Transcript
Speaker: There's an old Onion article that the various algorithms in my life won't stop recommending that I should take a look at. The photo accompanying the article shows a man in a blue dress shirt sitting on a couch next to a young girl who's holding in her hands a copy of Talking Heads Remain in Light on Vinyl.
Speaker: The headline reads, Cool Dad Raising Daughter on Media That Will Put Her Entirely Out of Touch with Her Generation. As it happens, the algorithm's recommendation in this case is a real bullseye, not just because of the way I can't help but experience parenting as an opportunity for aesthetic education, but maybe even more particularly because the specific canon invoked in the article, not just the talking heads, but Big Star, Marky Moon, a DVD set of the TV show The Prisoner, all really strikes close to the heart.
Speaker: My aesthetic sensibility is really very easy to predict after all. It's no wonder that the algorithm has got my number. As it turns out, maybe it also has the number of my guests for today's episode of Some Marvelous Experience.
Speaker: Andrew Epstein, scholar of contemporary American poetry and noted cool dad, and Casey Epstein Gross, a music journalist who is his daughter. I thought of the Onion article as soon as I thought about talking about their experience sharing music with one another, and I was planning to bring it up during our conversation, but instead they beat me to it and they mentioned it before I even had a chance.
Speaker: I've mostly been thinking about friendship in regards to the kinds of aesthetic experiences I've been talking about on this show. But there's also something intriguing about the particular experiences of sharing art and literature within the context of a family.
Speaker: I can think of a couple of central tropes for this kind of thing. One is the formative power of being a kid, listening to music in the backseat of someone else's car, before you're old enough to take control of the playlist. I guess the other ubiquitous trope might be the one of coming back later in life to discover that your parents' record collection was actually... despite your conviction growing up.
Speaker: Pretty cool. Andrew and Casey wind up talking about a lot of things, but the particular artwork that they choose to put at the center of the conversation is advice to the graduate on the Silverdew's first record, Starlight Walker, which was released in 1994.
Speaker: It's the perfect song to anchor their conversation because there's a way in which it's explicitly about the problem of advice. I've been thinking a lot recently about the relationship between aesthetic experience and advice.
Speaker: Obviously, this is the sort of thing that people of a certain age, and it's not only cool dads, are constantly complaining about. The music that you listen to or the books that you read used to be guided by the advice of people that you wanted to emulate.
Speaker: Older siblings and possibly cool friends. People you wanted to fall in love with you that you wanted to become or both. Now, of course, these decisions are mostly being made by algorithms, a fact which fills me with a melancholy that's probably a little disproportionate.
Speaker: But given the way that aesthetic recommendations are being outsourced to apps, it's probably especially useful right now to think about aesthetic advice. The cool dad conundrum isn't the only version of this, but I do think that one of the things that parenting ends up being about is the specific rhetorical challenge of offering advice.
Speaker: Mostly probably about learning to keep your mouth shut, but also about how to offer advice in a way that leaves room for it actually to be received. The sublimity of the talking heads might not be the most important version of this, but it is pretty important and may be a useful practice for other more obviously crucial lessons.
Speaker: Whenever the content, the structure of the problem is the same, how to take the lessons that you've learned and convey them to someone else so that maybe they won't have to go through the same experience, even when you know damn well that they're going to have to go through the same experience.
Speaker: It might seem like rock and roll is a funny genre from which to broach the problem of vice. Popular music is, of course, aligned in profound and powerful ways with youth. But the thing is that this fact doesn't necessarily foreclose what it means to be young.
Speaker: One of the lessons might be that there's a kind of maturity to youth that we haven't thought about enough. And anyway, for 50 years or so, rock and roll's defining temporality has probably bopped back and forth between the Who's My Generation, with its hope to die before I get old, and The Beatles Your Mother Should Know, which is eager to discover what maybe we're all too young to know.
Speaker: But of course, the other aspect of this dynamic that Casey and Andrew bring to light is the way that advice isn't unilateral. Maybe the primal musical scene of any aesthetic education is sitting in the backseat of some adult's car, finding yourself alive in a world that already had a soundtrack waiting for you.
Speaker: But the profound pleasures of sharing art and music don't always come from on high. Eventually that kid in the back might ask for you to pass the ox, might make you a playlist, might show that she knows you even better than your algorithm after all.
