Episode 21 transcript

Note: this transcript is AI-generated, and as such, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.

Chad Sutton (00:01.23)
Hello and welcome back to the Aural Mess podcast. I'm joined tonight by my Twitter buddy, Jim Bricker. Hi Jim.

Jim (00:07.184)
Hello, Chad. Good to be here.

Chad Sutton (00:09.518)
Auspicious introduction, I know. But why don't you tell the audience a bit more about yourself?

Jim (00:16.048)
gosh, I am well, Chad and I met through our mutual zeal for Steely Dan and you know, I'm a.

50 X plus year old music head living in Northern California. And gosh, I don't know what to say. I've got a very checkered past and I'm sure some of that will come up as we talk. And I find out the more that Chad and I actually talk together, the more it seems like we've got all these cross connections and similarities that don't quite make us separated at birth, but.

close, you know, people would be suspicious, I think.

Chad Sutton (01:01.069)
I think so too. And it's refreshing to have a fellow 50 plus something on the show. I had Dave who goes by Sproles on Twitter. I think he was the only other person close to my age. I've been blessed with a bunch of younger folks that have wanted to come on and done some really great conversations around Steely Dan and other music and everything else. So good to have a compatriot.

Jim (01:05.972)
Hahaha.

Jim (01:25.328)
Yeah, it is nice to have someone in the wheelhouse. When I was doing a work meeting earlier today, we were talking about music and someone said about making mixtapes. And the youngest guy in the group who was just graduated college, so his early 20s, he's like, mixtapes, that's with cassettes, right? And I just kind of shook my head and said, dude, I don't even want to talk to you.

Chad Sutton (01:51.213)
man. Yeah, tell me about it. Got a siren going by outside. Sorry, hold on.

Jim (01:53.04)
I don't need more that makes me feel old.

Jim (02:00.016)
Hope everyone's okay.

Chad Sutton (02:03.148)
Yeah, me too. That's the first time that's happened on an episode. Anyway, moving right along. So Jim, what are you listening to these days? You know, what's in your, speaking of mixtapes, what's on your current mixtape?

Jim (02:07.44)
privileged. Yeah, yes.

Jim (02:15.6)
My current mixtape is is kind of all over the place and that's in in prep for a bunch of other YouTubey type stuff I'm working on but really what's been in my wheelhouse lately is as far as new releases go there's a album that's come out by Christian McBride and Edgar Meyer two acoustic bass players it's called but who's gonna play the melody but it's it's

fantastic. I mean, they both have a touch and facility with melody and rhythm, of course, and it's just a, they lock in together really, really well. It's a great blending of styles. Edgar Meyer comes from more of a classical and bluegrass background, and Christian McBride is just like the primo acoustic bass player in jazz. And so it's just this really great meld.

Speaking of bluegrass and jazz, one of the other things I'm listening to is a very recent Bela Fleck release where he does three different versions of Rhapsody in Blue. One that is very blues based, one that's with a full orchestra where the banjo is taking the piano part. And the third version is basically a bluegrass version of

Rapsody in Blue and it is one of the most wonderful things I've ever heard. Again, it's just a very perfect melding of those two genres and for folks who don't know Bela Fleck and their music fans, you're missing out guys. He basically owns the banjo. That's just one of those like downbeat categories that they just retire because they know they're going to give it to Bela Fleck every year anyway.

he's just redefined what's possible with the instrument. And there's a couple other things that I'm kind of working on, but nothing comes to mind at the moment. I'm actually getting involved with another YouTube channel called The Music Den. And on The Music Den, I've done one session with them, and another one that were

Jim (04:37.68)
in a couple days talking about Pat Metheny, which is one of my big three musical loves. And then we're going to go into all sorts of weird directions talking about John Zorn and Frank Zappa, talking about kind of like what's new this year that's come out, some of the things that we enjoy and want to recommend. So there's...

There's a lot that's floating around in my head and I'm afraid the only things that are landing right now are Zappa and Zorn for some reason.

Chad Sutton (05:08.523)
You're at the end of your alphabet apparently.

Jim (05:11.824)
I've just gone straight to the end.

Chad Sutton (05:15.039)
So, you know, it's kind of funny because we do cross over, I think, in a lot of our musical taste. But there's just a couple of things that I just can't seem to wrap my head around. And I try and I've tried and I try, you know, every few years. And, you know, you're a big progressive fan. You're a huge Pat Metheny fan. I like Pat Metheny. I don't want to sit and listen to him, you know, like I do with other artists. And I don't know why that is. I don't know why I don't get into it.

Jim (05:27.6)
Mmm.

Jim (05:40.496)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (05:42.507)
So tell me, you've got this super sophisticated, at least in my opinion, sort of musical taste. Do you play? Did you come from a musical family? How did you get this deep jazz and sort of avant -garde music background?

Jim (05:51.6)
Mmm.

Jim (05:58.256)
good question. No, I don't play, I don't play a note, can't read music to save my life. there are times where I would want to sort of learn to pick up an instrument, bass or piano or something, but I know that I would get immediately frustrated because if I would sit down at the piano, I would want to play what I hear. And what I hear is like Bill Evans and I get frustrated that I can't achieve that. I mean,

It's a completely outlandish and unreasonable goal, but that's, you know, I kind of want to gravitate towards what I hear. And I'm just too old and impatient to kind of plunk my way along and stumble. But as far as like where, where all that kind of came from, my parents had the radio on a lot. Had a lot of Frank Sinatra records. Had, you know, some, some jazz records, modern jazz quartet, things like that.

But mostly, I think a lot of it sort of came from, I'll call it the golden age of AM radio, Chad, where you had songs on there that were really melodically and harmonically rich, where, you know, you would have, you know, the carpenters and people wouldn't scoff at it because there was just something just really brilliant about the way those songs were arranged and crafted and, you know, Karen's voice, of course.

Even just straight pop stuff like ABBA. I mean, there's some really, there's some really good stuff to it. So I think a lot of it just sort of comes from being exposed to a lot of great melody, great harmony, and that just sort of sinking in. As far as how it got weird, I'd probably have to blame that on college and just having doors being opened more.

it was in college where I really started to discover my own personal connection with jazz. And that was through Miles Davis kind of blue, getting into progressive rock, a bit more at that time, discovering, Genesis during the Hackett area and then working my way backwards, King Crimson, same thing, but you know, my, there,

Jim (08:24.848)
The longer I stay on the internet and meet people like yourself and other folks through Twitter, the more I find out that the less I really know. There's, I mean, I there there's guys out there who have this just encyclopedic massive database in their head for, for prog and things like that. And they just totally eclipse me in, in where they're at. And so while I appreciate the kind words on your part,

I would say I'm like middle of the road maybe in terms of really getting prog. I can throw out some band names out there, but I couldn't. If I tripped over one of their songs, I probably wouldn't know it. So I'm more stuck with the big guns, the Genesis, yes, King Crimson especially. And...

So I guess the weird left turn sort of came from that. And I don't know what it is about it, Chad. There's just something about it that when it's not musical masturbation and just flurries of notes and changing time signatures and just showing off for the sake of showing off, I can't really wrap around my head around those things. But if there's...

If there's some sort of melodic or harmonic connection to it, which again is weird if I'm talking about, you know, John Zorn and King Crimson, but there does exist a logic in there where there's a musical cohesion where it all kind of makes sense and it's not just a flurry of notes. The one illustration that I have that I think kind of sums that up pretty well.

is that when I was a senior in high school, I began to hear Aldi Miola and kind of appreciate a lot of what he has to bring to the plate. And, you know, he's really fast, he shreds, you know, when you're a senior in high school and you're a guy, you're like, this is awesome, man. Shortly after that time, though, someone had played a Pat Metheny record for me. And to me, that's where things kind of

Chad Sutton (10:38.088)
Yeah.

Jim (10:48.464)
exploded in my head because going back to my comment about pop music on AM radio, there's a melodic and a harmonic depth in how Matheny composes and performs and approaches this instrument. You know, whether that's playing fast or whether that's knowing where, you know, to let silence sort of take the melody for, you know, a few beats.

