do to somebody.
00:14:17
Speaker
to make them read one million words that you've written over the course of you know probably all told for five years now and I feel very bad about that but he's been crucial to every aspect of the show from the beginning and that you know one aspect of that is song choice you know and in trying
00:14:35
Speaker
There's no rhyme or reason to the order, right? These are not ranked in any sense, you know, to go from Alanis Morissette to the Jim Blossom to the Wu-Tang Clan to Missy Elliott and on and on and on. Like that's just a measure of trying to keep it interesting, trying to keep it broad, trying to keep it surprising. But like he's, he's involved in every decision made about this show, I guess, including when to stop and when to start again.
00:15:01
Speaker
let's say I would I would say for as a longtime listener of the show I I think they we can all agree like your wheelhouse is kind of like the the grunt the more grunge bands are you know of your sure your sound gardens and and so forth not that you that's your exclusive taste but they you know we all have kind of wheelhouses in a
00:15:18
Speaker
When you have to branch out to other artists that you might respect and admire but aren't as familiar with, but you want to give them the respect they deserve in their own particular episode, what are some of the steps that you ensure that you're giving, fill in the blank, that artist the same degree of attention and analysis?
00:15:39
Speaker
I think the first step is to be honest about it. And the binary, the way I look at it is, did I listen to this when I was a teenager or didn't I? And that's the measure by which grunge becomes my wheelhouse, right? Because I grew up listening to Pearl Jam and Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden and on and on and on. I was a meat and potatoes alternative rock kid. I just bought in to a degree that you cannot believe.
00:16:07
Speaker
And that doesn't mean that I listened to zero rap, R&B, pop, metal, whatever, whatever, whatever. But my relationship with those genres as a teenager, as a kid is different. And so much of this show is predicated on the idea that the music you loved as a teenager is so precious to you. And it's a different relationship with music than you'll have with any other music ever in your life.
00:16:32
Speaker
And so when I get to an episode that's about Selena, say, or Chumbawumba even, you know, other than tub thumping, like I had no prior familiarity with Chumbawumba. I was vaguely aware there were anarchists. I was only vaguely aware that they had like this giant daunting catalog discography of like eight, 10 records that precedes, you know, the tub thumping record. And so the first step for me,
00:17:02
Speaker
just for myself but also in the show in the script itself is like I don't outright say you know you know I didn't grow up listening to this I don't really I didn't know this until very recently but like just trying to be honest about my biases and my wheelhouses you know and what I know and what I don't know like Selena means so much to the people who grew up with Selena alongside Selena you know and the tragedy
00:17:27
Speaker
her death is such a visceral painful memory for those people and I can appreciate that but that's not the same thing as having lived it in real time. I just try and be honest both with myself and with the listeners about like what I can lay claim to on a personal level and what's a little hard what I can't lay claim to and I got to find another way in you know what I mean?
00:17:51
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. That's yeah. Imagine because when you if you are particular you know like like you say with your you have a vocabulary with your wheelhouse bands that you can almost don't even have to Google anything. You can just pretty much right off the cuff.
00:18:11
Speaker
I don't need to listen to those records ever again. I love them and I enjoy listening to them. But, you know, what I say is like, for example, like the downward spiral is playing in my head right now. You know, it's at a volume that I can't really hear it necessarily, but I just I do not need to listen to that album again to hear it. You know what I mean?
00:18:31
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think the last, when I started knocking on your door again to talk, it might have been somewhere around last summer or a couple summers ago at this point. And what struck me as the evolution of the show was happening, was evolving to be redundant, I'm sorry.
00:18:54
Speaker
I was struck by the puzzle of an episode and I think I phrased it as like the maze and at the start and it was specifically what really triggered this in me was the sabotage episode with Beastie Boys. Now you start with Warren's Cherry Pie. And it's just like I'm always, I listen in part, I'm like how is Rob gonna pull it back?
00:19:20
Speaker
to the title episode and how did that just maybe start to develop in you as a means to start talking about in this example sabotage.
00:19:31
Speaker
I think the foundation of that evolution is just frankly the length of the show itself. It's like the Alanis Morissette episode, number one is 2,000 words, the script. The Cardigans episode, which is whatever, 108 is like 8,500 words. So first of all, this thing got like three, four, five times longer.
00:19:53
Speaker
And so I think what started to creep in was that idea of a digression or just like a labyrinth of associations that brings me from some random point to the song I'm talking about. And the BC Boys episode
00:20:10
Speaker
I don't think I've done it very often where it's like it's like a very cute sort of fake out thing where I start talking about like they were so worried that this one hit would define them you know and they thought they were so smart but the song is so dumb and they thought everyone would understand that they were smart and they were very smartly making a dumb song but everyone took the dumb song seriously and now they're bound to it forever and then I play cherry pie
00:20:33
Speaker
right? You know, everybody assumes the idea anyway is that people will think I'm going to play fight for your right to party and that's the Beastie Boys, but we start with cherry pie. And I, that's, I don't know if there's ever been that explicit an example of a fake out sort of intro, but it did just get to the point
00:20:50
Speaker
where I thought about a song and I just tried to imagine a route to get to the song that I don't start with the song necessarily. And I do every once in a while just to mix it up, like the Macarena, right? Like I just, let's just play the Macarena and get on with it, right? But you know, for a lot of these other ones, whether it's a personal connection, you know, in which case there's no way unless you know me, you know, you're going to understand why I'm talking, you know, about going to basketball practice or whatever,
00:21:19
Speaker
in 1994, like you don't know why I'm talking about this unrelated thing, but I'm going to hopefully make it clear to you, or if there's sort of like a genre connection that makes a little more sense. I guess I did just get to a point where part of the fun of the show is constructing that labyrinth, you know, and that series of associations that magically leads you, you know, to Lisa Loeb or whatever.