Speaker: I hope you enjoy this discussion about David Berman's advice to the graduate. Sure. Thanks so much for having us, Brian. This is really fun and we're excited to have a chance to talk about this. I'm i'm Andrew and I'm the dad, obviously. Indeed. this, in this dyad. And, uh, I, um, talked a lot about, yeah, was so thrilled when Brian asked us to do this and Casey and I talked a lot about it and tried to figure out which of about, i don't know, 10 or 15 different kind of touchstone aesthetic artifacts or songs or objects like that we could start with and, and use as our main object. and we batted around a bunch of ideas and then we ended up with, with this one, which I think we both thought, um,
Speaker: worked well as a kind of um microcosm and and just sort of an origin point, um not chronologically, but just like a really interesting example. So the this band, Silver Jews, which hopefully lots of people know, but is still sort of, you know, somewhat of a fringe indie band. um I first became aware of in the mid-1990s when I was a big fan of Pavement, um which was, you know, one of the great indie bands of the 1990s, which um I kind of fell hard for and then learned that they had a kind of connection to another band um and that Stephen Malkmus from Pavement sang and played on this album by Silver Juice. And i
Speaker: Got this album and some of their other albums in the 90s and then also learned that David Berman was a poet and had studied with James Tate at University of Massachusetts and had an MFA and had also studied poetry at UVA before that. and that So it just hit a lot of my sweet spots as musician. poetry scholar and literature person and and aspiring English professor at that point. And then i learned that David Berman had a great book of poetry that came out a few years later, Actual Air, and so on. So anyway, this this song, the reason that it means a lot to me is that it's um you know one of the ah one of Berman's great songs, but it's particularly a song that is, we thought, fitting for this topic too, because it's ah it's basically, the lyrics are about somebody giving advice to a graduate and in a kind of oblique and funny and
Speaker: somewhat ironic, but also kind of serious and touching way. And ah so that that song is one that i Casey remembers me kind of playing in the car when she, like, you know her last day of eighth grade and being like, here's advice to a graduate. um and the advice in question The advice in question is, like, on the last day of your life, don't forget to die, which I found extremely useful.
Speaker: like said how yet, but... and It has all these um lines about, ah you know, sort of ash ash in your shoe and, you know, ah your third drink will lead you astray, you know, kind of warnings and advice from a from a dad to a daughter or whatever, ah you know. And um so, you know, it was great for me to be able to kind of give this mock advice and serious advice. and And there's something really moving about the song, too. But it's also a song which is like...
Speaker: weird and has a kind of gruff, you know, and baritone singer who doesn't quite sound like a polished singer. And it's kind of got this kind of indie rock kind of churning guitars and so on. So I'll stop there. But that was one reason why or the main reason why we both thought of this song kind of right away.
Speaker: yeah ah Yeah, I'm Casey. I am the daughter in this dyad. And um this was absolutely one of the ones that came to mind because ah Berman has definitely been both significant for my dad and my dad, as he mentioned, is a poetry scholar and professor. And I'm I've been interested in poetry from a very young age, in large part due to him. ah studied poetry in school. I wrote poetry. I graduated with a chapbook for my thesis.
Speaker: or my thesis And um has always been a touchstone for us, poetry in general, as has music in general. And Berman is just kind of the center of that Venn diagram for us. And Advice to a Graduate is a very specific thing that I sense memories of being in the car from Fairview Middle School graduation.
Speaker: rounding this circle and my dad playing the song for me. And I was like, I don't really know what it means to use the old, always use the old sense of the words, but like, I'll do my best dad. but That's really amazing. i don't know. I mean, just to sort of get right into the kernel of anxiety that is motivating me.
Speaker: I mean, you can easily imagine a scene where um a dad puts on a song with his daughter who's just finished eighth grade and the like, you know, cosmic eye rolling yeah that would ensue. Did you sort of always look up to your dad's taste? Yeah.
Speaker: So there was never a kind of backlash moment where you're like, I'm not going to like this thing because my dad is trying to show it to me. Yes and no. I think that we were joking about this earlier, my dad and I, but the one time he ever made like a concerted effort to like, I am going to show you this music, it did not take. It was this one summer, i don't remember how old I was. um He wanted to a program he called edutainment.
Speaker: education and entertainment. And he was going to show me the entire history of rock and roll from the 1950s onward. And it did not take, we did maybe one day and I was not that interested in Elvis Presley. And, um, i and never really fell, fell into it. ah it's weird. Like my,
Speaker: The stuff that I kind of took from my dad is a lot of it, but for some reason, it's all kind of like 90s and up. He never fully succeeded me, fully succeeded in getting me into Bullet Underground or The Beatles or The Grateful Dead or anything like that. I don't know why. i mean, they're great.
Speaker: And obviously I've gotten to know them better in intervening years. I'm a music critic now for my job, so which is crazy in a lot of ways. Well, just about that, I mean, I think ah this is like my advice, not to the graduate, but to the dad.
Speaker: Of the graduate. Of the graduate. um That I found, maybe it definitely depends on the temperament of your kid, but first of all, Casey and I just gravitated to things that I liked, and we seemed to have a similar sensibility early on, but that I realized at some point that I had to have a light touch. Yeah.
Speaker: The Edutainment History of Rock summer course was definitely a misstep. That was a fail, yeah. But in general, like... Yeah, it was weird because, like, you know, was not... That was far from the first thing. Like, the reason that I'm sure that you went about that was because you were really enthused by how much I was taking to everything else that you were showing me, which was immensely. You know, like, I've been...