I liken it, you know, if you kind of compare Demiola and Matheny, to me Demiola is all icing. You know, it's, ooh, it's frost, you know, it's frosting. It looks good, you know, ooh, sugary, sweet, colorful. Matheny is the cake. He is the basis upon which the frosting can even sort of hang out. And so that's how I tend to think about it. I'm more driven by cake, which I need to work on, but.

Chad Sutton (11:44.904)
Don't we all?

Jim (11:46.128)
Yeah. So that's kind of a bit of my journey about how I got to this weird place in music. And of course, along the way, Steely Dan was discovered and just embraced wholeheartedly. So I guess that's a whole... Steely Dan was probably another launching point into more sophisticated music.

sophisticated uses of music in terms of melodic and harmonic development. I still don't feel like I have the right vocabulary to describe these things. I know I didn't back in 1977 when I heard Asia, but from a layman standpoint of just someone who enjoys music, that's how I tend to describe it.

Chad Sutton (12:36.199)
Yeah, hey, that makes sense. Steely Dan for me was also a jumping off point for sophisticated music, weird music, whatever you want to call it, because it was always there. It was on AM radio in the 70s and the 80s growing up, and FM radio, FM. Had to get the reference in there. But it just, it didn't sound like anything else. It always, to me, was off into its own category.

Jim (12:54.48)
Mm -hmm.

Jim (13:01.232)
Right.

Chad Sutton (13:04.039)
couldn't understand why until I got much older and started playing music myself. And not that I'm anywhere near the level of being able to play Steely Dan type stuff, but just having a little bit of theory and a little bit of practical knowledge sort of goes a long way listening to things. And I think the most progressive I got and the most progressive I still get, if you want to even call it that, took me a long time to come around to Rush.

Jim (13:32.592)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (13:33.927)
really wasn't into Rush until probably my early 20s was sort of the gateway for me. My first band that I was in was friends with a bass player. He was a little bit older and he was not so much really into super deep progressive stuff, but he was a huge Rush fan. He saw them live like 30 or 40 times, you know, in the 70s and just like, you know, total super fan. So he basically made me listen to

Jim (14:02.736)
You will listen to 2112.

Chad Sutton (14:02.81)
A lot of rush. Yeah, pretty much. And same thing with Pink Floyd, like, you know, peripherally like Pink Floyd. You know, the wall came out was at 1980. So, you know, here's eight year old Chad, and you know, we're in the cafeteria at school, they let us play records when it was, you know, rainy outside, and we're playing, we don't need no, you know, teachers are glaring at us and principals, you know, taking the record away, right. So, you know, typical.

Jim (14:19.792)
Hahaha.

Jim (14:29.712)
Hahaha!

Chad Sutton (14:31.015)
that was my entree into Pink Floyd. But then, you know, growing up, getting to college, moving on, you know, getting deeper into their music, like, wow, this is great stuff. I still wouldn't call Pink Floyd really a progressive band in the current sort of, you know, vernacular of what that means necessarily, right? But then when I get over to, yeah. I was gonna say, and then when I get over to like King Crimson and

Jim (14:40.592)
Mm -hmm.

Jim (14:47.264)
Right.

Right, and it says, no, please, sorry, go ahead.

Chad Sutton (14:58.567)
some of the deeper yes albums and the early Genesis stuff, like, I kinda like it, but again, like I put it on, I listen, I try to appreciate it, and I'm like, okay, I did my homework. It's not something I go back to, and I can't explain why, because I want it to click, and maybe when I'm 60, it'll click, I don't know.

Jim (15:10.512)
There you go, yeah.

Jim (15:20.036)
Yeah, I don't know what it is that's that tipping point for some people and not another. I get what you're saying about Rush and even certainly your friend who was in the band with you, if you saw them during the 70s, that was their prime prog period where you got 2112 and the Farewell to Kings hemispheres. But Rush became more and more commercial.

Just like Genesis kind of became more and more commercial. I don't think you can, you know, yes, did for a couple of albums. I don't think one could ever really make that argument about Crimson. But it also might be a thing where maybe the times kind of caught up to them and began to appreciate them more as well. You know, the Rush never, not that this is the ultimate arbiter of anything good, but they never hit the cover of Rolling Stone until like their very last tour.

when it's like you, it was kind of like a revenge of the nerd story where I think that was the tag on the cover as well. But yeah, it's like people have accepted it. They've come around, they appreciate it. It's like, you can't deny a lot of stuff about prog is that you cannot deny the expert musicianship there. And, you know, but again, it's not just having...

Chad Sutton (16:23.909)
Ha ha ha!

Chad Sutton (16:42.757)
Yes.

Jim (16:46.352)
back to my Demiolo thing, it's not just about having the chops and the speed, it's about what you do with it.

And yeah.

Chad Sutton (16:55.174)
And it's knowing when not to play and like you said, kind of like when to lay out, right? I mean, the flurry of notes, the technical wizardry, that's really cool. You know, when I was a teenager, when I was in my twenties and I listened to like, I mean, you know, not jazz, not progressive, but like Joe Satriani or Steve Vai, when they were doing like these just shredding guitar instrumental things, you know, I was so into that stuff. And I was like, those guys are my guitar heroes. But listening back now, it's like, it's cool.

Jim (17:16.848)
Yeah, like s -

Chad Sutton (17:23.973)
There's a couple songs that I still love by Satriani, but more the groove driven, less showy songs, right?

Jim (17:26.48)
Mm -hmm.

Jim (17:33.36)
Right, right, absolutely. Yes. You're talking about like surfing with the alien albums like that around that time.

Chad Sutton (17:39.269)
Yeah, exactly.

Jim (17:40.944)
Yep. Yeah, see, that was something that I never really made a connection with. So I think by that time, I had kind of said, all right, I'm not into the histrionics. I don't want to go there.

Jim (17:56.944)
Enough.

Chad Sutton (17:59.845)
Well, it's kind of funny. I went and saw the G3 tour. I forget what year it was. It had to be the mid 90s, 96 maybe. And it was the first time the three guitar players went out and did this, you know, sort of joint tour. And it was Satriani, Vi, and Eric Johnson. I didn't really know much of Eric Johnson before I saw him play live, but of the three, he was my favorite. I mean, I fell in love with his music more so than the other two because,

Jim (18:07.504)
Mm -hmm.

Jim (18:17.072)
Right. Okay.

Chad Sutton (18:29.349)
he again, you know, he was playing more blues influence stuff and sort of had a real, just, you know, I guess more of a jazz flavor to some of his things, more so than the other two guys who were just up there showboating, you know what I mean? So for him to come out and just completely have this technical expertise, but at the same time have like feel, which I always found lacking in the other two, it was just like, wow, okay, so you can marry the two and have it work, you know, so.

Jim (18:44.528)
Yeah.

Jim (18:52.08)
Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sutton (18:58.916)
Huge Eric Johnson fan to this day.

Jim (19:01.84)
Nice. Yeah, that's, I'm not very familiar with, with Eric. I know is it Avia Music Comm? Is that the one album? That's the big album. Yeah. I probably heard some of it on the radio, but there's nothing that connects with me at the moment. To your comment about Vi, one of the, I haven't seen a lot of live shows in many, many years, but that's changing. The show I'm looking forward to seeing most coming up.

Chad Sutton (19:08.388)
Yeah, that was the big album.

Jim (19:31.044)
in September is to see the, we'll call it the King Crimson 80s, you know, tribute tour with Adrian Ballou and Tony Levin back in their seats. But they're bringing along Danny Carey from Tool on drums to replace Bill, to replace Bill Bruford, not like Bruford's replaceable. But Steve Vai is going to be doing Robert Fripp's parts.

Chad Sutton (19:48.403)
wow, okay.

Chad Sutton (20:00.427)
wow.

Jim (20:01.552)
Yeah, because and Vi I guess is a huge Frip fanatic and Robert has said, yes, Steve, awesome, go, go forth and conquer and shred. And so it'll be it'll be interesting to kind of see his. Apparently, he's going to be, you know, faithful to the Frip parts in where you need to be, because a lot of that music is the guitar parts are extremely interlocked. And if you, you know,

Chad Sutton (20:11.908)
Ha ha.