00:21:46
Speaker
At what point did you realize that you could start to take it from the 2,000 words, say, from episode one and really start to push the limits of that boundary? When did you get comfortable with that? I think part of it was the feedback I was getting. This show is by far the most, the best response I've ever gotten.
00:22:09
Speaker
that i've ever done and part of that i put down and you know this well to the parasocial nature of podcasting right you know just something about my voice in people's ears in people's cars you know as they wash the dishes you know there's an intimacy you know and there's a friendship like a bond that ideally forms like i do it with plenty of podcasts and to some extent maybe people are doing it with me
00:22:33
Speaker
and mine and so these emails that I get right and it's it's they're very kind but what they want to do mostly is just tell me their own stories you know they want their they're proposing that I do an episode you know on Harvey Danger you know and they explain why because when they were a teenager this and that happened and this Harvey you know it was so important to me this song and it's I love those emails right and it's
00:22:57
Speaker
I love that my mundane personal suburban Ohio stories that virtually nobody can relate to literally. Nobody knows what I'm talking about when I talk about 107.9, the end, the alternative rock radio station in the Cleveland era. It's the greatest radio station ever. Nobody's listened to that unless they've lived or driven through Cleveland. But the idea is it just gets you thinking about your own hometown radio station.
00:23:23
Speaker
right and what songs you heard there that you loved and what CDs you bought and whatever whatever whatever it's the old saw about the more specific a song is the more universal it becomes you know that's the principle just applied to me now talking about those songs and so i guess that feedback
00:23:41
Speaker
that I was getting and the idea that the show was connecting and what was connecting was in some degree to some degree the digressions and the more personal stories and the longer more winding road you know to yellow lead better or whatever like
00:23:57
Speaker
It got me to the idea that the long digression could be the actual thing. The song is important, but how you get to the song and why the song is so important to you is just as important.
00:24:15
Speaker
I'm thinking especially of late of the Black Hole Sun episode and it just popped into my head and it was like you know you start with I believe you know this smash mouth and move into like Blind Melon and you know was that a way for you to shoehorn extra songs in?
00:24:35
Speaker
They might not deserve their own episode, but here's a way we can get these 90s songs in under the umbrella of this Titanic 1994 hit. I think you got me there. Deserve is such a squirrely word, right? Because I, Blind Melon, you know, No Rain absolutely deserves, you know, deserved an episode all on its own. You know, it's deserved as in the eye of the beholder. You know, that's the entire point.
00:25:04
Speaker
of the show, but it is absolutely true that as I sit here, you know, at the point of Soundgarden with like 15 episodes, 15 songs left to go, now I'm at like 10, dude, like 11 or 10, and it's terrible. It's a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible feeling to look at this Google doc, you know, of 50 songs that I wanna do episodes on, and I'm looking at 11 blank spots, and I'm just like, oh, shit.
00:25:33
Speaker
And so I do think there is an impulse lately, you know, as we as we ramp up to our dramatic conclusion, you know, hopefully it doesn't feel that shoehorned, but undeniably kind of it is shoehorned. Like, it's just I want to where can I fit these guys in? And the Soundgarden episode is odd for a few reasons. It was like the first one back, right? I had been on break, you know, to deal with the book.
00:25:58
Speaker
for a couple months and so you sort of want to come back I think it's you know I don't know numbers I don't follow stats you know I'm very blessed you know very privileged to not worry about that and so but I have a sense certainly that the alternative rock episodes tend to do a little better you know or get a little more of a response you know your Pearl Jam your Nirvana of course stuff like that and I don't know if that's
00:26:23
Speaker
a reflection of the Ringer audience in particular, or if that's just the way it goes, or what. But we want to come back with a bang, quote unquote, we think Samgarden. But Steve Harwell from Smash Mouth had died during that break, quite unexpectedly. And so I'm reading all these very tender tributes to him. I've got him in my head. I went through a run. I'm getting all this feedback. It felt like a coordinated blind melon
00:26:52
Speaker
campaign. I'm not going to rule out that there was some sort of astroturfed super pack where they all got together and pretended to independently email me about Blind Melon, but it was all very tightly coordinated. I just started getting a lot of Blind Melon emails.
00:27:09
Speaker
And it's like, that's a great idea. I love getting suggestions, and they're all great ideas. And that's why I have a Google Doc that terrifies me. But there was just a run of blind melon. And it's so grim to say, but I knew the Soundgarden episode was going to be heavy because of Chris Cornell dying. And he died like three days before I was going to go see him in Columbus. And I had never seen Soundgarden live before, and I was so excited, and I was extra devastated.