Speaker: Like from a very young age, like I've actually, as a music critic, I, you know, a lot of, it's hard being a young music critic writing about all of these older albums. um We do a lot of retrospectives at my job at Paste Magazine. And so a lot of the time i have, I can't be like, yeah, I heard the song when it came out in like the seventies and my friends and I went driving around and drinking and shooting the shit. I was like, no, when I was about three, my dad played the song on the guitar a lot. And And when he played Casey Jones on the guitar, he would change the word cocaine to lo mein because I was three. And it was easier to imagine someone driving a train off the track because they ate too much lo mein, my favorite Chinese food, than it was explaining what cocaine was.
Speaker: So there's a lot of that. And so my entire musical um knowledge and just my entire base is very much from my dad. i My entire music taste has been skewed from a very young age. You know, that we talked about the Onion article. I think that's very true. I would go to school and think that like Babies on Fire it was like a hit song that everyone would know. not a very weird Brian Eno song. Yeah, no, I was like, yeah, baby's on fire. Throw her in the water. Look at her dancing. What do you mean you don't know this song? What's your problem? Yeah, like, what the fuck? I was very, very disappointed with my Tallahassee, Florida, 12-year-old peers who only listened to, i don't know, Taylor Swift and Pitbull.
Speaker: but But let me go back to the light touch. So I think I just i tried to like just play a lot of music around, you know, just so it seemed like it was just the atmosphere, which I guess probably all parents who like rock music, I'm sure, do that with their kids. But, you know, very early on, Casey, like really liked The Clash, which I thought was great. Yeah, third grade.
Speaker: Yeah, like under... under 10 was yeah i had to like give a make a poster about like myself in um third grade had to make a poster and put it up on the wall and like in the my favorite band section the poster i wrote the clash it was very cool third grader also like if we're gonna go way back like for third three or four she we i don't know ever did this but the the they might be giants yes who's better better known as a real first concert Quirky indie band. That's right. They might be dead for my first concert. yeah Really? Yes.
Speaker: That's crazy. That's insane. So they you know they put out a bunch of very good, smart, funny kid albums right around the time Casey was born. My lifeblood. um And so we listened to those a ton. i Here Come the ABCs, and there was another one.
Speaker: And um she loved it. and I love the album No. The album No. I stand by it to this day. It had like ah it had a a CD or DVD that you could put into your laptop, and it had like little games and videos that came with the songs. And I was obsessed with them, and I just like lived on that cv like constantly.
Speaker: Third or fourth, I mean, three or four years old at at preschool. Preschool, wait, I want to see. yeah you this so we we had like ah a Halloween parade where everyone dressed up in these costumes and stuff. And um it was a lot of like Spider-Man, Cinderella, that sort of thing. entirely. Yeah.
Speaker: Entirely. Well, yes, it was all princesses and superheroes. And the way that the parade worked was we were all sitting in a big classroom and um they would say, all the Cinderella's, you get up and go out to the parade. All the Spider-Man's, you get up and go to the parade. And one by one, they kept calling names and I was the last person left.
Speaker: And eventually they were just sitting there looking at me and they're like, and what are you? And I was like, I'm John from They Might Be Giants. um Which John? I don't, which one? It was hard to say. Who was it? Linnell? I think it was Linnell. I think was Linnell. I had They Might Be Giant shirt. I had an inflatable guitar. So yeah, when I was like three or four, I actually... Franzberg is the guitarist, so... Well, shit.
Speaker: Well, i was I was a combination of the Johns. It was a sort of innovative approach to bands, um just kind of thinking there was one organism. ah But, um yeah, so I... And then we went to London and we saw them play a kid concert, which was... i actually forgot that that was your first concert. It first concert, technically. They had the the inflatable dolphins that where people were like throwing over the crowd.
Speaker: And so um so that definitely I felt like I was on a good good stretch for a while. And then around sixth, seventh, at fifth, sixth, fifth grade, she started listening to a lot more pop, watching American Idol, that kind of stuff. And I just kind of like hung back, bit my tongue and just waited it out and kept playing stuff. But when I tried to say like, you really need to listen to this, like she tended to do it less. So I had to kind of come at it.
Speaker: indirectly so and we both remember having um spotify playlists that hers was called things casey wants dad to listen to mine was things things that dad wants casey to listen to very original um that's a amazing thing yeah i mean there definitely was a phase where i got momentarily more interested in pop and i think a large part of that was because i was a child around other children uh desperately wanting to be liked and fit into the panhandle of Florida scene. And there were not a lot of cool hipsters. Uh, they were a bunch of, you know, born and raised fifth generation Tallahassee Leon high school, uh, attendees who had never really left Florida and, uh, not a lot of pavement fans there. I will say,
Speaker: mostly mostly like bunch of country and a bunch of pop and so i got vaguely into pop you know there were some that i liked but i don't think i ever really like by the time i hit seventh grade i was out of it entirely it was like fifth through like sixth grade yeah i had a moment of trying and then i was like i don't really like this and i stopped um and so i And I tried to like just play really weird stuff in the car that um just so... The car is a great place for it. the car You have a captive audience when you drive your kid to school. That's the thing.