Jim (20:29.072)
If you don't have each of them playing the 32nd note at the right time, the composition is going to fall apart. So it's going to be interesting to see how Steve brings his personality into that music, or even if it's possible. I mean, there are some crimson tunes where it is just shredding wallpaper, like Sartorian Tangier is basically a Fripp solo escapade.

So I can see something like that being a vehicle for Steve just to kind of go off and really kind of nail it and make it his own within that crimson palette. That was a pun and I didn't even realize I was going to make it. I was more clever than I thought. But yeah, it's so that'll be really interesting to see. But yeah, that's the other show that I saw recently that was like the first one in a dozen years that I saw.

Chad Sutton (21:11.843)
hahahahah

Jim (21:27.696)
was the Bill Frizzell Trio in Berkeley. And so Bill, a guy named Thomas Morgan on acoustic bass, Rudy Royston on drums. And basically, Chad, it was just one show. Their first song was basically a medley of about eight different tunes that lasted about 65 minutes that they just seamlessly

Chad Sutton (21:54.654)
wow.

Jim (21:57.872)
dove and guided and just tiptoed their way from, you know, one meter song to another, one key to another. And it was just, it was fascinating to watch musicians of that extremely high caliber connect with each other and seem like they're going without a net. Cause nowhere along the way did Bill say, okay, now we're going to play Stella Bar Starlight or All the Things You Are.

As far as I could see, the only person that had a set list there was Bill. And the rest of them just knew the cues and knew where to take things. It was remarkable for it to be the first. Yeah, there's some videos out there on YouTube of the three of them playing as a trio. And I highly recommend it. Just the, again, the interplay and the listening.

Chad Sutton (22:34.466)
Wow.

Chad Sutton (22:38.915)
That's really hard.

Jim (22:54.224)
that has to go on to kind of pull this off and just make it as cohesive and seamless as it is was, it was just fascinating. I just was slack jawed the whole entire time.

Chad Sutton (23:09.41)
You'll have to send me a link and I'll drop it in the show notes too. Cause I'd like to check that out for sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, again, playing, you know, having played in a band, the closest thing we got to a medley. Well, it wasn't medley. We did a Zeppelin medley because, you know, we didn't want to play a Zeppelin song all the way through. So we put three together and just remembering, just remembering the interplay and the cues, like you said, just, just for that, like, you know, seven or eight minutes.

Jim (23:15.76)
Sure, yep.

Jim (23:29.2)
Okay.

Chad Sutton (23:37.162)
It was hard enough. I can't imagine doing that for an hour. You know, like that's just crazy.

Jim (23:38.512)
Mm -hmm.

Jim (23:42.864)
Yeah, yeah, it's just a whole nother level of musicianship.

Chad Sutton (23:48.674)
And it's kind of funny when you mentioned Vi going out on the road with Crimson. I just saw recently that I think Joe Satriani is doing like a Van Halen tribute. And I think it's with Sammy Hager, of all people, which, you know, I mean, obviously it's going to be him. But yeah, so it's, it's, you know, it's interesting because, you know, who else could really play? I mean, I don't, I haven't followed enough of Wolfgang's career to know if he's as good as his father was. I know he's a shredder, but.

Jim (24:01.968)
wow.

Jim (24:17.872)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (24:18.529)
you know, who could do Eddie Van Halen's guitar stuff, you know, note for note, right, besides somebody like a Joe Satriani, right? So it's just, yeah. It's.

Jim (24:30.448)
Yeah, there's a whole world of amazingly gifted musicians that are out there who can just dance their way around a fretboard. I mean, YouTube's full of guys who are just incredible shredders and can play anything, whether it's guitar or bass or whatnot. And you see these people like Nuno Bettencourt, I think is a name I remember from, I never heard of him until Rick Beato's channel.

Chad Sutton (24:55.33)
Yeah, sure.

Jim (24:59.984)
seeing an interview with him and it was just like wow it was really fascinating. Yeah, there's not a lot of people who can fill Eddie's footsteps, but yet there's this universe of players out there who look like at least for the short time it takes to film something that they can just

Chad Sutton (00:15.151)
No, no.

Jim (00:37.099)
knock this stuff off. It's kind of jaw dropping, the technical facility of some of these people. But can't, you know, are they good for the long term? Can they compose? What's their interplay with other people? You know, how do they sit in a band context? That's, you know, that those are some of the things that I really be interested in knowing about some of these people who are just these Internet hotshots, who I don't, I don't mean to knock their I don't mean to knock their talent because certainly, I couldn't do any of that, but it just, to a degree, it kind of seems like frosting.

Chad Sutton (01:13.837)
There you go, back to the frosting. And you mentioned, what we really want is cake, damn it. You mentioned Nuno Betancourt and love him as a guitar player. I mean, people like to hate on extreme. Poor Gary Sharone gets shit on a lot because he fronted that sort of ill -fated third coming of Van Halen in the 90s or whatever. But.

Jim (01:16.043)
Back to frosting and all goes that.

Jim (01:22.827)
Yes.

Chad Sutton (01:40.654)
Nuno is just a fantastic guitar player. One of my favorite riffs, and I'm pretty sure he wrote it, or maybe he just plays it really well. And a favorite guitar solo of mine is Janet Jackson's Black Cat. He plays lead on that track. And, you know, that song is just a banger to begin with. But his guitar work on that is just phenomenal. And, you know, some of extreme stuff, you know, I mean, they had a couple hits, I guess, and I wasn't really a big fan. But,

Jim (01:54.923)
Okay.

Chad Sutton (02:10.669)
If you go back and listen again, listen to some of his guitar work, it's just phenomenal.

Jim (02:14.955)
Yeah, yeah, that's again, it's just one of these people that I had no, no concept of whatsoever. All of a sudden, he's on Beato's channel. I said, so okay, he's got to be someone you know, where, where, what rockhole have I been living in, where I haven't, you know, heard of this guy. And yeah, definitely some, some amazing talent there. And I love it when, you know, Beato can, you know, gets well,

Clearly, he's not new. He was new to me. But to the degree that he can get people out there that deserve some sort of wider recognition, like...

Michael O'Mardian. He had that interview with the pianist Michael O'Mardian, who's got from Steely Dan Sessions, who's got this amazing, amazing touch and facility. And it was great to kind of hear him play and hear his stories. And I just love it when they can get together and talk shop. And when they talk about minor triads and Phrygian modes and whatnot, I glaze over.

But I kind of wait for the other things in the conversation that I can hook into.

Chad Sutton (03:31.308)
Yeah, that's fair. I love Beato's channel. I love that he's really making it his mission to get as many of these, I don't want to say unsung heroes, because he's got plenty of well -known folks as well, but some of the behind the scenes folks that you wouldn't know necessarily like Nuno and like Michael Amartyan, and sort of recording their stories for posterity. I mean, none of us are getting any young.

Jim (03:45.259)
Yeah.

Chad Sutton (03:55.34)
And unfortunately, a lot of these guys that were in these groundbreaking bands and played on these classic records are hitting their 70s, 80s and beyond. And luckily, a lot of them are really sharp and can still tell all the stories like it was yesterday. So we're kind of lucky there.

Jim (03:56.267)
Yeah.

Jim (04:10.347)
Right.

And that's, I think you touched on an important part of it there, kind of the important public service. A lot of the YouTube reactors that are out there, I mean, yes, some of them are completely overblown, but to the fact that they're being turned on to music that was like so important and so groundbreaking for us seasoned professionals.

You know, and they can help get some context and understanding for what makes the music today. You know, they're, they're, you know, the internet is, and YouTube are full of reactions to, you know, Russian people's minds are blown Steely Dan and their, their, their minds are blown. So, it, it, it's just nice to see that those things, you know, they're, they're, they're classic for a reason.

There's just something about them that has a level of depth that just isn't there for a lot of the modern music. I think I alluded to this fact that I was kind of going through a lot of newer releases and finding things on Spotify and checking out recommendations here or there. And there's a lot of it that I just find it's kind of lacking where, again, it's sort of missing that.

melodic or harmonic depth or just even something that's unique and pleasant. I guess I do have to go together to me because you could be unique and it can be just this atonal mess. Doesn't mean I'm going to like it. So there has to be a pleasantness to it for me to kind of find my way into it and enjoy the 40 minutes that I'm going to dedicate to listening to it. Yeah. I'm

Jim (06:07.723)
There is some neat stuff that's out there. But it may just be one of those, let's call it the curse of the internet, where it's this place where you can publish everything. And now you've got access to everything. So it seems like the

joyous needles in the haystack that you can find are just so much rarer because the haystacks are so freaking huge.

