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All right, let's say it's 1986.
I'm eight or nine years old.
Let's say it's seven or eight in the morning, Saturday morning.
I roll out of bed. I got my bed with transformers, sheets.
I got my He -Man pajamas or my Star Wars pajamas or my GoBots pajamas.
One of those, probably.
Cereal -wise, I got my Fruity Pebbles or my Coco Pebbles.
I'm on a Pebbles -based diet.
Far as I'm concerned, the two major food groups are Fruity and Coco.
And then I rumble down the stairs to our basement because our TV is in the basement.
And it's time, my friends.
It is time for Saturday Morning Cartoons.
which means it's time for Bugs Bunny to teach me about classical music.
My Newt Waltz by Chopin.
A lifetime, my lifetime of sophisticated musical appreciation and flagrant mispronunciation born in this moment, thanks to Saturday morning cartoons, thanks to Looney Tunes, Thanks to Bugs Bunny, depicted here playing piano right before Dr. Jekyll drinks the potion and turns into Mr. Hyde and starts chasing bugs with an axe.
The plot of this particular cartoon doesn't matter.
What matters is that Bugs Bunny is about to provide my first exposure to the Minute Waltz by beloved 19th century Polish pianist and composer Friedrich Chopin.
and Bugs is going to slap a candelabra on the piano and throw in a Liberace joke for good measure.
I wish my brother George was here.
That's a Liberace joke.
Apparently, Liberace, the beloved 20th century, primarily Las Vegas pianist and fashion icon, con.
He had a brother named George who played violin.
And right before he threw down on his rhinestone bedazzled piano, Liberace would go, I wish my brother George was here.
Did I know that as an eight -year -old?
Of course not. Did I know that like 10 minutes ago?
Also no. But see, that's why I'm here in the basement, wolfing down cocoa pebbles and watching Saturday morning cartoons.
I'm here to be educated.
Saturday morning cartoons.
They used to only show cartoons tunes on TV on Saturday mornings and also for an hour or two after school.
If you're too young to know what I'm talking about, then keep it to yourself.
I'm busy. I'm watching cartoons.
I'm learning things.
I'm experiencing culture.
I'm expanding my musical horizons.
Was Looney Tunes my very first childhood exposure to classical music?
Maybe. Was Looney Tunes my very first childhood exposure to classical music in which I was 100 % locked in and wrapped and delighted.
Definitely. I am seated as the kids say, as the kids too young to remember Saturday morning cartoons say, I am seated to watch Bugs Bunny give Elmer Fudd a haircut to the immortal strains of Italian composer Gioacino Rossini's 19th -century opera The Barber of Seville.
Yes, of course I'm pronouncing his name correctly.
correctly. The slapping sounds there, that was Bugs Bunny using his ears to rhythmically massage Elmer Fudd's bald head.
Just FYI, I don't mean to narrate a Looney Tunes cartoon to you.
Speaking Speaking of Elmer Fudd, here's Elmer interpolating the Ride of the Valkyries, the big hit opera single from 19th century German composer Richard Wagner.
What? What did I do wrong now?
Wabbit Twikes. Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit.
I just love the smell of fruity pebbles in the morning.
What else we got going on in the mid -80s, Saturday morning cartoons -wise?
We got the Snorks. We got the Smurfs.
We got the Muppet Babies.
We got the real Ghostbusters.
We got the life -changing multimedia extravaganza Pee -wee's Playhouse.
For all you wrestling fans, we got Hulk Hogan's Rockin' Wrestling.
I, myself, as an eight -year -old, I was a WWF agnostic.
And also, I had no inkling that like 30 years later, a Hulk Hogan sex tape would functionally obliterate the powerful media company that employed me at the time.
I don't want to talk about it, but let's just say that I did not expect that.
And furthermore, I did not appreciate that shit at all.
And I will do my best not to let the Hulk Hogan sex tape bankruptcy fiasco retroactively discolor my fond childhood memories of hulk hogan's rock and wrestling though i will tell you honestly that as an eight -year -old my favorite wrestler theme song in that cartoon was rowdy roddy pipers hulk hogan's mortal enemy roddy piper would start playing the bagpipes and whatnot and everybody in the cartoon crowd on screen would start booing canonically within the universe of the show everyone agrees that rowdy roddy piper's music is bad but i'm sitting there at home and i'm like nah man let roddy cook
i'm hearing some arcade fire some godspeed you black emperor and of course also some corn i'm telling you rowdy roddy piper and his henchmen nickolai volkoff and whatnot these guys are really on to something here melodically there's got to be an alice coltrane record that sounds like this look i watched a lot of saturday morning cartoons and i took the liberty of committing the theme songs to muppet babies and the snorks and even like pole position to memory but looney tunes was the best bugs bunny was the best bugs bunny Bugs Bunny making Liberace jokes in a cartoon first released in 1955 was the best. I'm
sitting there in my footie pajamas in 1986 and I'm thinking, hmm, old shit might be better than new shit.
I'm paraphrasing, but you get me.
No offense to the Berenstain Bears or the Wuzzlers or whoever, but nothing beats when Bugs Bunny got pissed off at a pompous opera singer.
And so Bugs showed up at a big concert and disguised himself as a famous conductor and and made the opera singer hold a high note until the roof collapsed.
Tremendously satisfying conclusion.