Speaker: I remember playing like babies on fire and which is very weird. Brian, you know, song that's kind of disturbing about throwing something, know, baby in the water a weird or baby in the water. the baby in the one The woman's not on fire. The baby's on fire. I was thinking about this case. Do you remember religious vomit? but Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. um yeah Yeah, of course. And I remember obviously Kay on the way. The Beck song. The Beck song played in the car all the time, specifically when we hit this one part of the regular route. We would always play that song every time. and So i guess the larger point is that my goal was to um just sort of like...
Speaker: not force it on her, but then just let her like sort of, I was hoping and like, um, start to appreciate like a really wide range of, um, not just music, but like art, poetry, you know, everything. And then it just was so exciting that she liked it and didn't like rebel against it. And,
Speaker: um So anyway, that's... that's yeah Yeah. I mean, and a lot of it was like, I think, you know, i think in large part, you know, you got to start on young. I think it's, if you grow up listening, like before you're really consciously listening to anything, if the music you're hearing sounds a certain way and that way is weird and off-putting and abrasive and not technically impressive, then you're going to start liking music that sounds weird and off-putting and not very produced and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Like, i i have a much harder time connecting to music with a higher production value or that just has a sort of sheen that wasn't what I grew up listening to.
Speaker: And i think, like, even when I got to the point of, like, finding my own music that I enjoyed, I always had that in mind. And it wasn't really a conscious thing. It's more just, like, this is what good music sounds like because that's what I grew up listening to. Like, there's an anecdote that we always talk about with... ah I was in elementary school and i was... I took a lot of photos at school on a camera. And then I, like, went up to my... Went to the family computer and, like, uploaded them and tried to make a slideshow of them. And on, like, Shutterstock or whatever, there was a program where you could add songs to the slideshow. and it was a bunch of, like...
Speaker: terrible bullshit royalty-free music and it all just sounded so like cheesy and muzaki and overproduced and i didn't like any of it except for this one song which had this like raspy female vocalist and it was really weird and it was like your guitar is a race car sex is your best friend and i didn't know any of those words meant but i thought it was cool and so i showed my parents like the slideshow i made with that song on top and they were like where did you find kristen hirsch's your dirty answer i was like it's royalty free And it wasn't. It would just happen to be uploaded onto my parents' computer alongside the free royalty tracks. But when I approached it was... You thought it was built into the program? Yeah. I thought it was a built-in song that was the same as Bossa Nova, 124, whatever random tracks were up there. But even when I had the chance to choose between all of them, the only one I found interesting was indeed that one, which is a song I adore to this day. I love Kristen Hirsch immensely. And
Speaker: And, ah yeah, it got to the point where that was absolutely, I was choosing stuff that sounded like that because that's what I enjoyed. You know, if you grow up on, to bring it back to Berman, he has this quote from um ah We Are Real, which is all my favorite singers couldn't sing. And that is absolutely a maxim that I took to heart at a very young age.
Speaker: um i was much Despite you know wanting to be a singer myself for a very long time, my favorite music was always singers with very unconventional voices that wouldn't necessarily be pegged as good because that's kind of what I grew up listening to and thinking music sounded like. It was like that was the difference between rock and musical theater was the singer had to sound a little funky.
Speaker: but I want to talk a little bit about the about the song itself. yeah It's really interesting. I think there's like something sort of ah generationally specific about... um like I think it in some ways, maybe this is a ah like a ah story as old as time or whatever, but I think there's something specific about...
Speaker: Attaching to your parents' music when your parents' music is the music of the 90s that is different than so it would be for me to ah to be invested in my parents' like you know ah baby boomer kind of music.
Speaker: Like I actually, so I hadn't, I just remembered this. I hadn't thought of it in years and years, but my um dad would always whistle um the a melody from a Day in the Life from Sgt. Pepper's. And like this, like, you know, little five notes was like, that's just what I associate with my dad. And I yeah knew that.
Speaker: um like string of notes ah for years before I understood that it came from a specific song. And then after that, like ended up um kind of getting into the Beatles because of my dad, because of the fact that it reminded me of my dad. and Yeah. um Anyway, but but like, you know, um ah developing an attachment to the like late 60s is like it's a different thing than to develop an attachment to this, you know, ironic slacker a pavement.