00:27:38
Speaker
to hear that he was gone. And so now I'm sort of in a eulogy mindset as part of the Soundgarden episode, then Steve Harwell dies, you know, and I want to try and honor him, you know, and then Blind Melon unfortunately slides into that. Like I try not to think in those terms too often, in terms of like stringing tragedies,
00:28:04
Speaker
together, but it was just curious to me the way the sudden, you know, shocking death of a front man, of a rock star, changes the way you hear their songs. You know, the way No Rain overnight when Shannon Hoon passed became like this beautiful
00:28:22
Speaker
You know eulogy, you know that it was just it's just a heavenly sounding Song already no rain and he appears to be at peace, you know, just your mind starts spinning in that way, you know to hear all-star
00:28:37
Speaker
which is such like a silly song and such an aggressively memed song and like it's not a joke or if it's a joke it's a joke they're in on but there's just such a complicated like two online aura around All Star and around Smash Mouth as a whole and then all of that is brought to a screeching halt by his death you know and you're suddenly
00:28:58
Speaker
and, you know, confronted by this very human tragedy, you know, and you've been making Shrek memes about it for 10 years and you're like, oh my God, like just that, that was just all swirling around in my head. And I tried to harmonize all of that, you know, without getting too grim about it.
00:29:18
Speaker
Oh yeah, and in that episode as well, which is kind of a great connective tissue, is that the necklace that Chris Cornell wears, and I believe in the Black Hole Sun video, was given to him by Shannon Hoon. And it's like, oh, that's a great way. Did you know that going in? How long had you known that? Was that something that just was pure serendipity? Or like, oh, here's a great way to connect these two here.
00:29:46
Speaker
It was serendipity, you know, it was I had already put them together and if I'm fairly certain I had already written The smash mouth part which led into the blind melon part and I was somewhere deep into the blind melon part of like writing and still like reading stuff feverishly as I'm writing where I stumble across that I'm like, yes
00:30:11
Speaker
What I should do is tell you that I knew it the whole time, I guess, or maybe it's cooler that I sensed it with my Spidey sense, that there was this beautiful connection between Chris Cornell and Shannon Hoon, and then it manifested in the necklace.
00:30:27
Speaker
It's like a Denny's fork that Shannon Hoon sort of twisted into a necklace. Even that image is very profound to me as a former Denny's waiter. It's such a legitimately beautiful thing.
00:30:42
Speaker
Well, that's what's terrifying about writing, you know, writing anything, you know, when you feel like you're doing so much research and you feel like you've done enough or you're maybe you're panicked that you haven't done quite a bit and then you're writing along and then you stumble across something. You're like, oh, my God, I thought I turned over every stone. And then you find out there are stones you didn't even know were there. And you're like, God damn it. There are now new stones. I didn't know they were there.
00:31:10
Speaker
Oh, of course. I've never flattered myself for one second. The explains part of this show in this book is a joke. I've never flattered myself for a second that I'm 5% comprehensive on even the bands I've been listening to all my life. I think it's a matter of just amassing enough research, enough personal history
00:31:36
Speaker
I build enough of a labyrinth to get through it, but I'm never gonna know everything and I'm inevitably three months later gonna stumble across the perfect quote or the perfect antidote. What would usually happen is I would find out about the spoon necklace tomorrow.
00:31:57
Speaker
and I would be like, oh shit, it's very fortunate that I found that when I did, but it's far more likely that I find these serendipitous things way too late. There's a moment in the Beastie Boys, the sabotage episode, it was probably, it's such a subtle thing you did, but it probably made me laugh harder than any other
00:32:23
Speaker
Thing you've ever said over the entire run of the podcast was right at the start and I it's when you make the Fight Club reference You're like that's a Fight Club reference speaking of failed attempts to satirize macho bullshit that instead inspired a bunch of extra macho bullshit But then you just go blah and keep going when you go blah
00:32:42
Speaker
That moment right there is the encapsulation of the entire podcast for me. Oh, my God. That's that's very kind of you to say. And yes, you know, the combination like to put it in comic strip strip terms, it's like half Kathy, it's half like act and it's half like Charlie Brown. Like that's that's the for me. You know, I
00:33:08
Speaker
I end up using that word or I just go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When I hear myself being a rock critic, you know, like they're they're coruscating riffs like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like what I what I wanted from this show from the beginning is to avoid, you know, my rock critic voice, you know, which I always worried was
00:33:31
Speaker
calibrated to be only audible to other rock critics. I'm going to write this awesome 1,200-word review of this Lana Del Rey record. But unless you know every single detail about the career and discography of Lana Del Rey up to this point, you are not going to be cool enough to get all these sweet references and inside jokes I'm making. That is precisely what I wanted to avoid here. And I hope I'm successful at that. But part of, yeah.
00:34:00
Speaker
Part of that is when I find myself, when I get to like the fourth adjective in a sentence, you know, that's the fourth adjective in the third adverb. That's when I'm like, I'm doing the rock critic thing again. And that's when I get the urge to just go, and that's, you know, I'm so relieved that that is amusing to even one other person. That's very gratifying. Thank you.