You know that movie Whiplash about the mean jazz drummers?
That movie looks too mean for me, but I read the Wikipedia plot summary once, and apparently that movie's ending is similar.
Also, does that one Looney Tunes cartoon constitute 40 % of my total lifetime exposure to opera?
Don't worry about it.
Look, everything I know about music, I learned from cartoons.
That's what I'm telling you.
Jump to 1992 and I'm 14, and I still rely on cartoons for my musical education, even if my personal taste in cartoons tunes has gotten you know edgier happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy trust me this was super edgy in 1992 yes the ren and stimpy show which incredibly first aired on Nickelodeon and starred Ren the incredibly angry dog and Stimpy the lovably dim -witted cat you know what I don't want to explain this at all actually the Ren and Stimpy saga got a little too edgy on screen and off that's an original
song called happy happy joy joy and the line I told you I'd shoot but you didn't believe me why didn't you believe me bubbles into my subconscious every six months or so and the hell with the rest of it i need to quit all social media immediately permanently obviously but i can't yet because sometimes on social media i still stumble across a life -affirming clip of for example beavis and butthead watching the wicked game video i think we all knew we would wind up here on the couch in the mid 90s with mtv's very own Beavis and Butthead watching the softcore pornographic video for Chris Isaac's 1989
hit Wicked Game. What percentage of my teenage opinions about late 80s and 90s music did I receive directly from Beavis and Butthead?
What percentage of my current opinions about 90s music did I receive directly from Beavis and Butthead?
They are the two most influential rock critics of my lifetime with all apologies to like bob chris gower and powers or greg tate i'm sorry but if i delete twitter and instagram and blue sky and wow even threads from my phone then how else am i supposed to hear buttheads chris isaac impression where else will i get trenchant sociological analysis of the 1994 Blur song Parklife.
I can't really tell what he's saying.
Yeah, this must be English.
England sucks. That's the good shit right there.
There's a reason Beavis and Butthead has come up on this podcast like 50 ,000 times and that reason distilled into just two words is england sucks that's all i'm saying you know who else hasn't come up enough though you know the only cartoon superhero with enough clout to do an amusing and super awkward and semi -fake interview with rem frontman michael Stipe in 1995.
Why, that'd be space ghost. Sing that shiny, shiny people song.
No, I'll get you started.
Shiny, shiny people.
Shiny, shiny people.
Oh, me too, Michael.
Me too. I love shiny, happy people.
If you want the truth, top 10 REM song.
I bet Michael Stipe agrees with me top 30 maybe space ghost the titular hero of the cheeseball 60s action adventure cartoon series brought to you by hannah barbara the animation monolith that of course also brought you scooby -doo and the flintstones and the jetsons and myriad other staples of one's saturday morning and or after school cartoon diet but who would emerge decades later not shaggy not george jetson not fred flintstone no space ghost would inexplicably re -emerge as a late night talk show host antagonizing your favorite rock stars police listen i can't worry about every little snafu
i have celebrities to talk to like moby celebrities so celebrities are more important than the safety and well nobody cares moby space goes coast to coast premiered on the Cartoon Network in 1994 it ran off and on until 2008 and it featured a beguiling mixture of vintage cheeseball animation and live -action interviews with the likes of Bjork Willie Nelson Hulk Hogan again Conan O 'Brien Weird Al Yankovic Fran Drescher and Tom York I can distill the tremendous appeal of Space Ghost Coast to Coast into just three words this time and those three words are nobody cares mobi and also it's that delightful
disjointed fake interview thing where the rock star is pretty obviously answering different questions than space ghost is asking and it's all humorously edited together maybe you had to be there and by be there i mean you had to be sitting on your couch at home by yourself as a teenager on a friday night watching cartoons cartoons.
Friday Night Cartoons, a tremendous and perhaps life -saving new innovation for the socially inept.
George Lowe, the voice of Space Ghost for the 11 -season lifespan of Space Ghost Coast to Coast. George Lowe died in March 2025 at 67 years old after a long illness.
In his voice, George's stentorian Space Ghost deadpan voice, it bubbles up into my subconscious every few days And I am eternally grateful to him for that.
Bugs Bunny taught a generation.
Bugs Bunny taught multiple generations of impressionable children about classical music.
Space Ghost taught multiple generations of impressionable teenagers about secretly hilarious anti -comedy surrealism.
On the great sports and culture website Defector, the great blogger Barry Picheski wrote a lovely eulogy with the headline, George Lowe had to be brilliant to make Space Ghost that stupid.
And Barry, who's younger than me, but not by a lot, Barry writes, quote, watching Space Ghost coast to coast always felt like I was getting away with something.
I just wasn't sure what.
But staying up past my bedtime, both my parents asleep, sitting in the dark and watching this bizarre cartoon on a cable channel, ostensibly for children, not quite getting many of the jokes or anti jokes, but understanding on some level that it was all very funny.
I assumed I wasn't old enough to understand it, which at that age is one of the most thrilling feelings in the world.
end quote and i found that quite moving honestly as a confused and thrilled teenager back then myself and i'm saying that even though i personally have always been a brack guy i remember this moment so clearly so space ghost coast to coast is successful enough to inspire fire a 1995 Cartoon Network spinoff show called Cartoon Planet, which is stylized as an even more chaotic variety show starring Space Ghost and two of the villains from the original 60s show, namely Zorak the Space Mantis and Brack the Cat Alien.
