Welcome to this bonus episode of Sound Opinions. If you listen regularly, you will know that on the main show, we just celebrated our 1000th episode by looking back, Greg and me, on... for each of our outstanding moments, over a thousand episodes. One low light each. You know, we didn't have enough time to share the wealth with our long time veteran, incredibly talented, devoted and wonderful producers, Andrew Gill and Alex Claiborne. So it's.
only fair, Greg, while we were doing all this glad-handing to ask them their thoughts. Alright, what stands out for you, Andrew? You know, I got two examples of things that are in shows that I thought were really memorable moments. One is Mary Clayton. When we interviewed her, this was like over Zoom. And like she she connected via like.
phone or something she like called into the zoom and so we couldn't see her and the audio wasn't great you know but um she was telling us about when the night she got the call to come sing on gimme shelter with the rolling stone and how she was pregnant. She did not want to go. But the fact that they were going to pay scale was like, or like whatever, it was going to be a union gig. And so it was going to be better than average.
And so she hauled herself down and recorded one of the most iconic duets in rock history. Yeah, and then went home and put her pajamas on. I had put on my beautiful pink silk pajamas, honey, and was lotioning my hands. He had rolled my hair, and my hair was gorgeous. And I said, well, I'll put the scarf on, and the phone rings. There's Jack Nietzsche. Hi, Mary.
I said, oh, Lord. It's Jack. I said, oh, Lord. What's happening, Jack? He said, you know, we've got these guys in town. So my husband hears me talking, and he takes the phone. He said, wait, give me this phone. Who is this? I said, Jack, meet you. And Curtis put his head up in the air. He said, oh, Lord, it must be something about music. I said, it is. So Jack said, Curtis, you know, this is going to be something really special for Mary.
We won't need it for about an hour. Is it okay if she comes? We got a car sitting down in front of your house right now. So I was going to go in this big old limousine, sitting down in front of the house. I said, I don't want to go and do so. Yeah, Mary, again, the voice of reason. Curtis said, baby, don't take you long. He said, you know, once you get it, it's done.
So Jack said, he said, Curtis, it's going to be a great thing for Mary later on in her career. He said, she's not going to stay any longer than an hour and a half. That's it. No longer than an hour and a half. He says, OK, then I'll be there. I'll be waiting for it at the front door. So I get there and I walk in. Jack's at the front. And I see Keith and Mick.
coming from the back door in the studio, but coming through the studio towards me, walking wild. Well, you know what they had been doing. Coming out of the back. So... They say to me, are you married? I said, yes, I'm married. I said, what do you want me to sing, honey? Because it's late. Get to it. Let's get to work. Let's cut to the chase and let's do what we got to do. I said, you see this belly? I said, I got to go put it to bed.
And then the other one was when we did the Stooges Funhouse album dissection. We recorded, we tried a different technique where we were like, all right, Jim and Greg, you guys... download all your knowledge about this album. We'll record it and then we'll sift through what you talk about and see if we can find other people to talk to.
Because, you know, we had tried to get Iggy Pop, but he wasn't returning our calls at that time. He wasn't answering his cell. He's out on the golf course. And we didn't have a budget to go to Miami to find him. Right. So I.
picked up on this name that Greg had thrown out, Don Gallucci, who had produced this record, who was like a record industry suit. And I was like, all right, my mission is to find Don Gallucci. And so I used every resource i possibly could and you know found out that wasn't his real name he like lives his no straight life is under a different name and anyways through um some crazy string of of events we got him on and you guys interviewed him you know and the lineage of like him
being in the Kingsman and playing keyboard on Louie Louie as a teenager. And then recording one of the greatest punk albums of all time. And then recording, yeah, Funhouse in the Elektra studios. It was... I was like, wow, this plan really came together. That was amazing that we got this guy. We had three hours and 50 bucks. This was like what they used to call a jingle studio. So the engineer had never dealt with it.
what he considered this awful rock and roll. We play Louie Louie once and everybody cringes when they hear the vocal. They thought it sounded awful. And so Kent Chase had the bright idea. He said, look, kids don't care about the lyrics so much. Turn up the music, turn down the voice. The engineer...
looks at us with disgust and says, mister, you see that dial there? That's where it's been. That's where it's going to stay. It would not turn it down. And so we have the guy, you know, raise the boom. So it's overhead, and Jack can't get to it. It did what you weren't supposed to do in those days, just get a room sound. So we do a take with the mic, giving it the sound that you hear, which sounds like a...
Some kind of a goofy party, I guess. You know, Don, the fascinating connection between Louie Louie and, of course, Funhaus... Lester Bangs would write a 35,000 word piece. That, you know, this birth of punk rock in the 60s by kids who were just having fun, you know, becomes something else again in the 70s with bands like the Stooges.
But did you see the connection between what the Kingsmen had done, you know, in three hours on a jingle studio budget and what the Stooges would do on Funhaus? Honestly, no. Okay. Between Louie Louie and Fun House, Gallucci spent plenty of time in legit studios. Now, he worked on Dick Clark's TV show, where the action is as part of the house band, after all. So when he started the Fun House sessions, he tried...
getting a clean recording out of this band. Tape is rolling anytime you're ready. It was literally two minutes. We started playing and I'm in the control room of the booth and It just sounds deader than a doornail. I don't know. Whatever the term people use is, there was no life to it at all. And so... But it was clean. That was for sure. Yeah, sure. I'm sitting there and I'm going, this is like so wrong. And they don't like me. They think I'm a suit. I was just a jerk from the label.
assigned to them at age 21 yeah there was no justice but anyway i had to take all the carpet out all the baffles everything and i set them up like they were on stage in a row with the drums behind, and they were singing to the booth, so to speak. We even gave Iggy a handheld bike so he felt comfortable. Give me that bike. It's down. My privilege and honor... Shut up!