Speaker: I was very into pavement. I thought Cut Your Hair was like a mainstream song, another one that I would go to school and reference. And I'd be like, yeah, what is like... ah la you know cut your hair And then also the other one, what was it? The ah ah Vaseline? What's the song? It's like Vaseline. That's the Flaming Lips. Yeah, yeah I got both carger hair Cut Your Hair and Don't Use Jelly, where those and Baby on Fire were the ones that I would always go to school and talk about. Because cut your hair and um ah because the Flaming Lips performed She Don't Use Jelly on, I think on Beverly Hills 90210. Oh my God. I've never seen it. yeah Which was like a crazy, um ah like both of those songs are really in an explicit way about, or there's, don't know, both of them have an interesting relationship to the nineties kind of dogma of, of not selling out. And I actually think in a way the, ah the Fleming Lips maybe represent a turning point in that history. i don't know. Like um a moment when um it became,
Speaker: uh, like, okay, uh, to, to have an act like, you know, um, uh, sell out in the parlance of the, the time. And now here we are. Right.
Speaker: Uh, for better, for better for better or for worse. So, yeah. Go ahead. I was going to say that Advice to the Graduate is like a really interesting song. Like, I think it's representative of Berman's lyrical approach in general. um Like, I feel like what I like about the Silver Jews and about Purple Mountains, his other project, is that all the songs really feel like they are Advice to the Graduate in a way, that they're like... um ah His lyrical persona is one that's like offering a specific kind of um ironic, world weary wisdom that's both like really smart
Speaker: Um, really, ah ironic often, but nonetheless does have a kind of, uh, don't know. There's also a kind of sentimentality. Yeah. I'd say there's definitely like a big thread of like earnestness, I think, and warmth through a lot of it.
Speaker: a um I wrote a whole retrospective on this album, Starlight Walker, which was the album that Advice to a Graduate appeared on and also was ah David Broman's debut as Silver Dews.
Speaker: And ah I talked about how the first song that was ever recorded for your Silver Juice, or at least was on the album, um Introduction 2, starts out so warmly. And it's very, hello, my friends, come in, have a seat. It's all about welcoming people into this kind of persona and this worldview. And I think that's something that he absolutely keeps going through his entire discography all the way up to Purple Mountains, which on...
Speaker: Snow is falling in Manhattan. Um, I, I think about there, these lines that I think about all the time, maybe more than like any other lines from like any song. um he has this verse of like songs build little rooms in time house within the song's design is the ghost. The host has left behind to greet and sweep the guests inside, stoke the fire and sing his lines. And I think that's just very emblematic of Burren as a whole, where there is this sort of kind of welcoming in Which you see even in the very first song, his very first album, which is quite literally welcoming you in. but I think that's something that's on advice to a graduate as well, which is you're, it's very, um it's welcoming you into this strange world where this is the advice and these are the things that you need to know in order to survive in the quote unquote real world.
Speaker: i think that's yeah This is a like a side note or side quest maybe, but um I was thinking about those snow falling on Manhattan lines recently because there's an allusion to them in on Kevin Morby's. I talked to him about it in my interview. What did he say?
Speaker: Oh, let me find it. i say She just interviewed him. i just I did a cover story on him for Pace Magazine. It's so funny that you mentioned that because I was overjoyed and I saw that because I think about those lines so much that I turn them into a question for interviews frequently. I love asking um when talking to an artist. I love putting those lines and then asking, like, what what does the room that your album has built look like? What's the ghost doing inside of That's great question.
Speaker: I think it's a lot of fun. And so I mentioned that to Kevin and I was talking to about it. um He said that he thinks a Little Wide Open is a grandma's house with... ah yes ah you know, what are those little candies? The hard candies. those articles Yes, where those originals are in there. There's like a window blowing. There's like a hearth going. But yeah, no, I, that's so funny that you mentioned that. I actually asked him about it and he was, we both just geeked out about David Berman for a solid five minutes in that interview. um He's a huge fan, as am I. So that was a lot of fun.
Speaker: Yeah. the Great album, too. So, yeah, I mentioned this to Brian, you know, before we did the the episode, but that just, it also seemed just like mind blowing to me that, um first of all, that Casey has grown up to be music writer. is Ridiculous. Ridiculous and so exciting and cool for me. um But that just weirdly enough, like I i wrote a piece about David Berman and and somewhat about the song and so did she. So there's like this real like literal point of overlap where we both have kind of been in print about it. but For our careers.
Speaker: Yeah, that you mentioned, Brian, about like the weird way in which he seems to you know just be dispensing advice but undercutting it at the same time. And I talk it in that piece that I wrote about his interest in the aphorism as a form and that he feels both – he's like incredibly good at it and everybody says – No one writes like one-liners and aphorisms and and memorable phrases like Berman, but he also seems to distrust the form and and to be too much of an ironist to...
Speaker: be a wisdom dispenser and stuff. So anyway, that's the piece that I wrote, but I just think there's something so um poignant and moving about this song. Like, I mean, the, the, at the same time that it's really funny, you know, so it's like, you know, sleep on your back, which is great advice. ash I don't follow it. I don't follow it.