That's B -R -A -K. And it turns out that Brack, voiced here by Andy Merrill, Brack has one of the funniest voices I have ever heard in my entire higher life.
In fact, I first discover when I hear Brack singing a song called Don't Touch Me in my grandparents' living room.
This song is 50 seconds long about my grandmother and grandpap's house in rural southwestern Pennsylvania.
I'm sitting with my younger brother in the living room.
No adults in this room with us.
The cartoon network's on.
That's Space Ghost beatboxing, and my brother and I are both immediately of the opinion that this is the funniest thing that has ever been shown on television.
I still remember every place in this song where I laughed, in part because my brother was right there laughing also.
Don't touch me! Don't touch me!
Hey! Oh! Don't touch me!
Okay, maybe you had to be there, and so it's a good thing that I was there.
I am not quite the man I am today if I'm not there.
Brack got his own spinoff show.
I owned a couple of Cartoon Planet CDs.
Space Ghost Coast to Coast spun off a bunch more weird animation classics, most notably Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
The Cartoon Network debuts an initially late -night programming block called Adult Swim in September 2001 in a new and spectacularly weird 21st century animation monolith is born.
Squidbillies, The Boondocks, Rick and Morty eventually, etc. Can I personally wrap my head around all of those shows?
No. Rick and Morty especially.
But I respect, I understand the necessity of all of it.
Cartoons raised me, pretty much. Cartoons taught me about music, pretty much and so by 2001 i am primed to receive i am ready to welcome my new cartoon rock star overlords one last thing one last maybe the very last great thing social media ever gave me a couple days back i saw this video i think on blue sky i saw this skeet is that what you call a post On Blue Sky Skeet?
I'm never saying that out loud again, obviously.
I saw this video that's just 30 seconds of unhinged screaming from old Looney Tunes episodes.
This is more appealing than it sounds.
Trust me. What am I doing?
Turn out those lights!
Quiet! Now get this.
If you're late one more time, you're fired.
Get to work. what percentage of that screaming was mel blank god tier looney tunes voice actor mel blank who provided the voice for like everyone that was five different looney tunes characters but voice -wise was that entirely mel blank he was the best in the youtube description for that video it says why can't cartoons be like this anymore and meanwhile i'm wondering where have i heard bizarrely appealing, unhinged, cartoonish screaming like that recently.
And two seconds later, I was like, oh, right.
My name is Rob Harvilla.
This is the 16th episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, colon the 2000s.
This week we are, it's still funny, this week we are discussing Feel Good Inc.
by the bizarrely massive cartoon rock band Gorillaz from their 2005 album Demon Days.
Gorillaz are canonically a fake, they are a virtual band with now 20 plus years of elaborate comic book lore built up around them gorillas are also of course a groundbreaking collaboration between blur frontman damon all barn and comic book artist jamie hewlett featuring an ever -spiraling constellation of guest stars that's feel good inc as in feel good incorporated and speaking of guest stars this song of course features the god tier long island rap trio de la soul that is maceo from de la soul scream laughing there maceo aka pacemaster mace aka plug three aka vincent mason the dj and producer
and rapper and occasional scream laugher who comprises one -third of de la soul i hope i never give maceo any reason to laugh at me if you prefer de la soul at their screamiest then i would direct you also to their 1993 album Balloon Mindstate, and specifically the song Ego Trippin' Part 2.
If you're listening to the Balloon Mindstate album on headphones late at night to unwind right before bed, that song, Ego Trip Part Two, might re -unwind you, just speaking from personal experience.
You know another crucial element of the Saturday morning cartoons experience?
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just to fully replicate the 80s saturday morning cartoons experience i really hope that you just heard an ad for pop tarts or bubble yum or betty crocker's pudding roll -ups available in milk chocolate chocolate fudge or butterscotch or honeycomb or lucky charms or cocoa and fruity pebbles just a staggering array of ultra sugary breakfast cereals available in the reagan era all of which I consumed in vast quantities, and that, too, has made me the man I am today.
And now, a brief word on Britpop.
It's over. You don't need to tell me.
It's over. over it is 1999 and britpop one of the coolest and rowdiest and bitchiest and most geographically distinct musical revolutions of the decade is over england sucks that's not true england is fine but britpop is over this is a blur song from 1999 called no distance left to run the best britpop song is common people by pulp the best britpop album is either definitely maybe or or parenthesis, what's the story, close parenthesis, morning glory, question mark by Oasis, one of those.
They're both rad as hell.
You pick. And the best Brit pop band is Suede.
I'm just kidding. Those guys are rad, too.
But yeah, it's Oasis.
Don't overthink it.
They sure didn't. You ask me, point blank, Blur, or Oasis, it's Oasis.
Is that a frontrunner opinion?
Not to mention a knucklehead who grew up in Ohio opinion?
Sure, probably. But speaking as a knucklehead who grew up in Ohio, there was always an arm's length aura to blur even peak blur butthead for sure did not appreciate their landmark 1994 album parklife but i could sense even back then that i'd be cooler if i did appreciate parklife more and sure i dug their biggest alt -rock radio hits there's no other way girls and boys woohoo etc but nah as a 90s teenager i never got heavy into blur too snooty too bratty too whiny voiced too condescending too english but in 1999 blur put out their sixth album in my favorite this album is called 13 and this song
the penultimate track and big grandiose whiny finish is called no distance left to run and yeah blur frontman damon albarn is whining here but he's crooning whining he's emoting he's in sad sack breakup album mode and okay this i can and heavily vibe with back in Ohio.