00:34:25
Speaker
It's part of the Harvillian cadence I've come to adore about the whole thing. But you bring up a great point about the rock critic voice and that was something I wanted to
00:34:40
Speaker
to talk to you about, I imagine that at some point over a rock critic's career, a music critic's career, you're writing to impress other rock critics instead of serving the readers who might want to just enjoy the music. And I wonder how you have wrestled with that.
00:34:57
Speaker
Oh, that's been my fear from the beginning, you know, and especially, you know, I worked at the Village Voice, right from I think 2006, 2011. So I'm in my late 20s. I've worked at a couple alt weeklies. You know, there's been a bunch of ugly corporate takeovers, you know, it's a pretty gnarly situation. And I'm just sort of flown in.
00:35:19
Speaker
I'm just a dude from Ohio suddenly let loose in the big city and trying to edit Bob Crisco. And everybody's just looking at me like, what the hell? And in that moment, running the Paz and Jop poll, which is this revered, just so historical and important year end critics poll that sort of distills a year of critical knowledge and consensus into one poll and all these essays. And it's legitimately was so important to me.
00:35:48
Speaker
and it terrified me, and that exacerbated, magnified this sense, as you say, exactly, that I'm writing to rock critics and not to like my mother-in-law. You know, my mother-in-law is so sweet and so awesome and so supportive, and she'll read, you know, this cool Lana Del Rey review that I did, and she'll be like, that was really, that was a really good article, Rob. I was like, thank you, thank you. She's like, I didn't understand
00:36:13
Speaker
any of it. I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sure it was very astute. It was like, oh, crap. And so that's exactly what I wanted to avoid. But the second part of it, just as crucial, is that I have to say this shit out loud.
00:36:28
Speaker
You know what I'm saying? Like what they tell you as a writer is to read it out loud and you will see the problem immediately. And so the impulse that I have as a writer to write these 200 word convoluted sentences, you know, full of semicolons and m dashes and parentheses, you know, the fact of having to read it out loud,
00:36:50
Speaker
Immediately, I think, and I can sort of tell just reading over even the earliest scripts is like it's simplified my writing and improved my writing, I think. And that also that helped me also make my writing more accessible, you know, to people who don't do this for a living.
00:37:11
Speaker
You know, it gets to the point of voice, too. And quite literally, you're putting this down on tape. And over the course of the run of the show, in what ways would you have you noticed that your voice became more refined or polished over the course? Sorry. Excuse me. That's a very funny word.
00:37:38
Speaker
First of all, I don't know if you can hear, but my three-year-old daughter just wandered in here, so that will make this a more exciting experience. All right, now I'm also caught on a... Okay, here we go.
00:37:49
Speaker
How have I gotten more refined is the I guess you know to put it in something that feels feels left less highfalutin. It's like you know a guitarist has like evolves their own sort of their sound their own tone and that feels uniquely unique to them. And I guess just over the course of doing this you know you start yet you're at a natural starting point and then over the course you're like
00:38:13
Speaker
you're starting to find more of a grounding in your own voice over the course of several years. And so I guess that's more or less what I'm referring to.
00:38:24
Speaker
No, I understand. And so from the very beginning, I understand academically that the process of writing the first script for Alanis Morissette, you ought to know. I open a Google Doc and I type some words into it. This is familiar to me. I know how to do that. But I understand that I'm going to have to read it out loud. And I think I understand what that means and how it changes things. But of course, I don't grasp.
00:38:52
Speaker
the fullness of it. And part of that is, again, the feedback, you know, the realization that people are going to hear my voice in their earbuds or in their cars or while they mow the lawn or whatever. It took me a very... As some of you like to know, I do occasionally interject when I feel like I have something germane to say.
00:39:17
Speaker
Rare as that is. Rob saying about the mowing of the lawn and so forth. I remember what's kind of cool about his podcast is at times I remember where I was at a certain time when I was listening to a particular one. I was actually cutting the grass in the backyard listening to the Fiona Apple episode on criminal.
00:39:38
Speaker
And I remember cleaning up dozens of piles of dog shit during the regulators episodes. There are these things, the little GPS coordinates that you remember when you're listening to a podcast, specifically 60 songs that explain the 90s. Okay, back to Ron.
00:40:01
Speaker
now sort of fully wrap my head around that like the direct conduit from this from my head to this microphone to other people's ears. It's just a very foreign concept to me even now and I it's not a discomfort but I do think that there's like a healthy
00:40:19
Speaker
sort of bewilderment that I continue to have about that. But if I go back and I did, you know, to research this book, I reread all my scripts and I can tell that I'm getting more comfortable or I'm sort of understanding
00:40:35
Speaker
far beyond the rock critic, avoiding rock critic, uber-adjective talk, finding a more conversational tone and performing it without it feeling performative. Monologue is such a dorky word, but I'm not an actor. I'm not performing
00:40:58
Speaker
per se, but I do think that blah is not something that I put in print too often, but that's an example of something where I'm like, I think this may actually help and change the tone of the thing if it feels like I'm actively struggling with what I'm saying as I'm saying it. I could make it more conversational in a way that felt natural to me. I don't want to laugh at my own jokes
00:41:23
Speaker
Ever you know but I do when I find something somebody else said funny You know and I laugh at it organically when I read it out loud even if I've heard it 200 times Like does that sound on the other end to the listener sincere? Does it sound like I'm fake laughing like all that kind of thing just sort of understanding?