Speaker: i don't either. Actually. I sleep on my side. Not good for me. He was right. I sleep on my front. That's fucked up. Yeah. There's something wrong with you. know Always use the old sense of the words, which Casey said earlier, you know, yeah i think that's a great it's very, I love that line. It's very, um, I, speaking of other, uh, artifacts that I've aesthetic, aesthetic works that I've, uh, we've talked about together. I mean, my dad read city of glass, um, great book, um, which very much has a whole portion about that city of glass. Um,
Speaker: the paulower yeah the Paul Auster novel. It's so good. And there's the whole thing in that novel about, ah there's this character in it. That's trying to basically, he's incredibly frustrated by the fact that words no longer mean what they used to, or that their meetings have become too bloated in the sense that like, if you say if a broken umbrella is still just an umbrella, but if the umbrella doesn't perform its function anymore, then it shouldn't be called an umbrella. It should have a new word. ah And so he was trying to come up with all of these new words or whatever. And yeah, I don't know. Now that line always makes me think of City of Glass, which is just another shared touchstone for us.
Speaker: Well, it's so it's because the, um I think always use the old sense of the words really points to a kind of like a belatedness that don't know. I was thinking about this when you were talking, Andrew, about him being so good at aphorisms, but also being really distrustful. And there's a way, I mean, obviously um there are many tragic things about Berman's life, but there's something in particular about being good at the things that he's good at, at the historical moment that he yeah occupies. Yeah.
Speaker: makes things a little complicated, like to be so talented at aphorisms, at like turns of phrase at this moment that really is um kind of generationally steeped in a kind of irony. And that I think probably thinks about languages ability to to sort of be lapidary and persuade us as something that we should be deeply suspicious of and something that's connected to advertising and to um lack of thinking for yourself.
Speaker: like puts him in this position of both always offering a kind of wisdom and then immediately under, uh, yeah. I think, you know, as we were talking about the best shortly before we started recording and, you know, expert in a dying field and all that.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly Berman's vibe is that he's like, uh, yeah, he's a kind of like a throwback to uh, a kind of other moment. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah. And then, you know, you were saying something about how he can combine irony with sentiment and just that that um that move from the... I'm trying to find out. Always make your mama cry. Yeah. On the last day of your life, don't forget to die, which is poignant, but also ridiculous in some ways. um And then the things that you do will always make your mama cry. I like the status, you know.
Speaker: this is a that girl dad episode, but that, uh, it's equally ah valid, but for, for dads, but it's just that that hits me really hard. And then you get this thing with Malkmus cuts in and does this sort of other voice, you know, when he says, well, you know, you've got a lot of hope for the new man. man And ah it's like sort of two people or two sides of the consciousness talking to each other because their voices are quite different. And Malkmus doesn't sing a lot on Silver Juice songs. And suddenly you get him saying like,
Speaker: sort of to the person who's offering the advice, like you've got a lot of hope for this neophyte or whatever. And ah so much hope, so much hope it says over and over again towards the end. So um yeah, it's just, I think it's just a brilliant song. Yeah. Good morning to the new world at the end as well. It's like, you know, very much a passing of the torch of like, you know, the new to the old to the new advice to the graduate and then good morning to the new world. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, seeing how, you know, this advice that's equal parts, there's there is an earnestness to, i think, the sentiment that's running through it. At the same time, the the sentiments themselves are so kind of ridiculous and post-ironic.
Speaker: I don't know. it It does end up really pulling at heartstrings in a weird way, especially in this kind of generational fashion. Right. So much more so than a straightforward, like, you know.
Speaker: Yeah. watching my kid grow cats, kid cats in the cradle kind of song, which I love. You do cry. You do. You won't play it in the car. He will not play that song in the car because he does cry ah ah This is not one of my, like, you know, cool in indie hipster taste moments, but i do like that song. And um the day I dropped you off, we dropped off at college. We went to go get ah dinner and, and ah you know, her mom and I were pretty, like, emotional and teary. And we were, you know, just pulled away from college. And then um we were in this, like, pizza place and that song came on. and i cur
Speaker: This cannot be more on the nose. Yeah. Oh, man. I forgot about that. That's so funny. Yeah. now I mean, I guess part of what I'm thinking is that it's not clear from the lyrics that they would be advice to the graduate. And, you know, it's not like mandatory that you take the title literally.
Speaker: right um ah But there is something about that, um like trying to figure out how to pass on some kind of knowledge that's based in painful experience ah with, you know, with the possibility of some kind of optimism.
Speaker: Yeah, I think Berman Media said a lot in the sense that I feel like he's always kind of
Speaker: he's never exactly like in the moment. He's always looking forward to the next one while still grieving the one that's ending. And I think that's very much a sentiment that is prevalent throughout like the the good morning to the new world. There's like a sense of a sense of sadness about, you know, like there's this hope for the new men, but there's, there's something that's being left behind as well. and it makes me think of the, the end of the first song on the album.