Damon Albarn is crooning, whining very explicitly about his breakup with Justine Frischmann of Elastica, a fellow viable candidate for Best Brit Pop Band.
and for whatever reason i have never forgotten justine talking to the enemy in 2000 about how hurt and how pissed she was when she first heard this blur album 13 which she thought was milking their breakup she says quote i squirmed when i heard it i was really surprised at how personal it was we were breaking up and damon was very secretive about what he was recording which was was unlike him.
If I'd heard it, I would have asked him to tone it down.
I've always had a horror of my private life being exposed for all to see like that, end quote.
She also says, and this is the part that really struck me in my early 20s, Justine says, quote, He didn't talk to me, he wrote about it.
But if he'd spent as much time giving me emotional support as he spent writing songs about not getting it, we might not have broken up, end quote.
Quote, that concept, that image, that dichotomy has stuck with me.
Writing about it versus doing it.
Saving someone from drowning versus writing a song called, oh, geez, I wish I could save you from drowning.
Anyway, Justine adds that she cried the first time she heard No Distance Left to Run.
And same deal with the first song on Thirteen.
Another grandiose little jam called Tender.
and meanwhile i love this album suddenly i love blur now and possibly that's just down to the tone of Damon Albarn's voice.
Historically, I had always found Damon's singing voice to be a little too smug and sardonic and yelpy and droopy, but dig the macho vulnerable bass dip right there.
Love's the greatest thing.
And the backing choir too on Tender.
Come on, come on, come on.
The heightened scale, the unapologetic air of grandiosity.
Not every rock song with a choir works.
And in fact, most rock songs with a choir sound at least a little bloated and ridiculous, but the naked ambition, the brazen rock star pompousness, even the outright bloated ridiculousness of Damon Albarn hits different, hits harder.
Blur will carry on into the 21st century and they'll put out a few more albums, including a new one in 2023.
And they'll headline Coachella in 2024, but the kids in the crowd won't give a shit and Damon will get all pissy about it.
And I love it when that happens, personally, when an old vaunted rock band bombs with the youth at a major festival.
Shout out to Stone Roses.
But Blur's going to be fine, basically.
But here, at the end of the 90s, Damon Albarn, having milked his high profile romantic relationship for content and having spent most of the decade trading bitchy insults with Oasis and Suede and so forth in the press.
Damon is realizing that maybe he ought to at least pretend to be a little less personally famous.
Sidebar, Justine Frischman of Elastica previously dated the lead singer of Suede, Brett Anderson, and so Damon and Brett would trade bitchy insults.
And in 1994, Damon tells Loaded Magazine that, quote, I've always been more of an intellectual bisexual, end quote.
And he also says, quote, I'll say this though, I'm more homosexual than Brett Anderson.
And that's arrogance, my friends.
Claiming that you're more homosexual than your heterosexual romantic rival.
Sidebar number two, there apparently was some controversy over who wrote Blur's song 2 from 1997, the Woohoo song.
And Damon has said that, quote, people in the States are always trying to take credit for it but he insists that he wrote it he's got the demos to prove it and on twitter in 2024 in response to some tweet on this topic liam gallagher of oasis goes quote gotta be off your box to claim to have written that song absolute turdos end quote turdos TURDOS in all caps.
T -U -R -D -O -S. TURDOS.
Incredible. England rules.
Also, that's why Oasis is better than Blur.
But even by 1997, Damon Albarn realizes he better change his personal vibe, or at least his personal brand.
That year, he tells the UK newspaper, the Sunday Times, Quote, wanting to be the biggest is a weakness.
I slowly recognized that in myself.
It was a flaw in my personality that I wanted to be the most famous, the most loved.
I'm on top of that now.
End quote. Fantastic.
I dig this rock star tone tremendously.
Not only am I the best at being bisexual, but now I'm the best at not wanting to be the best. recently i became eageless i think that's worth a round of applause i love it but also damon aubarn in the late 90s compared with all his brit pop friends and all his brit pop enemies damon has something that basically nobody else has he's starting to get another idea and one facet of this other idea shows up briefly on the blur album 13 at the tail end of a noisy and crunchy song called mellow song that high keening melody right there that's our egoless friend damon albarn on the melodica the melodica you
know that little keyboard that you play while blowing into it sort of half tiny piano half harmonica you get a frail feathery eerie plaintive wounded songbird vibe out of the melodica you know that awesome cheesy 80s arena pop song and we danced by that band the hooters i didn't name them they're from Philadelphia and they're grown men who make their own decisions and they name themselves the Hooters.
Anyway, fantastic melodica intro here by the Hooters.
And we danced like a wave on the ocean.
Roam at great song.
For sure, it was the Hooters who first inspired Damon Albarn to take up the melodica.
No. OK, more likely Damon was inspired by something, by someone slightly hipper.
Augustus Pablo, say Jamaican reggae legend Augustus Pablo, who we observe here throwing on the melodica on the title track to his phenomenal 1976 album king tubbies meets rockers uptown i love this record so much put on king tubbies meets rockers uptown by augustus pablo at your your next barbecue or house party or whatever, and you will have quite literally the time of your life.