00:41:41
Speaker
that like it or not, there is a performative aspect to this and just trying to find a way to do that that felt natural to me and sincere. You know, it's a process and it continues, but I can tell just reading the scripts and how sort of conversational and jocular the script started getting that I did at least realize, you know, that I'm on this path and that that evolution is happening.
00:42:05
Speaker
Has a critic of of any of anything let's just say rock critics have they ever fundamentally changed your relationship to music you you loved and actually like you're like ah shit they kind of ruined it for me ooh
00:42:23
Speaker
Has anyone ruined anything for me? You know what I really don't like, and I do this all the time, is the construction of Pearl Jam are older now than the who were when Pearl Jam first came out. You know what I mean? The fact that the 60s were as far away from us in the 90s, I hate that shit, man. And I do that all the time. But I do not need to be reminded
00:42:51
Speaker
of how old I am, and that the music that I loved as a kid is now definitionally classic rock. I don't need that. Wow. I don't think that anyone has ruined anything. I think it's gone the other way. It has deepened my appreciation over time.
00:43:16
Speaker
I find myself talking a lot lately about Janet Jackson, you know, who I revered as an MTV superstar when I was a little kid watching MTV. And I was so mad for so long that like Escapade was an 80s song, you know, and that I had a personal spiritual relationship with Janet Jackson's 80s stuff.
00:43:38
Speaker
And I didn't have that with the 90s. What I had was like the rock critic praise for her. I understood that the Velvet Rope was like her best reviewed album in some ways and like her deepest, her densest, her darkest, you know, her most sophisticated piece of work.
00:43:55
Speaker
But I didn't feel that on a personal level the way I felt control, right? Because I was a kid then and my relationship was fundamentally different. But over the course of finally doing the Janet Jackson episode that I'd been scared to do for so long and doing together again and diving into the Velvet Rope,
00:44:14
Speaker
I had this knowledge, all these wonderful writers, the 33 and a third book on it, these critics I admire who had been praising that record for years and who had been telling me for years that this is such a wonderful record and very arguably the best record of her career, I finally got it on a personal level in addition to a critical level.
00:44:36
Speaker
And that's a lot of writers, a lot of critics doing a lot of unpaid work on my behalf for years and years and years and years, but it finally did happen. And I'm so grateful to all of them for helping me finally come to that realization.
00:44:51
Speaker
I think of the note that you made, we talked about Metallica a lot the last time, and how Lars' drumming was like falling down the stairs. And that, I can't hear his drumming now without that image. And there's a song on their new album called Too Far Gone, and it is the apotheosis of stair falling drumming.
00:45:21
Speaker
Oh, that's so exciting, though. As soon as we're done talking, I'm going to go listen to that, though, because I'm in the mood for falling down the stairs with Lars experience. You got it, man. I dig it. I wanted to get a sense of how you approach interviewing, too. And I admire how you go about asking questions. A lot of I'm a work in progress as an interviewer, as you can tell.
00:45:47
Speaker
And a lot of interviewers tend to be very bloated in the way they ask questions. And I feel like you get to the point really quick and don't answer the question on behalf of the guest and then ask the question again. How did you develop just a good interviewing sort of cadence?
00:46:10
Speaker
I'm frankly relieved that you think it's a good interviewing cadence. That's also very validating to me and I thank you very much. The interviewing part worried me for a long time. It kind of still does. Comparing the interview to the monologue, I always felt more comfortable. I think I will always feel more comfortable.
00:46:29
Speaker
with the monologue. I think the interviews have improved over time and what I'm trying to do is what you're describing. I think it's partly a function of, I have now talked about this song for 9,000 words in 45 minutes.
00:46:46
Speaker
I have exhausted my take. Please, somebody else, say something. And so I think that makes me even more reticent than usual to talk over the person I'm interviewing. I just wanna hear their perspective. And that's been true from the beginning. I think the thing I struggled with so much at the onset, and I can go back and listen to the monologues,
00:47:14
Speaker
of say the first 10 episodes, but no way am I doing the interviews, right? Because my concern with the interviews is it sounds so stiff to me. I'm reading the questions. I was interviewed by a dude here in Columbus in person. We're at a coffee shop, right? And there's a recorder between us, the classical thing.
00:47:35
Speaker
And I've been in that situation interviewing people plenty of times and I've always struggled to not have a list of questions in front of me because my memory doesn't work very well, right? Like I just, I can't remember the questions I want to ask. And so I have this cheat sheet, but now I'm sitting across from a person and I keep looking at this piece of paper and then going, yeah, it was cool. And I'm reading the question word for word and that's terrible, right? Like there's a difference between an interview and a conversation.
00:48:03
Speaker
And so I think the arc of this show from the interview perspective is getting me from interview to conversation. And what I can say with some confidence is that it's better. Now I feel less stiff. I feel less like I'm reading the questions word for word. I'm trying to just listen to what they say. And ideally the next question comes not from my piece of paper, but from what they're saying now.
00:48:33
Speaker
trying to make it more of a conversation has been everything to me. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. And I've, I've, uh, likened it to, uh, like I have a series of notes. I have a screen up with things that are like some bullet points and, you know, I'm always, I'm always scribbling like things down, like putting a pin in something. Oh my God, that's cool. I like how someone said that. I might circle back to that.