Chad Sutton (06:42.123)
Yes, for sure.

Jim (06:43.563)
There's so much stuff to go through.

Chad Sutton (06:47.435)
There it's Spotify is like a fire hose, you know, and if you let it be and I just had this really great conversation on the last episode of the pod that I recorded that will be coming out, you know, right before yours. This woman Alex and I were talking about just that, you know how Spotify's

Jim (06:50.827)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (07:05.483)
because hey, all the music in the world at my fingertips, right? But Spotify is awful because all the music in the world at my fingertips, right? It's like you said, it's harder to get through and find that needle in the haystack. But you know, at the same time, I still do find gems. I might not find them through Spotify necessarily, but I will, you know, you've seen and I think you've even offered up answers to me on Twitter every once in a while.

Jim (07:24.331)
Mm -hmm.

Right.

Chad Sutton (07:34.411)
I'm like, okay, I'm really bored with all my playlists. I'm sick of listening to Steely Dan right now, you know, for the next day or so, until I decide to listen to them again. You know, and I'm driving into Manhattan for my, you know, twice a week commute to work, throw me a track that you're obsessed with right now. And you know, I get the smart asses that send me all the Steely Dan songs. And I'm like, you know, yeah, I know. Right, but once in a while, somebody sends me something that I've...

Jim (07:42.923)
Hahaha!

Jim (07:54.347)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (08:03.499)
either never heard of the artist or it's like a deep cut from an artist that I'm familiar with. And it's great because I'll start there, I'll throw them on my playlist, I'll really listen to them on the way in or the way home, whenever I'm in the mood for music in the car. And it's been great. One of them that just sort of came up organically, it wasn't an ask of mine, but somebody who I follow on Twitter, I think retweeted this band or maybe it was Instagram.

Jim (08:08.555)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (08:29.706)
some one of the social media channels, but the band's called East of June. Apparently they're, yeah, they're from California. I'm not sure whereabouts, but great music. And I wanted to tie this back to what we were saying before, like all these artists that just, you know, write songs and record things on their laptops or whatever, that's fine. You know, I respect that, but the painstaking

Artifice if you will of generations past is just not there anymore and sometimes that's a good thing because you know it lets people Make music that they want to make and be able to make it You know without all the the money and the nonsense around it But also it's like you get a lot of crap as well, right? But what I find is kind of funny and maybe I'm just showing my age here again too is like nobody makes albums anymore You know me a lot of bands don't make albums. So

Jim (09:17.163)
Yeah, right.

Chad Sutton (09:24.874)
you know, case in point this East of June, I immediately, you know, heard the song that the person linked and I was playing and I was like, I like this. Let me go see what else they have. And they've got a string of single releases on Spotify, which is great, but there's no album. So I don't know if they're gonna, are they gonna collect all these songs and make an album out of it at some point? Are they recording an album? Maybe they've just had a string of singles and they're waiting to get money to go to the studio. Like, who knows? I mean, you know, it could be any number of reasons why but.

Jim (09:38.667)
Huh, okay.

Chad Sutton (09:53.034)
I just find it funny when an artist has, you know, 1520 songs on Spotify and they're just songs. You know, I think it's just the modern market, right?

Jim (10:02.091)
Sure, yeah, and we've reached a place technologically where people can do that. So it kind of changes the whole paradigm of music distribution and kind of as a consumer, you're consuming things as songs as opposed to albums. Weird Al Yankovic comes to mind as someone who says, all right, I'm not gonna do any albums anymore. I'm just gonna be doing...

like songs every once in a while. And who knows the real reason behind that. But yeah, the days where you're making demos and shopping them to record execs for hopes of putting out an album, it's just not there anymore. And given everything that's happening with the advances of AI, it makes it all the more

everything can just become a studio creation. And the possibilities of putting out albums or playing live diminishes because everything is just this, it's just a craft work on haywire. Yes, it's people on computers, but they're using them in ways that couldn't have even been imagined back in the 80s.

I was watching something today, I got stuck down the rabbit hole of the Amen break. And, you know, just, you know, again, here's like this eight second sample of this totally amazing, you know, drum fill that this guy was doing. And it's been lifted and shifted and stretched and compressed and squashed and, you know, put through.

Chad Sutton (11:35.913)
Nice.

Jim (11:52.235)
death metal filters and all these things to the point where it's just not even recognizable for what it is, but yet the core of the sample is still there. People are using, I'm on my laptop right now, so people are using things like this to do what seven, eight musicians maybe would take hours to figure out doing. And so I guess in a way, you've been,

You saw the kerfuffle about the Apple ad with the new AirPad or whatever it's called, the iPad Air. And I get where people are coming from. There's something about taking away the human element that's sad. And computers are a fascinating tool. But you've got to remember that they're a tool. And to the degree that we start using them to

replace Wendell, you know, we could, you know, you could get into a lot of trouble. You lose something there. The quest for ease or perfection robs you of just that human element and that feel. And I walked into that bear trap, so I'll keep going. You know, there's something about the drum work on Gaucho that

just feels a tad bit.

Jim (13:26.155)
you know, well, mechanized. It's so perfect that it just loses that feel. You know, it doesn't feel like Bernard Purdy. It doesn't feel like Rick Morata. Even, I don't know if there are Rick Morata or Bernard Purdy imperfections on the royal scam or on Asia. There might be.

Chad Sutton (13:29.831)
Yeah.

Jim (13:53.227)
But there's just something about the feel of those drums that Gaucho just doesn't replicate. And I'm not knocking on Gaucho of the album because I love it. And I know you love it dearly. But again, it's that quest for perfection or ease that can sometimes just really side swipe what someone's...

You kind of lose the force for the trees, I guess is what I'm saying, Chad, is that you're chasing after one thing and it's like, but you forget about this other thing that made that so much special.

Chad Sutton (14:35.622)
Yeah, and I think it was a lot. It was like a logical succession for Steely Dan and in my mind, because they were always after the perfect drum take, right? Like they would bring in whole bands. And, you know, some of the session guys have been quoted as saying, like, we knew going into the session that they were going to throw everything away and just keep the drums, right? The whole idea of us playing in a room together was to get a drum track. You know, and everything else might just be replaced, you know, three more times before the final cut was done.

Jim (14:35.787)
you know.

Chad Sutton (15:06.042)
And the only saving grace to me with Gaucho is that they had enough common sense to have the fills played by live drummers, right? So Wendell was the backbeat, if you will, or the, you know, like the main drum part, but then the fills were organic. So it didn't lose completely. Cause you know, drum machines are really bad, right? You can't make a drum machine swing. Maybe modern ones, you know, maybe something like modern computer stuff. I mean, I don't know.

Jim (15:06.155)
Yeah.

Jim (15:16.651)
Mm -hmm.

Jim (15:29.067)
Yeah, that's true.

Chad Sutton (15:35.462)
I haven't played with any of that stuff in a while. But you know, having I used to have a boss, God, what was it the little drum machine that was like this big and it was like 100 bucks back in the day, which was a lot of money for, you know, young me. But I saved up and bought one because I was trying to record demos on my four track and you know, I was just having fun, you know, playing around with music and stuff. And

Jim (15:35.723)
Yeah.

Jim (15:58.955)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (16:00.838)
There were a few times when I was programming a part for a cover song that I wanted to record and I just couldn't figure out how to make it sway. And then it became evident that like you can't, you know, these things are quantized. They're, they're lined up to a measure, you know, or whatever internally and they're, and they're programming. And the only way to deal with it is to sort of play the little, you know, plastic pads manually, if you want to have any kind of human feel to it.

Jim (16:16.779)
huh.

Jim (16:26.571)
Right, right.

Chad Sutton (16:27.046)
So I adopted that same methodology without knowing anything about Wendler, how Gaucho was recorded back then, but a couple cover songs that I had recorded on my four track, I did the main drum parts, programmed, laid out all the different measures and everything else. But when it came to like a fill that had to have a little bit of a breadth to it, I would just go back and overdub those manually. So it makes sense, but I don't know. It's the quest for perfection.