Damon Albarn has spent the 90s touring with Blur, expanding his musical horizons, getting deeper into dub and funk and hip -hop and electro, and the hilariously offensively broad category of world music, which at its broadest, world music applies to any music that is not made by sneering, English -speaking gentlemen with guitars.
This is all giving Damon in another idea.
And so Damon starts toting his melodica around with him.
And thus here we have Damon's melodica and also his yelpy droopy voice on a song released in the year 2000 called Time keeps on slipping, but Damon is merely a guest this time because this song is brought to us by Deltron 3030, the science fiction rap trio of producer Dan the Automator, turntablist Kid Koala, and also this guy.
Mathematical astro, grapple flow, pterodactyl, very factual crash course, Del the Funky Homosapien, the beloved Oakland rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, who did indeed just rhyme mathematical, astrograpple flow, pterodactyl, and neurological cubbyhole.
I love this guy very much. And this guy is about to collaborate again with melodica enthusiast Damon Albarn on a delightful and inexplicable major pop hit.
But then again, delightful and inexplicable is historically how Dell the funky homo sapien rolls.
from the instant i evoked the name del the funky homo sapien i think we all knew we would wind up here with his 1991 breakout hit mr dobolina that's a monkeys sample kind of fake and kind of real 60s tv rockers the monkeys this song of course is taken from del's 1991 debut album which is called Hey, how about that?
I wish my brother George was here.
Did I know when I bought this CD at the Amoeba Records in Berkeley, California, did I know that the album title, I Wish My Brother George Was Here, was a cheeky reference to Bugs Bunny making a cheeky reference to Liberace?
No, I did not know that.
Did I instead think that Dell the Funky Homo Sapien had a real life brother named George whom he missed?
Yes. Yes, I did think that.
Did I therefore mistakenly project a melancholy, perhaps even a grieving tone onto the entire remarkably lighthearted Dell the Funky Homo Sapien album?
I wish my brother George was here.
Maybe. Perhaps. Perhaps.
Meanwhile, Del is just blissfully talking trash about Mr. Dabalina.
Just to reiterate, Del the Funky Homo Sapien does not have a brother named George, but he does have a cousin named Ice Cube who serves as the high -profile co -producer of this this album, I wish my brother George was here.
And despite my confusion, what I love about Del immediately is his sense of place.
His geographical specificity is world building.
Whether the world he is building is intergalactically spectacular or defiantly mundane.
The next song on this record is called The Wacky World of Rapid Transit, in which Del takes the bus from the East Bay to san francisco that's the plot that's the premise of this song if you've ever taken the bus across the bay bridge then you know this to be an epic oregon trail caliber excursion so when this song dell is trying to ignore all the jerks and weirdos trying to talk to him the whole time starting at the bus stop and what i remember most and what i love most about this This whole album is the way Del says, I don't have time to listen to your stories.
And so, based entirely on his majestic delivery of I don't have time to listen to your stories I will be listening to Del the Funky Homo Sapien for the rest of my life and dell builds a robust solo career for himself in the 90s balancing such whimsical adventures with genuine battle rapper fury on 1993 is no need for alarm he's really really mad at a writer for rolling stone i'm still trying to get to the bottom of that one but i do love dell best as a painter of landscapes when he sets a scene and fully verbally inhabits it the sights the sounds the sense, the vivid ambiance.
In 1997, Dell puts out an album called Future Development.
This song is called Corner Store.
It's about how he's walking with his friends in Oakland down to the corner store.
And this song is, in the best and most sincere sense of the word, transportive.
between and if I pass by with beer they will look at me mean so what you can feel the children rudely brushing past your legs you can breathe in all the smells wafting out of the muslim bakery and you can feel yourself withering beneath the disapproving glares of the dudes in the muslim bakery if you're passing by with beer dell has a rare and precious gift gift for storytelling, for galaxy building.
And he further proves this in 2000 on the Deltron 3030 record, in which Dell portrays Deltron Zero, a young mech soldier and computer prodigy rebelling against a 31st century Orwellian dystopia in his quest to smash the state and become Galactic Rhyme Federation champion.
Don't overthink it.
That's his job. This song called Virus I basically levitated the first time I heard Del rhyme virus with papyrus also there's a skit on this Deltron 3030 album that's just a review a positive review of the movie Strange Brew the 1983 super Canadian Rick Moranis cult comedy classic Strange Brew, Hosers and whatnot.
It's a great movie.
There's a lot going on here.
Del the Funky Homo Sapien thrives in environments where there's a lot going on.
So let's get this guy onto a mainstream pop hit already, shall we?
okay this song is called clint eastwood it is performed by the band gorillas and features dell the funky homo sapien the first gorillas album self -titled gorillas with a z is released in march 2001 gorillas are in our human universe a collaboration between super famous rock star Damon Albarn, and also pretty famous comic book luminary Jamie Hewlett, perhaps best known for co -creating the Tank Girl series.
FYI, in the court of public opinion, it appears that the Tank Girl comics are slightly better than the 1995 Tank Girl movie soundtrack, featuring Bjork Hull and Portishead, and that soundtrack in turn is way better than the 1995 live -action Tank Girl movie starring Lori Petty.
Okay, Damon's got the sound.
Jamie's got the vision.