00:48:56
Speaker
I kind of equate it to like an NFL call sheet. It's like, here are all the plate, you know, and it's like, depending on the situation. Oh, it's third and long. We got to go to this one. Oh, it's fourth and one. We're going to go for it. You know, that's right. You're going to. This is the tush push question. No, I did. This is the brotherly shove time. Exactly. Yeah. It's really sharp.
00:49:20
Speaker
I hadn't heard that one. Oh, you haven't heard that one yet? All right, nice. I have not. It's been Tush Push. I don't think I've seen that, actually. I've just read about it on the internet. I've watched Eagles games in the background as I'm cleaning the house or whatever, but I don't know that I've ever been looking straight at a television when a Tush Push occurred. I don't know exactly what transpires there, but I'm very interested, of course.
00:49:47
Speaker
Yeah, if NFL games were on Saturday, my wife and I would have a drinking game. But any time you hear tush push, you had to take a drink. Thankfully, we'd be too hungover on a Monday. So we can't do it on Sunday. You'd be drunk, yes. Exactly. And it's just kind of still piggybacking on interviewing. And I think you've probably spoken and thought a lot about having Courtney Love on the show. And she is a force. Yes.
00:50:15
Speaker
There is no getting a word in edgewise most of the time with her. Well, I listened to her on Marc Maron and he just let her go. And likewise, he was hilarious. Of course, I listened to that before I talked to her and his approach. He was just going, yep.
00:50:32
Speaker
Yep. Yep. All right. Like I said, this is the way to do it. I'm just taking notes over here. Like say yep, say yep. Keep your mouth shut otherwise. Just let her cook. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. So as you're going into that, I mean, she gave you some pretty high praise online. What was it, like a stentorian something? Stentorian voiced dudely bro.
00:50:58
Speaker
I think was the phrase. And it's, you know, I try not to read everything that is said about me, but like that phrase, I have taken the liberty of committing to memory and hopefully I got it right. But like, yeah, that's a big moment for me, for Courtney Love on Instagram to refer to me as a stentorian voiced doodly bro. You know, just put that on my tombstone and be done with it.
00:51:22
Speaker
So when you're heading into an interview like that and you do want to just naturally let her cook, what was your approach as you're like, okay, I probably only am going to get in X amount of questions. Let's make sure I get the right ones because she's going to take that rope and run with it.
00:51:41
Speaker
Yeah, I just want her to talk. I am under no illusions. In that moment, people just want to hear from her. The less I say, the better. And so I think for me, it was a matter of not interrupting her or talking over her or talking at all, but just being ready.
00:52:00
Speaker
for when she did want me to talk right like just following her very closely and sort of trying and sort of the fun of her a lot of the time is you don't know where she's going and you don't know how these things connect but they do on a long enough timeline that's what's so fascinating to me
00:52:16
Speaker
about the way her mind works, just the combination of memory and shit talking and really astute critical opinion about music and the connections. She's so smart and she's so funny and she's been through so much, but she's going to get there the way she wants to get there. And it's just my job
00:52:37
Speaker
It's not even a matter of steering her toward it because she's getting there and it doesn't benefit anyone to get there any faster than she wants to. Like just let her do this. But when there's, when she asks me a question, you know, when there is a moment, you know, for me to interject just to be ready for that moment, there's like a hurry up and wait quality to it where I want to be absolutely present
00:53:00
Speaker
and following her as closely as possible, but also I am silent, you know what I'm saying? And so it was a really cool thing for me to be listening just as much as a person, anyone listening.
00:53:14
Speaker
And it must have been especially validating that she wanted to have a conversation with you and gave you such high praise for the way you honored her on that Doll Parts episode, given that she was so highly scrutinized as Kurt Cobain's wife and in the shadow of that monolith. And the fact that, you know,
00:53:42
Speaker
I guess just for you, just as a critic and as a writer, that must have been really just validating in a lot of ways. Like, okay, this is working.
00:53:56
Speaker
I mean, it's validating. It's surreal as hell. And, you know, it's just to have Courtney Love at me on Instagram, to have Courtney Love talking to me on WhatsApp, you know, as I'm sitting and watching a movie with my kids, you know, to be on a Zoom call looking at Courtney Love, you know, as she's singing the alternate lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit, you know, reading off Kurt Cobain's handwritten
00:54:20
Speaker
pages of lyrics I just there's no way to fully wrap my head around that you know but it's incredibly gratifying and it's super kind you know and I it was awesome you know it's it's it's undeniably the hype a high point or possibly even the high point of my career just in terms of the weirdness of it but the coolness of it at the same time
00:54:44
Speaker
And was it serendipity again that you hadn't done Smells Like Teen Spirit yet, and then you were able to pair Courtney with that episode? Because you could have easily have done Smells Like Teen Spirit like the first 10 episodes of the show.
00:54:58
Speaker
I mean, for the longest time, it was going to be the last episode or the second to last. You know, obviously, when I'm looking at a list of 200 songs, you can pull out, you know, 20 to 50 of them. That's like, man, I got to do this. Like you can't do something like this without Biggie, without Tupac.