Speaker: My friends, don't you know that I never want this minute to end? And then it ends and the song's one minute long with one second. And then the song ends, which is just brilliant. He's a genius. But yeah, I think,
Speaker: e unbraing Yeah. It's, I find that line so hard. I wrote a poem actually with that as like a reference to that as the final line. Um, but it's, I think he finds a lot of purchase in and of both giving these more aphoristic things about the future and about these like weird sort of advice things while also grieving the fact that the future is coming. ah And I think in that sense, it's never too sentimental about the current moment that is being lost because there is this looking forward to the future with this sort of grimness to it as well. But it's also not hopeful for the future because there is this sense of loss. It's this kind of double-hander, I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah. It's interesting what you said, Brian, like you wouldn't necessarily know it's like advice to a graduate without the title, which also makes me think of it works in the way that sort of a poem does or like a John Ashbery poem or something where the title, you know, really changes what you're hearing um by giving a kind of frame for it.
Speaker: um Yeah. And and yeah looking at the lyrics now and it definitely, yeah, it wouldn't necessarily, like, you know, the song begins with like, if you got a message, leave your name and number and we'll get back to you. And that, you know, that very much doesn't sound like a speech from a father to a daughter about, you know, right i'll know your knife I'll know your name and number.
Speaker: Right. It's also, this is probably before your time, but that's ah what we used to have on our answering machines. know this, Dad. not I'm not, wasn't born yesterday. had an answering machine. We have a home phone. We used to have telephones in our houses that were connected. I know. had one. I know it by heart. I know the number by heart because we had it for most of my life.
Speaker: That's true. you You caught the tail end of the actual. I did. Come on. And am I right that the silver juice kind of began by recording, um, answering machines? Like that was the technology that they had in the living room. It was on a DAW.
Speaker: Um, yeah, no, crazy. Um, and it's such a sort of trite, you know, ah intentionally trite cliched title. And, um, and then the whole song just kind of deconstructs that. Yeah. Um, and does it at the same time.
Speaker: Um, Well, it's interesting as ah um i mean, because part of the structure of Advice to the Graduate, um like as a genre, is that there's no, um it's always top down and there's no space for response. Yeah. So it's interesting that the song immediately kind of.
Speaker: acknowledges that and maybe opens up a space so possible ah critique of that by, so the the first two lines of the song are, if you got a message, leave your name and number and we'll get back to you.
Speaker: um ah Which is introducing the second person in a kind of interesting way. And also like, you know, ah suggesting the possibility of a kind of talking back, um which which may or may not, um which may or may not happen.
Speaker: Do we think that the you in the first line is the same you ah in the chorus or whatever we call it? So when Malcolmus kicks in and he says, well, I know you got a lot of hope for a new man. Is that you, the same you that is um the, like, addressee of the advice?
Speaker: I think what I was saying before, which I honestly only thought of today driving home to do this, but it was like I've never really thought about the Malcolmus part as as dialogic, but suddenly it occurred to me that it's sort of talking to the advice giver. Yeah. um and like Look at you like offering all this stuff. You've got a lot of hope for this person you're addressing. I also think there's a chance that it it could be even from like a more cynical addressee. Like, yeah you know, like you have a lot of hope for, for me, for the new generation. I'm not sure why. Like, I feel like that's even our dynamic a little bit is like, you know, you give it like, I think that's, I think, especially like in this moment where it feels like each generation becomes more cynical than the one before it, uh, as the world gets darker and grimmer and more depressing.
Speaker: I think that is a very kind of possible reading. so in that in that instance, then the, in that reading, the Malchmas, Stephen Malchmas would be the speaking from the perspective of the graduate. possibly ah Talking back to the, I don't know. You got a lot of hope for me. Calm down. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, because I've been thinking about this too. um I was glad you picked this because like right at this moment, there's been so much discussion of the commencement address as an occasion because we've just yeah seen seen a whole slew of speakers um who are you know come in celebrating AI and their graduation addresses um being completely clueless to the extent to which the audiences that they're addressing like really hate AI yeah and um aren't you know convinced by the the kind of optimistic future that the ah that its champions are are selling them. And so there's been all this booing of people, um which ah you know came as a surprise to people who are really locked into the the bubble of AI.
Speaker: Yeah, it's funny to it's funny to revision the song with that in mind, in which case, like the new man becomes increasingly literal, where it's not even a man anymore. it's robots Yeah, you got a lot of hope for the robots, for the chat bots. But I was also thinking that part of that genre.
Speaker: Part of that genre, like the, the like, um ah I don't know, rhetorical structure of the of the graduation speech is often a kind of gesture of, you know, like looking around, things are really bad right now. But, um you know, I have hope because of you, young people and who are going to um come and clean up the messes that um our generation has produced. Yeah.