Our Deltron 3030 friend Dan the Automator, no stranger to elaborate concepts, he serves as co -producer.
Simple enough, Gorillaz are officially, canonically, a cartoon rock band, a virtual rock band, a quartet consisting of four cartoon characters.
And I cannot decide, right up to this very moment, I cannot decide how deep we want to get into guerrilla's lore which is quite impressive and daunting which is biblical in scope and density even if you're a guerrilla's agnostic I suspect that you have stumbled across many images album covers, music videos, live performances and various web extras depicting the members of guerrillas who are, okay, Murdoch is the glowering satanic megalomaniacal dark -haired hedonist bass player and mastermind russell 1l is the gigantic white -eyed drummer and hip -hop oracle noodles she's the diminutive pre -teen
japanese guitarist and 2d not 3d but 2d 2d is the black -eyed blue -haired emaciated singer and keyboardist who likes zombie movies that's enough lore for now i think you could spend the next two weeks solid consuming nothing but gorillas lore exploring the bowels of kong studios and whatnot gorillas had a great website back in the early 2000s back when websites felt new and dangerous most interviews with gorillas especially in the beginning starting around 2001 even in like rolling stone or the various british weeklies or whatever most gorillas interviews are styled as has conversations with these
cartoon characters, where Noodles is thoughtful and spiritual and Tootie is pretty oblivious and Murdoch is a huge jerk and so forth.
There's a lot going on here, conceptually.
And not every artist thrives in such a heavily stylized environment.
But fortunately, we know at least one guy who does.
So, okay. So a while back, my kids, my two pre -teenage boys, they stumble across this gorilla song, Clint Eastwood, on YouTube or whatever, and they love it.
And we play it in the car all the time.
And sometimes I remember to play the clean version without the F -bomb, but usually I forget.
This is a hit pop song, Clint Eastwood.
it made the billboard hot 100 at number 57 but notably that is higher than any blur song ever even woohoo didn't make the hot 100 at all the first gorillas album sells 7 million copies worldwide which is way better than any blur album which is possibly better than every blur album combined and i'd like to know of all the millions of people who know and love this song i'd like to to know what percentage of those people are aware that canonically del the funky homo sapien is rapping on this song clint eastwood from the perspective of del russell the gorilla's cartoon drummer's dead friend russell
the cartoon drummer is from brooklyn right and all russell's friends including del were killed in a drive -by shooting that russell mysteriously survived and all russell's dead friends possessed russell they were sucked into russell's body and they live on inside him that's why his eyes are milky white and russell moved to england to escape all this violence and he joins gorillas and on clint eastwood the ghost of dell emerges from russell's body and starts rapping and this explains the lines now i'm sucked into your lies through russell not his muscles but percussion he provides.
I just don't think this is translating well to the podcast format.
All this guerrillas lore.
That's my concern. Forget it.
Here's the chorus. now canonically this is the voice of 2d the wayfish zombie -esque gorillas cartoon frontman 2d but no really it's our old pal Damon Albarn both his droopy voice and his melodica and this is a remarkably fantastic pop hook the Clint Eastwood chorus given that Damon sounds half asleep or perhaps even half dead I got sunshine he sounds like muppet baby Bob Dylan I don't mean that pejoratively I mean that right from the first Gorillaz album the first of eight Gorillaz studio studio albums and counting not counting remix projects and whatnot immediately we have no problem hearing
what is clearly damon all barns voice but imagining that it's actually emanating from a zonked out black eyed cartoon character that song is called five four as in the time signature and yes the chorus is she turned my dad on and doesn't damon's voice just make more sense to you as a subversive cartoon okay one thing i'll say about gorilla's cartoon lore there's a huge perplexing rabbit hole of old early 2000s website shenanigans and short videos and fake interviews and whatnot not and there's this early 53 second guerrillas video called free tibet it's a real life video of six men sitting cross
-legged on the sidewalk outside the chinese embassy in london and they are protesting china's treatment of tibet and 2d the cartoon guerrillas front man the blue -haired semi -zombie guy.
2D is part of the protest. He is animated into this scene.
He is sitting there silently, reverently with these real life protesters.
And you just see them all sitting there.
And then there's a little title card with information about the Free Tibet campaign, along with a URL for freetibet .org.
And that's the video.
And watching this video for the first time across these 53 seconds my reaction goes from oh wow to oh no to hmm maybe to yeah sure to okay this is weird but kind of lovely it's a journey to my mind this clip swings from disrespectful to cautiously respectful to oddly moving in less than a minute you are free to never ever engage With the virtual cartoon band aspect of Gorillaz, that is an opt -in experience.
It is not necessary to enjoy this music, but that cartoon versus IRL dissonance can be fascinating and confusing and slightly troubling and bizarrely heartening if you are willing to indulge it.
Okay, as the Gorillaz project rumbles on, these records will get increasingly guest star heavy, but here on the band's 2001 self -titled debut, we get a modest handful of features.
Most notably, beloved Cuban singer and Buena Vista Social Club luminary, Ibrahim Ferrer, who does not have, nor does he require, a convoluted cartoon alter ego.
That song is called Latin Simone, parentheses, que pasa contigo, close parentheses, and dig Damon's melodica sneaking into the mix again amidst the trumpet.