00:55:16
Speaker
without nirvana right and of course i'm getting suggestions and what about blank all the time dms emails and i love those i love those suggestions i love to be yelled at for things that i haven't done yet but obviously i think you know undeniably smells like teen spirit was the one where people like where's the nirvana episode and like i think it's clear to people
00:55:37
Speaker
that this is not a ranked list of songs. We are not going in any sort of coherent order. We're just making this up as we go along. But the Nirvana episode was always looming. And again, it was always going to be last or close to last. But then that got to feel anti-climactic. That felt too obvious. And that's what people would expect.
00:56:00
Speaker
and so why don't we drop the episode you know when it's still somewhat of a surprise you know and we again we had been on a hiatus for a while you know and we were coming back that was the book was announced in that episode which is not timed that way but was certainly a very cool serendipitous thing but it's like all right let's do this surprising thing and let's just do it now and then i think it'll make me work a little harder
00:56:23
Speaker
to still build up the rest of the show, including right now, up to something, right? Like, I don't have as logical a last song as I used to have when Nirvana was still on the table. And so I'm going to have to find an alternate route to end this, you know, in a seemingly, you know, climactic, triumphant type matter. And that's a cool challenge for me.
00:56:45
Speaker
But the other part of that was Courtney, you know, I'd been talking to her for a while. You know, she started asking me if maybe I would want her to do the Nirvana episode. I was like, oh, my God, like, of course, like, as long as that's not too painful, too personal. As you say, there's been so much terrible shit written about this person, the scrutiny she was under to this day.
00:57:05
Speaker
And I would never make her relive that for my little podcast. And I was honored that she asked and I was honored that she did it. And that also contributed to me just keeping my mouth shut and letting her do it.
00:57:21
Speaker
Now, over the course of the show's run, it's good to be king episode. I was particularly struck by and the fatherhoodness of it. And in a lot of ways, as we spoke about last time, how there is a distinct memoir quality to the totality of the show.
00:57:47
Speaker
And over the course of it, too, given how you bring in that fatherhood element, I've kind of taken the interpretation that, in a sense, it's kind of like a manuscript in a way to your children. Because they might come to a day where they might want to know more about you. And you can kind of point to these songs in this decade as a means to explain who you are to them.
00:58:15
Speaker
And I don't know, what do you make of that? That's just my interpretation, but I wonder what you might make of that.
00:58:22
Speaker
No, that's a really interesting idea, you know, in the immediate cheese ball way that I thought to articulate that is like this podcast explains me way better than it explains the 90s. Right. You know, like I didn't start out thinking I'm going to tell so many cool stories about when I was a teenager and people were going to be fascinated. You know, I did not go into this thinking that I talk about myself and certainly my children at all. I didn't I didn't imagine this memoir quality at all.
00:58:51
Speaker
But I think that that gradually came with the evolution too. And that was another element, you know, the podcast aspect, the parasocial aspect, the very personal relationships that people have with music and the more personal stories people were telling me, the early feedback I was getting.
00:59:07
Speaker
I can see that evolution too, of me very slowly and carefully talking a little bit more about myself as the show goes on. And there's a pretty hard line there for me, and partly that's about just privacy stuff. It was very obvious from the beginning, I'm not talking about ex-girlfriends in any way, shape, or form, because they don't need that.
00:59:28
Speaker
But my family, my wife, my kids, they come up, but I don't want it to ever feel like I'm using them as content. I have all that swirling in my head. But I do think that the Tom Petty episode was a very personal one, obviously, and a culmination of things.
00:59:48
Speaker
My daughter was born in October 2020 on Halloween, right? And the show had been out for like two weeks. And so my daughter is like a physical manifestation of how long this show has been going on. And that's sort of unavoidable.
01:00:03
Speaker
I'm really interested in that idea of this as you know what I leave my kids that explains me because of course the other part of it is like I'm driving my sons to a birthday party to like a laser tag birthday party and I'm playing salt and pepper in the car and they're like who is this I'm like salt and pepper is like is this for the podcast yes you know like I've subjected them to each and every artist
01:00:29
Speaker
that I've talked about on this show and so a really interesting aspect for me if they they have listened to some of the show you know and the swearing you know and the churlishness you know is unfortunate you know I am what I am I guess but like they listen to the Tom Petty episode that they might be Giants episode you know but I
01:00:49
Speaker
It's interesting to me that it's both a road map to me and a road map to the music that I made them listen to, you know, for the past three years. And I wonder if they will, if they're anywhere in their heads, do they remember, you know, the two weeks that I just played Pantera nonstop? And I'm like, who is this, like Pantera? Is it for the podcast? Yes.
01:01:09
Speaker
Like, if they remember that stuff at all, and if this helps with context, or if it's just, you know, dad bloviating, you know, about high school again.
01:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, because there's an element of the grandfather who's published this from a vanity press. And it's just like, these are my memories if you want to get to know me a little bit better once I have long passed. And I was like, you know what? This is Rob's footprint for a particular area that really defines him in a certain ways. And maybe there's a time down the road to be like, oh, yeah, I remember listening to Pantera on the way to soccer practice.