Jim (16:48.491)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (16:56.585)
I think it pissed a lot of people off, frankly, you know?

Jim (16:59.591)
Yeah, it seemed that you kind of are describing a nice balance there. You know, you're in a sense, you're using the programmed drums almost like a click track to metronomically keep you on the pulse and know where you're going and, you know, constantly have the bass drum and the snares hit. And then, yeah, you're able to then use, you know, your real hands to kind of figure out, you know, ride cymbal patterns or

you know, hi hat touches or fills in between songs, you know, that's, or in between the main parts, you know, to really kind of hold it together. But I, I want to, I want to press on something that, that you said there, related to the, the fills coming in on, on Gaucho. I don't know this for a fact, but one of the things that's always bugged me about Hey 19 is that the fills,

I think are all Wendell, because they all sound the same.

Chad Sutton (18:03.588)
Could be.

Jim (18:06.795)
I am someone out there, check me, confirm me, set me right, do something. But yeah, it just seems like that's one thing where it really feels mechanized. It's still a great, great song. I love the sentiment. I love the groove. There's still that Steely Dan snark that's in there. And yeah, it's a great track. But you know.

Chad Sutton (18:21.413)
Yeah, that song...

Jim (18:35.563)
Boy, is it different than whatever. I got the news or green earrings.

Chad Sutton (18:41.797)
Yeah, well, it's very, you're right. It's probably their most clinical song if I had to pick one in terms of the drums and the rhythm for sure. And, you know, going back to something you said, like, yeah, absolutely. Purdy and, you know, Keltner and Porcaro and all the sort of heavy hitters, no pun intended, that were on all these Steely Dan songs. Of course, they're not playing perfect, you know, mechanized level beats, right? Because it's humanly really not possible.

Jim (18:46.795)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (19:09.157)
Although funny story on that, by the way. I don't know if you're familiar with Smashing Pumpkins, the band at all, or if you listen to them. So they're drummer for most of the first albums and then I think he left for a while and came back. But Jimmy Chamberlain is one of my favorite drummers ever, full stop. The guy is just amazing. Comes from a big band and jazz background. Played with his dad, I think, in Chicago.

Jim (19:15.307)
Yeah, a little bit.

Jim (19:28.651)
huh.

Chad Sutton (19:38.052)
you know, really has just unmatched meter, but he can swing like nobody's business. And the guy's just like a machine, like he's unreal. And he was just featured on Rick Beato's channel. He did an interview, which I was really excited about because not only is he a fantastic drummer, he's, he just knows so much about music and he's just really, really smart about other things as well. Like he just seems like he's sort of a little bit of a Renaissance man.

Jim (19:55.179)
Okay.

Jim (20:05.451)
huh.

Chad Sutton (20:08.132)
and I appreciate that, but listening to him tell the story about how the pumpkins were in the studio and I guess they were trying to work out the song and just something wasn't clicking. So they said, hey, what if we take like, you know, the A part from this song that we sort of have finished and put it together with the B track, you know, or the B part from this song that we sort of have finished. And the engineer was like, well, I can't just combine those on tape because, you know, you guys didn't play to a click.

And they were like, just try it. Let's see how it sounds. And sure enough, it matched. Yeah. And I was like, I don't know many drummers that can do that. You know what I mean? And I like to say this. I've probably said it a bunch of times already on this podcast, but I'll say it again. The drumming in the song Cherub Rock, which is the opening cut on Siamese Dream, his hi -hat and his ride cymbal in that song, you can set your watch by them. I mean, it's just, it...

Jim (20:35.691)
Mm -hmm.

Jim (20:40.459)
Okay, wow.

Jim (20:57.323)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (21:04.516)
drives the song and just hearing how it's working in the production of that tune is just unreal. Butch Vig and Billy Corgan produced the album and just outdid themselves. I mean, it's just amazing. It's definitely my favorite Pumpkins album, one of my favorite albums ever. So strongly recommend that to anybody out there.

Jim (21:21.835)
Wow, I am going to have to check that out. I saw the interview with Jimmy, but since I didn't have an association with it, I didn't click on it. I'll have to do that now, and I'll have to check out the cherub rock. I'm going to make another note to do that.

Chad Sutton (21:37.976)
And apparently according to Jimmy Chamberlain, there's like this secret society of drummers like they must all hang out together like he knows Rick Marotta and you know, like he's hung out and done drum clinics with with other people. I mean, like it's it's like this little cabal. You know, it's really cool.

Jim (21:53.451)
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, funny enough, I was watching a tribute video online for Neil Peart and they had a bunch of drummers talking about him and spent a lot of time with Stuart Copeland and because I guess he was pretty close with Neil and he, you know, he talked about, you know, how they would hang out and how at the

The memorial service, the private memorial service that happened about two weeks after he passed, it was just like drummer's world, unparalleled. It's like every drummer that you could think of, of any pedigree and talent level were there. And so, yeah, it kind of feels like, yeah, they all interact with each other. They all know each other. Neil did the album Burning with Buddy.

which is his Buddy Rich tribute album, the two of them, and each track has got different drummers on there. I'm sure it was just a case of him picking up the phone, calling these guys because they do know and interact with each other. And so they could make this kind of thing happen. But yes, secret societies and cabals, they make me a little nervous. But if it's drummers, I'm probably okay with it.

Chad Sutton (23:17.365)
I was gonna say, I'm good with drummers getting together and practicing witchcraft, if you will.

Jim (23:23.467)
What kind of necromancy can we do with, you know, whatever in 98?

Chad Sutton (23:31.107)
Exactly. I mean, you know, guys that like to beat stuff for a living, you know, you kind of have to question that anyway.

Jim (23:37.163)
or stay away from them, one of the two. They're likely dangerous.

Chad Sutton (23:39.01)
We could do Jumber jokes, but I won't go there.

Jim (23:46.411)
Okay, there's no time.

Chad Sutton (23:48.162)
But I'm bump. Good one, good one. So why don't we pivot a bit? Why don't we pivot a bit, Jim? Because I just found out something interesting about you, which is that you had written and drawn and produced a comic book years ago that ended up being a play. So if you want to dig into that a bit, I'd love to hear the story.

Jim (23:51.179)
yeah. Let's.

Jim (24:01.163)
Jim (24:07.275)
This is true. Sure, I'll dig into that. So one of my other big loves besides music is animation and cartooning. And when I was a kid, my drive was to be, I wanted to be the next Charles Schultz I wanted to have. Comic strip in the newspaper. I wanted to do that kind of thing. I was just really fascinated with that kind of storytelling.

And when I was in college in 83, the San Jose State newspaper, they had comic strips in there and I'm like, they let students do comic strips? I am so there. So I kind of just went into the office and said, I wanna do this. And they said, okay, show us what you got. And I did and they published it. And so for...

For four different semesters, I had a strip in the Spartan Daily at San Jose State. That led to a couple of other opportunities where I did some things that got me in trouble with some people. I did a series on fraternities and apparently the Intra -Faternity Council at San Jose State wrote a letter to the Daily asking for me to be censured and,

The editor showed me the letter and he just laughed at it and tore it up and said, you're fine, just keep doing what you're doing, it's great. The other thing that I did was based on experience I had with a bunch of other folks who were music fans. And we were all sitting around talking about Windham Hill records and how we kind of appreciated them at the time. You know, George Winston, Mark Eishin,

things like that. And somehow the conversation pivoted into, you know, what if Windham Hill started to do like death metal? What if they started to become like suicidal tendencies or stormtroopers of death and other bands like that? And so, you know, so yes, the record label name would change to Windham Hell. You would have like Gorge Windstorm, you know, Lizzie Story who had an axe.

Jim (26:31.339)
And just, you know, like Shadow Axe was another one that we came up with. Dark Isham. So all these different gags sort of came around and I ended up doing a three week strip series in the Spartan Daily about Windham Hill converting to a metal label. San Jose is close enough to Palo Alto or Stanford, which is where Windham Hill was based.

so that Windemheil actually saw these strips. And apparently they loved them. That's what I heard back channel, but I never heard from anyone. They thought that that was funny. Anyway.