My personal favorite song on the first Gorillaz record is called 19 -2000, a title that nicely sums up the evolution, the transition, the psychological journey from the 90s to the 2000s that Damon is attempting here.
But don't worry too much about any of that, because the chorus to this song is Get The Cool Shoe Shine.
infectious that's noodles the underage cartoon japanese guitarist on vocals there voiced actually by miho hatori from the great new york city avant rock band chibomato uh tina weymouth god to your basis for talking head she's in the background there somewhere as well and i'm also delighted to hear from either of them but i think we can agree that nobody on this first gorilla's record is having more fun than dell the funky homo sapien i want to get down lower than atlantis going toe -to -toe with an enchantress it's funkier than Funkadelic wearing Pampers while you eggheads is on the wall preparing
answers And God bless Del, truly, for emerging from within Russell, the Gorillaz drummer's body once again, to rhyme Atlantis, Enchantress, funkier than Funkadelic wearing pampers, and While You Eggheads is on the wall preparing answers on another rad single called Rock the the house now if you come to this song to this first gorillas album as a huge fan of del the funky homo sapien you might be tempted to be dismayed that these are the biggest hits of his career the most radio play the most mtv play by far the most streams now it's a drag maybe that del could only reach his commercial apex within this splendid
but quite convoluted virtual universe verse.
But just from the buoyant tone of his voice here, Dell doesn't sound concerned about any of that at all.
So maybe let's do like he does and do what he says.
there we go great advice great trumpet line also on rock the house so partly gorillas is a full full -blown subversion of Damon Albarn's ego.
Yes, he's not in the videos, in live performances, heavy on giant TV screens and holographic effects and whatnot.
He's a shadow lurking behind a curtain with the rest of the real life band, like the Wizard of Oz.
He's not even officially in the band.
But on the other hand, this is a huge flex for Damon Albarn, a way to flaunt all his cool, famous friends, defraud his immaculate globe trotting musical taste defraud how quickly and decisively he can leave all his old brit pop friends and enemies far behind it's not just that with gorillas he's had another idea this is a much bigger idea conceptually and commercially gorillas far surpasses blur at this point with younger people especially gorillas don't brick at coachella put it that way Is Damon pleased with himself about this?
Of course he is. Talking to Wired Magazine in 2005, Damon says, quote, Gorillaz shouldn't be denied any of the affectations of genuine rock stars just because they're cartoons.
They've been very successful, so now they have more money, and they can make bigger, more grandiose videos.
The paradox is that by being completely artificial, artificial gorillas is a lot less artificial than a boy band or any of these other constructed entities we're all used to end quote yeah we're talking the early to mid -2000s here there's a lot of anti -teen pop sentiment and a lot of anti -american idol sentiment x -factor all these reality tv pop stars gorillas are a shrewd commentary on the disposability of 21st century pop culture.
Gorillas fake it so real, they are beyond fake.
Is that all a bit pompous?
Maybe. Probably. But when I put on the gorilla's song Dirty Harry, do I still levitate when the children's choir drops out and the beat comes in?
Absolutely. oh my god i could listen to this song on repeat for three hours it is 2005 now and the second gorillas album is called demon days and gorillas can now deploy a children's choir without sounding bloated and ridiculous that is way harder to pull off than a regular choir uh producer wise this This time we got Danger Mouse, a .k .a.
Brian Burton, clocking in just a year after his 2004 internet sensation The Grey Album, which mashed up Jay -Z's Black Album with the Beatles' White Album and unleashed an avalanche of think pieces.
Danger Mouse has a tendency to make everything sound like a spaghetti western, but he works great here.
We got the immortal galaxy building rapper MF Doom on this record. We got Sean Ryder of the immortal late 80s, early 90s Manchester rock band Happy Mondays on this record. Martina Topley Bird, Roots Maneuva, Booty Brown from The Far Side.
It's cool if those names mean anything to you, but it's also totally cool if they don't because suddenly this riff is all that matters.
So all you filial streets, there's a pain to see You won't get undercounted cause you standin' free Yeah, first of all, the only part of Feel Good, Inc.
that really matters is Doot, doo -doo -doo, doo -doo, doo -doo -doo, doo -doo -doo, doo -doo -doo, et cetera Just an astounding riff The lyrics do not matter Damon Albarn's somehow even more half -asleep or half -dead vocal tone does not matter doesn't matter this song is a triumph of riffology a triumph of groove a triumph of multiversal atmosphere so i myself spent just a little time awash in gorilla's lore which included reading a 2007 graphic novel type autobiography of the band called gorillas colon rise of the ogre which you can buy now for like a hundred bucks minimum or you can just read it for free
on the internet and you got to adjust to the convoluted cartoon backstory of it all these are extensive interviews with primarily the four virtual members of gorillas but you do hear damon albarn both the egolessness and the sizable ego of damon albarn you hear him very clearly through the voices of these characters at one point noodles she's the young japanese guitarist and moral center of the band noodles explains the essence of gorillas like this she says quote for many groups and artists there is a desire to add to a tradition or a history of music rather than stand apart from it or advance
it they seem happy just to be in a band for them Em, that is enough.
The security comes from the closeness of the impersonation.
End quote. Feel Good, Inc.
is the moment when I realized that Damon Albarn was trying to advance the history of music.
And I think he actually kind of did.