Can you work on Neil Young next? We've done a couple of press interviews. Chicago's celebrating 1,000. I was like, okay. They always say, what's your white whale? It's like I'd kill for Neil Young. I saw this morning Neil has a new song. So, you know, yeah. Find that publicist. I don't know. Well, Alex, besides getting to go to bed with me and Boy Genius, what stands out for you? It's only okay to say that because it was over Zoom. So that's the only reason I'm letting that fly.
Over Zoom. We were a very respectful distance. Yes. Well, and they kept making jokes about it. Yes, they did. Sorry, everyone. I'm a little under the weather, so please excuse my scratchy voice. But in addition to Boy Genius, I really enjoyed that interview. It was so much fun.
fun um the carol king classic album dissection it's a very special album for me and it was great to you know be in touch with some of those session musicians and tony stern and getting to um hear them and And hear how grateful and kind and, you know, just... very lovely people that they were. And I really enjoyed editing and putting together that episode for sure. Speaking of white whales, someone I had been chasing to book for a number of years that finally came to fruition in 2020.
when we had Chris France of the Talking Heads, the drummer of the Talking Heads, on the program. Probably three years prior, I had Facebook messaged him because he is very active on Facebook. And he said nice things about the show. Yes, and he hosts his own radio program as well. And I...
basically was like, hey, do you want to come on the show? He's like, yes, but I'm working on something and I'd like to wait until that time. So years go by and the pandemic and then finally, I would message him, how are the dogs? How's this going? of establish this like lovely rapport with him i said how's tina um and
You know, he said, I've got something and I'm going to like let you know. And I said, OK. And then, you know, so finally he came on the show, talked about his memoir that he released in 2020. And yeah, it was great. And it's still a great conversation that I. I think, holds up even a couple years later, and we've since re-aired it. But that was, I guess, an example of perseverance paying off after a number of years. All the other bands were...
Dressing up in costumes and if not the black leather jackets, they were wearing like satin shirts and high-heeled snakeskin boots and things. And we were just... dressed like some kids from the suburbs, you know. And it made a big impression. Some people didn't get it. I remember Johnny Thunders coming up. to me after our first performance and saying are you guys a feminist band i said to him Yes, as a matter of fact we are.
Well, that's, you know, I think an under an underappreciated element of your jobs, besides somehow making sense of the nonsense we spout at the mics and perfectly dropping in the right musical cues and everything else. Checking us. You guys try to pronounce our foreign pronunciations, but we've slaughtered every language you can possibly think of. You know, it's just, I mean, it must take you 20, 30, 40 phone calls and emails sometimes.
to book a guest, right? It honestly depends. Sometimes. Depends on the guest. It depends on the guest. Oftentimes we're reaching out to a publicist and that can, sometimes they reach out to us, which is great. You know, some of my other favorite. moments too that i just wanted to mention that were very easy to book where um we had two members of the go-go's on the show um talked to kathy valentine and you know gina shock and it was just you know
That was super fun as well. And those were both easy and great to book. If we had a tour booked for the summer, we would probably rehearse for three weeks. Even though we've been together decades and we know those songs back and forth.
We would probably still rehearse for weeks because we don't play together all the time. So what cracks me up is like, you know, the biggest shows that they've ever done, which is four sold out nights at the whiskey with two shows a night and four days before the gig, they don't even.
have a bass player lined up you know so so not only am i like learning my instrument that that instrument for the first time but i got two rehearsals with the band you know all the rest was just by myself like just staying up all hours into the night, play, rewind, play, rewind, like learning these songs. Oh, when they asked me to do it.
I was kind of, it was kind of like a lark, like, oh yeah, they're popular, this will be fun. When I said yes, it didn't occur to me that I would love them and that I would want to be in the band so bad. You know, if you're going after Stevie Wonder, obviously you probably aren't going to hear anything. It's going to be a, you know, a long back and forth. It all depends on timing if somebody is releasing something. So we just do the best we can. Yeah.
Oh, I know. It's a tough gig. Unforgiving job. You know, though, I will say that it helps make it worthwhile when we can convince you to... to book some of our favorite artists. So I feel like Alex did that with the Go-Go's. And I've managed to get three of my favorite bands on Sound Opinions, The Mountain Goats, Pager of the Lion, and Super Chunk. So Super Chunk twice.
You guys didn't have to be convinced about Super Chunk. Super Chunk was not... We have been fans of Super Chunk. Yeah, since before you were born, Andrew Gill. The other two, I would say yes. We probably... And you've hit your quota, by the way, Andrew. No, that's not true. You know, we always people. The other question besides white whale is how do you guys stay on top of things? You know, and the answer we both give and we tend to repeat ourselves and tend to like.
echo each other but it's true for both of us you have your antenna up all the time and you are you know on social media and you're following algorithms and you're uh you know listening to the buzz most of all from trusted friends like you guys you know so when you sat down and made a playlist for us of i can't believe you don't appreciate mountain goats more listen you know of course we do you know i mean we we do that for for for listeners
of the show and for readers of our written work. And of course, we're going to do it for Andrew Gill. We're just going to not let you know, you know, that we value your opinion as much as we do. Well, and those interviews turned out very well. They were great. And we're both fans now. One of the best songs ever about a drummer, Pedro the Lion. Thank you.
All right, that's it for 1,000 episode nostalgia. Sorry, Andrew, Alex. Hope you guys stay around for the next 1,000. We'll do it again at 2,000, okay? Otherwise, we're about moving forward. Thank you for listening. In addition to support from listeners like you, Sound Opinions has opportunities for corporate sponsors to reach our smart and engaged audience. Email us at sponsor at soundopinions.org and we'll fill you in on the details. details.