Chad Sutton (27:03.072)
Ha ha ha.

Jim (27:13.611)
As you want to do with college, you want to try to extend that into a career. And one of the career extension opportunities I had was this gathering of people who would review artists' portfolios. They were from different greeting card manufacturers, newspaper syndicates, people who would want to look at artwork and have a sense of stuff. And one of the things that I did was I showed my...

my portfolio, which, and actually what I did was I just took those three weeks of Wyndham Hellstrips and, you know, when I went to the syndicate tables, I passed them around and, you know, there was one guy in particular who was really, really taken by it. And that sort of sparked a conversation and we kept in touch, which ultimately led for me doing some comics to Disney. I did some writing for them when they had more of a comics presence in like the very...

very late 80s and very early 90s, you know, you remember DuckTales and all that kind of stuff. So they had like, you know, comics that kind of supported all the Disney afternoon shows. But I digress. I realize I'm telling the story. I'm not telling the right story. Sorry. So the...

Chad Sutton (28:18.335)
Sure. Yeah.

Jim (28:37.451)
I kind of got into my head that I want to do something of like political humor. Kind of up the middle that was, you know, skewering the right and the left. And one of the things that came to my mind was to take the movie Gremlins, which was popular at the time, and turn them into little Democrat donkeys. So they were called Demlins. And what I wanted these, and these little creatures,

Chad Sutton (29:02.143)
Ha ha ha.

Jim (29:06.187)
would go and irritate Ronald Reagan in the White House being 1984, which I think is when this was done. And so.

In the comic book world, which I was also a big reader of, big, you know, Marvel and DC stuff in the late 70s, very, very early 80s, you know, I got into the world of comics and there was a black and white comic book that came out around that time, it was called Cerebus. Cerebus had a backup feature in its thing where they kind of let...

aspiring young cartoonists or anyone, they would just give them like four or five pages to kind of do their thing, sew their wild outs. And so I had this Demlin's idea. I just drew it all up and put it together. I don't know how long I spent on it, but I just did the full thing and I sent it to him and I said, here, I think this might be a neat thing for your little backup unique stories thing. What do you think? And Denny Lubert, the publisher, wrote back and said,

I agree, Dave, and I think this is great. We'll put it in. And I'm like, holy crap, that was easy. So I ended up sort of, you know, I did another version of it to make it look better. And Denny, the publisher, and I stayed in touch. She ended up starting, whoa, I think that's on your side. Okay. No problem.

Chad Sutton (30:19.807)
Ha ha ha.

Chad Sutton (30:25.823)
Yeah.

Chad Sutton (30:33.055)
Yeah, it's on my side. Sorry, we can edit that out too. While we're pausing, by the way, I forgot to mention to you at the end of this, we'll say our goodbyes, but just sort of stay on the line with me because I have to stop the recording, make sure everything uploads. Okay, cool. Just wanted to make sure you didn't just say goodbye and jet. Cool. All right.

Jim (30:47.083)
Yes.

Jim (30:52.779)
Jet, okay, no, that's good, Jet. So, Denny and I, the publisher, we stayed in touch. And she said, well, what else you got for me? So I started down this road of doing something in like a political vein, again, just sort of observing different things, skewering the right, skewering the left, it really, you know, everything was a target, hence everything was open season. And...

And we talked about it and she's like, well, this isn't really what I was thinking of. You know, what about the stuff you were doing with your comic strip in at San Jose State? And I had the idea. It's like, okay, maybe I can take some of the characters that were there and turn them into this, you know, adapt it, if you will, and kind of expand it more into a comic book mode, as opposed to the three or four panels a day gag thing. And then I could really explore some of the other things that I wanted to.

do about getting into relationship dynamics and different things there. And I did. So Renegade Press was the publisher. We had six issues of Open Season. That was the name of the comic. And I think the tagline for the comic was a nice little comic book about relationship hell. And that was what kind of stuck with it. It took me.

until the third issue to really kind of find my feet and sort of nail down how I wanted the stories to be told and sort of for everything to sort of come into its own. And then the comic book industry imploded with the black and white glut of comics and whatnot. So it folded after issue six. There wasn't seventh issue, but.

But getting into the comic book world and you meet people there, there was a couple of guys who were dealers who would go to San Diego Comic Con and all the big comic book conventions. And they had their boxes and boxes of comics and paraphernalia and stuff. And they were really taken with OpenSeason. They really liked it. And they said, you know, we've been thinking, me and my partner here, I've been thinking about getting into producing plays. And we'd like to...

Jim (33:14.123)
see if you want to adapt open season as a stage play. And I thought, okay. I kind of thought about it for a minute. And I already kind of knew where I wanted open season to go story -wise in terms of major conflicts and resolutions and different things like that. And so I said, okay, I think I can do this. I think that I can put this together. And so...

Chad Sutton (33:18.076)
Well.

Jim (33:43.019)
In early 1989, I knocked out the script and just went through minor tweaks here and there. And then in November 1989, the play, Open Season, ran for a month in San Francisco. We had probably somewhere between 20 and 30 performances.

Chad Sutton (34:03.932)
Cool.

Jim (34:13.643)
got reviewed in the Chronicle or yeah, the Chronicle and the Examiner. The Chronicle review was good. The Examiner was like, meh. But everyone in the cast was like taking issues like this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He's talking about this, that, or the other thing. He didn't get what we were really trying to do with the play. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. This guy's a moron. So that was my one.

Chad Sutton (34:39.003)
Hahaha!

Jim (34:43.723)
Now, that also was kind of a stepping stone to something else that never really, really took off. Some of the actors that were involved with the open season play wanted to start like a theater collective within San Francisco. And they wanted me to kind of write some stuff for it because they wanted to have this kind of troop thing where they could.

just do these shows that kind of felt a little like, you know, Monty Python in a way where the stories could just go in any direction that it wanted to. And so I was involved in writing some stuff for them for a while, but it never really went anywhere. I think they might've filmed a couple of things just as concepts, but it never really took off. So, yes, my career in comics kind of had this...

You can draw a line from seeing newspaper comic strips when I was a kid to like buying Marvel comics off the racks of 7 -Eleven in 1977 to college doing comic strips there, getting into black and white comics and doing the Demlin story in Seribus to open season to...

to doing the stage play and then somewhere off there there's a branch of mike my comic strip hat leading me to do the the meeting with the guy with the syndicate the l a time syndicate who eventually went to work for disney and i ended up you know basically working for him writing a bunch of comics over at disney of different characters i think i mentioned you know the duck tales tailspin roger rabbit

I did a Mickey Mouse story, Darkwing Duck. So there was a lot of fun in that there were probably about eight stories that were published for Disney. There were maybe a dozen that were done. And that ended up kind of all imploding in on itself too, which was kind of a bummer because I had like five different stories already lined up that I was just ready to sort of pull the trigger on and go.

Jim (37:01.355)
But they imploded, so I never wrote the story, so I never got paid, even though the story concepts got approved and all this stuff. And then I said, well, I got to get a job. So I stumbled into a temp job at Apple, and then my grand career in high tech took off from there.

Chad Sutton (37:21.02)
Wow, that's a hell of a story. The Disney thing is super cool.

Jim (37:23.659)
well, I've told it. Yeah, it was. It's this weird thing. It's you know, you tell people that you that you've worked for Disney and they're like, what? And you got to be very sort of careful and say, well, it's not, you know, it's this little sliver side alley thing of Disney that's, you know, working with the characters. But it was it was it was frustrating and instructive, especially on the Mickey Mouse story, because the editor said to me,

I want you to be as wild and creative as you can possibly be. However, here's 19 pages of prohibitions that, you know, Mickey must never boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

Chad Sutton (38:21.818)
That's about right.

Jim (38:22.859)
It was a good exercise to kind of learn about how, you know, how the real world works in terms of, you know, marketing and brand identity and whatnot. You know, I was too young and stupid to kind of really clue into those things fully at the time, but it was a, it's a good object lesson looking back on it.

Chad Sutton (38:41.306)
Yeah, that's a great life lesson. Maybe I should write up a 19 page treatise about what you can and can't say on my podcast.

Jim (38:49.419)
There's... my gosh! I think I already probably broke a couple of them. Thou shalt not badmouth Gaucho, you know?