Speaker: And you can imagine a version of this song that is really pushing, you know pushing back against that and sort of saying, in a way, how convenient of you to to place this hope, and this hope in us and, um you know, to do so in a way that, like, you know, let's.
Speaker: previous generations off the hook or something. or Yeah. That's yeah. Yeah. um I do have to say that um the robot thing is not that far from Berman's mind. There's a line in um the frontier index, a silver juice song where there's a little joke. Robot walks into a bar, bartender says, Hey, we don't serve robots. And the robot says, Oh, but someday you will. ah and And there's other lines with robots in them. Serve in more than more way than one for sure. Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, right. um But no, I i like, i cut you know, my thing was like, maybe it's this other other person who's listening or like ah another part of Berman's, you know, consciousness talking to him in the in the chorus part. But I like what both of you are saying about like sort of a talking back by the agency. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, especially, like, when i'm down when it comes after, like, the, like, so get in some licks and hold your head up and soon you'll be drinking from that crystal cup. It's like, you got a lot of hope for me there, man Well, it just underscores, I think, how much of this music, i don't know, it's intergenerational in lots of interesting ways, even apart from the kind of specific mode of um ah intergenerational address that is taken up by this song. But even, you know, thinking about the... ah ah What bands like Silver Jews and and Pavement were doing at that moment, you know, was like, you know, trying to ah create a um a kind of aesthetic based on...
Speaker: um you know, whatever obscure music that they were digging out of record bins right or from, you know, their experiences ah like college radio DJs or whatever. ah And in a way it's specifically trying to um mine the past for kind of, a kind of sound that didn't really fit the time, you know? um ah So for us now, or Casey, for you to look back and sort of have this attachment to the,
Speaker: um this music of the 90s. Like part of what that music was about was, um you know, trying to ah kind of create a ah space where music that wasn't overproduced and super polished and and so on could could really exist, which like inevitably seems to always be, always involve looking back to the to the past to find something.
Speaker: Yeah, I think I very much have been. sensibility to to a detriment sometimes with my current job, actively attempting to unlearn my decades long distaste for overproduction just for sheen in general, which is something I need to do that as someone who, you know, is paid the small bucks to listen to bunch of different music and comment on all of it and not just, you know, music that sounds like it was recorded in like an abandoned hangar, which I mean as a compliment. Right, on an answering machine. Exactly. Because, you know, I grew up with, like, the mountain goats. You know, early mountain goats. Early mountain goats. Yeah, yeah, not, yeah, to clarify. That's when it meant something.
Speaker: Yeah. Um, and yeah, like it's, it's hard for me to you know, back to the art, the, on the Onion article about like, oh, dad raising daughter on music. That'll put her entirely out of touch with her generation. Like that's on some level, especially hard for me right now, less so because I can't, you know, it was hard when I was younger in the sunset, I had a lot of trouble relating to my peers at the time,
Speaker: And I, you know, had immense trouble finding anyone with even remotely similar taste to me, which I think was my dad's ah long-term plan all along to keep me close close to the nest.
Speaker: So I never left, which, you know, to some degree really did work. um But it's also hard because I, you know, there's a lot of great music coming up these days that is definitely more produced. And that's something that I have this like knee-jerk instinct against at this point because I just,
Speaker: I grew up so strongly loving ah this much more lo-fi, strange shit. And yeah, i think it's I think that's something that it comes in waves. I think like right now we're back towards a wave of more production with hyperpop, with droompop.
Speaker: which, you know, is itself lo-fi, but in a way where it's trying to be more dreamy and gauzy and use more of those synths and production effects and all of that. And so I think that wave of looking back towards the past and trying to make more sparse, stark, bare music, um I think we're kind of, like back in the 2010s, like late 2010s, like mid, you know, car seat headrest peak, that era, like 2016 something,
Speaker: there was, I think, a lot more of getting in that direction. And now we're kind of swinging back towards more poppier production and those sort of sounds. And so that's something that I'm coming to terms with. And then learning to... And then you geese and other things that are kind of swinging back the other way. Yeah, but I think like...
Speaker: Like, geese, I think there's still a sense of production there that there isn't, for instance, in something like Starlight Walker or Zopalote Machine or even early Car Seed Headrest. Right. Like, there's still very much a sense of production there and quality maintenance. And, ah like, I wouldn't call them lo-fi by any means, you know? Right, no.
Speaker: I want to mention something that like sort of turned the the influence in the other direction too, which is that starting in about 2016, 2017, Casey started discovering her own music. It was earlier than that. Like, Bonner Baseball was earlier than that.
Speaker: ah Yeah, sorry. Because 2016 was Car Seat Headrest. I was in those... I'm talking about like around that period where you yeah you started to um clue me into things that sounded similar to things that...
Speaker: I liked and then we found, you know, you were starting to introduce me to a lot of music that and then we found common ground and things like, yeah, like Carsey's Headrest, Courtney Barnett, like the other things around that that period. and um And then obviously that continues.