01:01:50
Speaker
That's pretty special. That's what I hope. I can dream. Well, Rob, the last thing I want to ask, and this is what I tend to bring these podcasts down for landing, is just asking the listener, I mean the guest in this case, for a recommendation of some kind. And I'd extend that to you, whatever you're excited about that you might want to share with the listeners.
01:02:13
Speaker
A recommendation, I think I'm going to go with a TV show called Ima Virgo. It is on Amazon Prime. It is directed by Boots Riley, who you may know from the coup from the Bay Area rap group. The coup, he made a movie called Sorry to Bother You a couple years ago about like a
01:02:36
Speaker
not televangelist but just telephone marketers like this really surreal like sci-fi comedy and I'm a Virgo is in that vein like it's about like a 13 foot tall like teenager you know just like a giant like just set loose
01:02:54
Speaker
in Oakland, California. And that's the aspect that really gets to me. It's a very funny, very weird, very in-your-face, confrontational kind of show. But what gets to me is the Oakland of it all. I lived in Oakland a couple times in the early 2000s. And I loved the music, the radio stations so much. And just to watch this show now,
01:03:20
Speaker
of kids now, teenagers now driving around Oakland, places I remember, Lake Merritt or whatever, and they're listening to E-40. They're listening to Too Short. They're listening to whatever. There's a weird nostalgic pang that I get watching this show. I'm an interloper there. I didn't grow up in Oakland.
01:03:39
Speaker
you know, a kid from Ohio was in Oakland for a little while and just sort of enjoyed it from like a remove that I was comfortable with. Like again, like I knew what I knew and I didn't know, but still like there's something very special and distinct to me about that time in my life and that place and that music from that place. There's just like a synergy that I never got from any other place or time in my life. And that's another
01:04:05
Speaker
present element in this show, which is otherwise just so surreal and so funny and so cool. So I'll say I'm a Virgo. Fantastic. Well, Rob, thank you so much for carving out the time to do this amidst your harrowing book book tour. Again, it's great to talk to you again. Yeah. It is getting a little harrowing, the sound of my voice at this volume and length. But I'm having a great time. It's great to talk to you again, and I really appreciate it.
01:04:38
Speaker
Aw, that was great. Ah, man. That's cool. Thanks to Rob. Name of the book again. 60 songs that explain the 90s. It's published by 12. Get it for the Gen X-er in your life. Or your mom. Thanks to the Power of Narrative Conference for promotional support.
01:05:00
Speaker
You have like two more weeks to sign up and if you go to come beyond that be you dot edu and you use narrative 25 You get 25% off your tuition, which is like it's a lot of burrito money I that that much I know I haven't gotten feedback on my Biography and I got a little tiny bit of feedback so it's not entirely true Which is it's kind of an unsettling amount of feedback because it's well not receiving anything. It's a little
01:05:30
Speaker
Unsettling because it's taking longer than I think either of us expected and that's never a good sign. I got a note that did say you don't want people to pay attention to the writing, which on its surface is a total bummer because we often link the writing quote with the person quote, unquote. Put your quotes wherever you want. I did the writing, therefore the writing is me.
01:05:57
Speaker
It's the same advice I got a few years ago from the same person saying, don't get right early on me. God damn it. I seem to have a pitfall. It's great advice. But when we read reviews or read scholars or experts or bloggers talk about people we admire,
01:06:21
Speaker
So often we're flooded with the laurels of what beautiful language in writing it is, I don't know, from Jane Austen to Hescott Fitzgerald, you know, long, dead, beautiful writers. Like the writing is, yeah. And part of the reason we got into this mess was to maybe earn that kind of attention.
01:06:42
Speaker
Yeah, nothing lights up a writer better than someone telling them that they love the writing. That checks clearing, of course, and arriving in a timely manner. So what is good writing? Maybe this is my best way to explain this. And I will use a couple different metaphors. I might even mix metaphors because that's bad writing unless you call attention to it. And then it's intentional. And that's good writing. Anyway, I don't know.
01:07:10
Speaker
Okay, good writing still has elements of voice and style, but not too much voice in too much style. When I watch a Wes Anderson movie, I know it's a Wes Anderson movie. Or Christopher Nolan movie or Sofia Coppola or Tarantino. Good writing dissolves. It's the solvent. It makes the story possible, but doesn't call unnecessary attention to itself.
01:07:37
Speaker
Good writing is surrendering to the story. David Gran is a master, and you wouldn't confuse his prose as being overly written, overwrought, or even quote-unquote beautiful. But there's nobody better, certainly in nonfiction, and maybe even extending over to fiction land.
01:07:59
Speaker
You find enough great details through your research and your interviewing. And then all you're doing is taking dictation from all that material. And yeah, you just shut up a little bit. You're throwing a little bit of seasoning, but you don't slam 10 grams of finishing salt on the dish. It's like a couple grains. And that's elevation. That is tasty.
01:08:26
Speaker
So how you put your stamp on that is voice inside, but like I said, it can't be too much. And at times in the early drafts, you are, so often, too much. There's a balance, and that's what the rewrites are for. And the rewrite, and the rewrite, and the rewrite, and the rewrite, and damn it, won't the deadline come? Stay wild, see ya in efforts, and if you can't do interviews, see ya.
01:09:05
Speaker
you