Chad Sutton (39:00.378)
That's number one. It's the number one tenet of oral medicine, Al Schulte, not bad mouth gaucho. Now, you know, again, I like this to be as just, you know, free form and, you know, say whatever's on your mind as possible. So this is all great. We also said we might touch a little bit and, you know, we're coming up on our time together here, but why don't we dig in for a few minutes about, you said that Chuck Jones and the whole Looney Tunes world was also.

Jim (39:02.059)
Yeah.

Jim (39:06.859)
Yeah.

Jim (39:15.819)
Yeah.

Jim (39:23.403)
Mm -hmm.

Chad Sutton (39:29.338)
big inspiration. So, you know, how did you get into that? And I guess, you know, how did it tie into your work? And, you know, what are some of your favorite Looney Tunes things, cartoons or otherwise?

Jim (39:30.923)
Yeah.

Jim (39:39.531)
gosh, well, I'm guessing like you that the Looney Tunes were discovered on either Saturday mornings on CBS or after school in reruns in your local cable channel. And so that's where I discovered them. And at some point along the way, I really learned to distinguish the better Looney Tune cartoons from the ones that were just kind of meh. And I, you know, chucked.

Jones, Charles Jones, who's this Jones guy? I really like his stuff. And I just kind of zeroed in on that and just really became enamored with how he did expressions on characters, how he paced a story, you know, the fact that he was...

free to do things like, you know, one froggy evening while he while he would still do, you know, bugs and Roadrunner and different things like that to pay the bills, you know, he still had this freedom to do other things. And it really the the Chuck Jones stuff really stuck with me in terms of how I approached my own cartooning. There were a lot of times where I would draw an expression of someone being shocked or surprised or

kind of going, and I was just straight out of a Chuck Jones drawing, whether it was, you know, the coyote or the bulldog or, you know, something. It's like, yeah, I can pin that expression I had in my head to this particular Chuck Jones frame. And so he really, you know, was an influence on.

just how I approached cartooning. And I did have the pleasure of meeting Chuck Jones once. This was when he did his first book, Chuckamuck, I think. And it was a book signing tour. And so I went to San Francisco and met him and got him to sign the book. I told him.

Jim (41:57.355)
told him how much one froggy evening meant to me and my father. And he was just a perfect gentleman. And there was at one point in my comic collecting days where I actually had a pencil sketch that was an animation rough done by Chuck for the Duckamuck cartoon. And it was something that was kind of unused where Daffy's kind of looking at the

Chad Sutton (42:17.898)
wow.

Jim (42:27.211)
you know, looking ahead at the viewer saying, it's like, all right, you two bit Rembrandt, you know, I'm getting sick and tired of this. And it was a line that was never used in the cartoon, but I knew from the context exactly what it was from. I said, I know this is from duck amok. It has to be. And this was, I bought it at San Diego Comic Con in like 1988. It was, it was 20 bucks. And, you know, and that was a time where it's like a, a,

Chad Sutton (42:53.114)
wow.

Jim (42:56.651)
good or a classic like Wile E. Coyote or Bugs sketch that Chuck had done for a cartoon was going for like, you know, 120 at the same table that I bought things from. And I felt like I was the luckiest guy that there is to stumble across something from Duckamuck that was just so cheap. It's like, all right, I know what this is. I found this little treasure. Now I feel like Daffy Duck. You know, it's mine, mine, mine. Give me, give me, give me.

Chad Sutton (43:23.13)
You're a happy miser.

Jim (43:25.579)
So exactly, exactly that. And then years later, I finally had the good sense, it's like, let me just be sure I have what I have. And I sent a letter to his daughter, who's the caretaker of his estate and business affairs and all the lithography and all the things that come out under his name, and photocopied it and said, have this, bought it, here's where I bought it, here's what I think it's from.

you know, can you validate this for me? And she's like, yep, you nailed it. It's exactly what you think it is. It's from this. And yeah, so it was, that's my, that's my Chuck Jones story. And yeah, my love for Chuck Jones still exists for a period of, you know, decades as a father, you know, probably, probably for 20 years running every father's day, we'd watch the bear for punishment cartoon.

you know, when it's Father's Day, dear, and just all the abuse that he goes through from his, from his wife and his son. so yeah, Chuck, Chuck Jones still has a special place in my heart. And I, I want Warner Brothers to do like an entire DVD series of just all the Chuck Jones cartoons. It's not too much to ask. I know I'm not the only person who would buy this. I know there would be.

Chad Sutton (44:51.674)
yeah, for sure.

Jim (44:52.875)
people out there who it's like, okay, I'll take the sniffles the mouse stuff. I'll take the stuff at the very, very end that was more Abe Levittow and Ken Harris than it was Chuck Jones. I want the, I want all of the middle stuff. I want all of that stuff from like, you know, 46 from the, the hypochondriac cat or whatever that was called. And, you know, Waikiki rabbit all the way through,

Chad Sutton (45:08.218)
Yes.

Chad Sutton (45:19.034)
Yes.

Jim (45:22.347)
What's Opera Doc? and things like that. That's just pure gold to me.

Chad Sutton (45:29.242)
yeah, that was the golden age of Looney Tunes for sure. So yeah, just like you, you know, grew up watching it. I have two older siblings. You know, there are some years between us. My brother's 11 years older. My sister's 13 years older. So, you know, they grew up watching Looney Tunes. And of course, you know, me as a very young kid, just, you know, cut my teeth on it really. So right alongside of, you know, God, what was even popular back then, you know, the

Mr. T cartoons in the 80s and all that stuff. Saturday morning was the Smurfs and that sort of stuff. But right alongside of that was always 40s and 50s Bugs Bunny cartoons coming on on syndication. And then I just ate that stuff up. And for the longest time, and to this day still with my brother and my sister, we just fire off Looney Tunes left and right. I was at my...

Jim (46:02.463)
Yeah

Chad Sutton (46:26.97)
going down to visit my my sister in Virginia. And I think I, you know, went like a slightly circuitous way to get somewhere because I wasn't familiar with the area. And I said, I should have should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque, you know, like, things like that just just just really are embedded in my my everyday, you know, language. So it's,

Jim (46:38.667)
Yeah!

Jim (46:46.443)
You know, there's, I have stories like that as well with different friends. I wish I remembered the name of the cartoon, but there's one where there's a very, this is probably early 40s Chuck Jones or, you know, 44 or so, a very spoiled rich cat where, you know, he gets the butler to do whatever he wants and he just abuses the poor butler to no end.

And the butler kind of says just one day, that's it. I've had it. I've left. You're on your own, you stupid cat. And the cat is left alone. And that's the cartoon where you first meet Bert and Hubie. And are you familiar with this one? Do you know the one I'm talking about? it's like, hey, bite. Come here. And it's like, yeah, yeah, Hubie. OK. And so there.

Chad Sutton (47:32.73)
I don't know Burton Hubie, no.

Chad Sutton (47:39.482)
yes, yes!

Jim (47:43.627)
you know, the mice are abusing this poor cat now because the cat doesn't know he's, you know, he doesn't know he's supposed to chase mice and do all that. And so now they're getting the, you know, they're getting the cat to do their comeuppance until the cat, you know, figures out what he is and what they are. And then it all sort of falls to pieces for there. But there's one, there's the butler in the cartoon, his name is Meadows.

And the cat would always say, you know, Meadows, you know, I need more food or something like that. And then there's these, once Meadows has enough and he leaves and he goes out, you see these great series of takes where, you know, the cat is just screaming, it's like, Meadows, Meadows, and these great, you know, Ken Harris exaggerated faces.

Chad Sutton (48:32.501)
hahahaha

Jim (48:36.363)
But there's one little thing where the camera draws back and you just see the cat backed up into a corner, you know, and he's just kind of like, you know, against the wall, just totally shell shocked. He just kind of goes, in this, this really squeaky little, little voice. And that's, I, I, and, and in college, when I had all this stuff on VHS tape, you know, I've watched these things with my roommates and then,

You know, one day I kind of used that Meadows line, you know, like 30 years later, I used that Meadows line on one of my former roommates and he just lost it. He just, it all came flooding back to him. Just all of those, you know, great times that we had had watching those cartoons.

Chad Sutton (49:24.213)
Yeah, yeah, I just sent, you know, so again, like prepping prepping for this today, I was just watching, you know, any excuse to go back and watch Bugs Bunny cartoons. So I found a compilation on YouTube and it's like 34 minutes of Bugs Bunny's best bits. And it's every catchphrase and every song and every great moment in and, you know, the sort of prime prime bug stuff. So, of course, I immediately sent it to my sister and I was like, you need to watch this. And she's like, this is awesome.

Jim (49:32.587)
sure.

Jim (49:46.571)
Hahaha

Jim (49:53.995)
Well, so if I'm going to send you the Bill Frisell link of the Bill Frisell Trio, you have to put the link to the 34 minutes of Bugs Bunny in the description for this video too.

Chad Sutton (49:54.005)
So, yeah.

Chad Sutton (50:06.181)
yeah, I sure will, I absolutely will.

Jim (50:09.387)
Because now I want to see it.

Chad Sutton (50:12.981)
I'll send it to you after we hang up. I'll definitely link it in the show notes because I'm sure there are folks watching and listening, all 50 of you maybe tops at this point, that might be interested and might not know Bugs Bunny and you really should. It's such a part of the cultural zeitgeist, especially for me.

Jim (50:15.403)
Okay.

Jim (50:23.979)
Mmm.

Jim (50:34.443)
And if you don't know Bugs Bunny, you might as well start at the very top. You might as well start with Chuck Jones and just realize how good you have it.

Chad Sutton (50:40.053)
Yes.

Chad Sutton (50:45.525)
For sure. Well, great, Jim, this has been awesome. I wanna leave with one parting question, and I don't know if you've seen this on previous episodes, but I've been trying to ask every guest this, and I've gotten some really great answers. So, you know, given all that I know about your musical taste and the things that you're into and the things that you like to listen to, what's something I wouldn't expect? Like, give me that one curveball song.

Jim (50:46.539)
Hahaha.

Chad Sutton (51:12.117)
or artists, you know, and I hate the word guilty pleasure because there's no such thing with music to me. It's it's you know, whatever you're into is fine. But you know, what's what's that one track that if you said, hey, I was listening to this on repeat yesterday, I'd raise an eyebrow and be like, Really, you were? What is that track? Or album?

Jim (51:19.339)
Right.

Jim (51:29.227)
The thing that comes to mind is that I have not become, I am a fan of the two Taylor Swift records, Folklore and the other one whose name I don't remember at the moment. Old Age, Too Many Music Things Going On, I can't remember what it is right now. But those pair of records,

Chad Sutton (51:58.003)
I hear ya.

Jim (52:00.779)
I just think are so very, very well done. Again, just very, very wonderfully produced, great songs that you can really get your hooks into. They're not, you know, they were a left turn. They don't sound like everything else on pop radio. They may have sounded like umpteen other like indie bands that I'm not aware of, but there was just something about the melding of...

that style with her style that just really connected with me. Now, I don't really care for much other Taylor Swift stuff that's out there. And I've heard some, well, there's a couple of things on Red that I think are pretty good. But overall, I'm not really a Swiftie by any way, shape or form. But I do like those two records.

Chad Sutton (52:56.275)
Interesting. Okay. Good answer. No, I mean, I mean that no, no, no, I mean that in the best possible way. Like I said, there's no wrong answer. There's no guilty pleasure. There's no shame. I mean, like I listened to so much stuff that you would never think. I mean, of course, no, I can't think of anything, you know, embarrassing off the top of my head. You know, something and I may have said this on a previous episode, but it still comes up on my liked songs or like, you know, my top songs playlist and it's

Jim (52:57.643)
Now I feel very self -conscious. Yeah.

Jim (53:14.187)
Yeah.

Chad Sutton (53:24.979)
I never skip it. And it's Mama's Broken Heart by Miranda Lambert, who, you know, I am so not into modern country. I love class. I love classic country, you know, Willie and Waylon and Dolly and, you know, Johnny Cash and all that stuff. But like anything after, you know, probably the early 80s, I kind of tuned out of. But that song, and by the way, that song was written or co -written by Casey Musgrave. So I also adore as an artist, just love it. You know, it's just a.

Jim (53:32.523)
Mm -hmm.

Jim (53:39.147)
Hehehe.

Jim (53:49.355)
Okay, yeah.

Chad Sutton (53:54.547)
well written song. It's got this great hook, the productions massive, the lyrics are funny. And the video is just great because you know, who makes music videos? I mean, the songs got to be I'm not sure what year it came out. It's it's a little older now. But just the fact that they've got an actual music video that has like a plot to it isn't just a band or you know, some some abstract thing, right? It's it's great. So that's that's that's mine. And there's more but I can't think of any others off top of my head.

Jim (54:07.403)
Mm -hmm.

Jim (54:14.347)
Ha ha ha!

Yeah.

Jim (54:23.325)
You know, it's funny that you mentioned that because that sort of brings up a whole nother topic of things we could sort of rat hole on, which is, you know, country and sort of how it got to where it is now, you know, maybe how it sort of replaced a lot of the, you know, in a way, kind of the classic AM radio that we grew up with. And it's, yeah, that would be a whole other topic to sort of delve in at some point. Could be, huh.

Chad Sutton (54:48.978)
Yeah, like another episode. Hmm.

Jim (54:53.003)
I'm setting myself up for failure because now I'm going to go, what country do I know?

Chad Sutton (54:54.642)
But that's the fun of this podcast is like, I love learning about new things. And, you know, again, like I walk away from every episode with just like a deeper understanding of something, you know, even if it's, you know, something I'm already familiar with, but just sort of reminding myself, okay, well, you know, so and so mentioned this, I'm going to go listen to it, or I'm going to go dig deeper into this artist, because, you know, they really sold me on it, right. So I think that that's the beauty of what I'm trying to do here is just,

get the stuff out into the world and hopefully people are listening and you know, enjoying learning about new music. So there you go.

Jim (55:31.339)
So I got now one final question for you, Mr. Sutton. We have, I think I've shared with you about jellyfish before, right? The band jellyfish. Now, where have you come down on jellyfish? Is that in your wheelhouse? Is it not quite your thing? Is it like to this or to that? What do you think about it?

Chad Sutton (55:35.634)
Sure, yeah.

Chad Sutton (55:44.018)
Yes.

Chad Sutton (55:56.753)
orderly in my wheelhouse really like them just haven't you know I I went and listen to their whole discography when you mentioned and I've probably peppered a few of the songs into my various playlists I haven't listened to them in a minute so that's something I should probably go revisit again because I did enjoy it you know and I listened all the way through and I dug and I think it's really good songwriting the production's fantastic I can't remember his name off top of my head Jason

Jim (56:11.659)
Okay.

Chad Sutton (56:25.713)
who was the main guy or was he the main guy or was he just in the band for a little bit?

Jim (56:28.107)
He was the guitarist on the first record. Andy Sturmer and Roger Manning are the principals behind Jellyfish. And I can't remember Jason's last name. We are getting old, my friend. Or we are old. Faulkner, Jason Faulkner.

Chad Sutton (56:37.776)
Okay.

Chad Sutton (56:47.761)
We are getting old. He was in the grays, he had a couple solo records. Yeah, Stacey Faulkner. Yeah, I really like him too. I mean, I didn't realize he wasn't as big a part as maybe I thought he was, but yeah, I dug it, totally dug it.

Jim (56:55.051)
Yeah.

Jim (57:00.235)
Yeah, good, good. All right, we may continue to converse then.

Chad Sutton (57:04.657)
So you passed the gaucho test and I passed the jellyfish test. Good. Turnabout is fair play. Excellent. All right. Well, Jim, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure as always talking to you. I'm glad you were able to make this work. And maybe I'll hold your feet to the fire on the country episode in the near future. We'll talk about that offline.

Jim (57:05.931)
You've passed the test. There we go.

Excellent.

Jim (57:26.091)
Okay, I would be up for that. And thanks a lot, Chad. I'm really glad that we got to do this finally. Been a long time coming and I always enjoy talking with you.

Chad Sutton (57:36.625)
Thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. All right, bye.

Jim (57:38.923)
All righty, thanks.