Okay, so there is indeed a windmill in the Feel Good Inc.
video. A flying windmill island that Jamie Hewlett, the visual half of Gorillaz, Jamie has explained that the flying windmill was inspired by the beloved 1986 animated film Castle in the Sky, directed of course by Hayao Miyazaki who runs the Japanese prestige animation monolith Studio Ghibli as usual nice to know but not necessary to know the flying windmill here represents the tower of soul -eroding rock star hedonism in which the members of gorillas have imprisoned themselves that's also nice to know but even less necessary to know Damon is crooning a little more tunefully here on the pre -chorus
but he is also shrinking he is fading into the background he is further subverting slash burnishing his ego he is dissolving he is teeing up the true stars of feel -good ink because at long last de la soul have arrived to trash your whole computer system and revert you to papyrus it's my chocolate attack laughing gas hazmats fast cats ass cracks play these ponies at the track it's my chocolate attack rest in peace to trugoy the dove aka dave aka plug two aka david jallikor aka one -third of de la soul dave passed away at 54 on february 12th 2023 just as de la soul's priceless early catalog was finally
available digitally and so in 2005 this is what makes feel -good ink so glorious and so bittersweet de la soul are all -time rap legends even then but they're magnificent first four records three feet high and rising in 1989 de la soul is dead in 91 balloon mind state in 93 and stakes is high in 96 they are not available via itunes not available via official digital channels, including streaming when streaming blows up in the early 2010s.
As with Dell the Funky Homo Sapien, Gorillaz are providing De La Soul with by far their biggest commercial hit.
De La Soul themselves put out three ambitious and fascinating new albums in the early 2000s, but those albums neither blow up nor go pop.
But Feel Good Inc. goes top 20 at its number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Notably, in the video and beyond, the three members of De La Soul, Dave, Maceo, and Paz Dinus, they are not cartoon characters with elaborate backstories.
They are, simply and triumphantly, themselves.
And they sound like 500 -feet -tall superheroes because that is what they are.
You win the play. Don't bite the dust. Can't fight with us.
With your sound, you kill the ant.
So don't stop. Get it, get it.
Until you chair the head to watch the way I navigate.
Or perhaps De La Soul are the 500 -foot -tall supervillains here, what with all the maniacal laughter.
Did you know that Gorillaz opened the 2006 Grammys?
Like the whole show?
Go watch that sometime.
You got Wizard of Oz, Damon Albarn, and his real life backing band totally out of sight.
You got the Cartoon Gorillaz on stage in hologram form.
It's sort of a hologram, but more accurately, it's a high tech version of the classic Pepper's Ghost illusion.
That's a real thing.
But never mind that now.
The volume, the bass frequencies couldn't be too loud on stage or it would ruin the illusion somehow.
Don't ask me why or how exactly.
Never mind. I just think about all the big stars at the 2006 Grammy Grammys.
Let's see. Green Day, U2, Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey, Kanye West. All these pop stars forced to sit there and watch Murdoch, the evil guerrilla's bassist in semi -hologram form.
Murdoch's prowling the stage in his underwear alongside his virtual bandmates with the flesh and blood dudes from De La Soul camped out in front and having what appears to be the time of their lives whilst basically screaming.
What a baffling and beautiful moment this is for Damon Albarn's other idea and De La LaSol to join forces and be anointed as primetime mainstream pop stars.
Pop stars proudly made in Bugs Bunny's image.
Bugs Bunny watching as the roof collapses on the opera singer.
Yeah, England rules.
Virtual bands rule.
The future rules. All hail our new cartoon rock star overlords.
And then, here on the Grammy stage, here on music's biggest night, here comes the punchline.
my god that's madonna's music as they say in professional wrestling that is literally madonna's music did you know that gorillas and de la soul and madonna joined forces to open the 2006 Grammys.
They opened like the whole show.
Madonna also is a semi -hologram on stage in this moment.
Though the illusion is so convincing that I don't think everybody realized that at the time that Madonna ain't physically on stage yet.
It's nice to know, but it's not necessary to know.
All you need to know is that nobody on this stage and nobody lurking behind It is satisfied, is happy just being in a band.
Even now, watching Gorillaz team up with Madonna, I do not quite understand what is happening here.
But I know it's funny, and I know it's cool, and that is still one of the most thrilling feelings in the world.
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Our guests today, we are delighted to be joined by Jeremy Gordon, writer, editor, and author.
He's worked for Pitchfork and Spin and The Outline.
He's currently a senior editor at The Atlantic, and his fantastic debut novel called Sea Friendship is available now.
Jeremy, welcome. Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me.
of course uh i think all my questions are minor variations on the same question like how did gorillas get so huge and so huge specifically with young people i think this is a band that is continually bigger than i think it is you know what i mean yeah absolutely i i saw them a couple of years ago at the barclays center in brooklyn and frankly i was shocked by the makeup of the the crowd.
It was extremely cross -generational, very young, very racially mixed, very diverse.
It's not to be naive, but I just wasn't expecting it.
And then as I was thinking a little bit more about it, it seemed to me like Damon Elbarn had sort of been ahead of the curve and anticipating a lot of intersecting trends of the 21st century, the popularization of anime and hip hop, the sort of genre -free way that the Internet encouraged all sorts of different subcultures and demographics to smash together.
In that sense, the gorillas really felt to me like something that sort of tapped into trends before they were even trends as far as the broader population was concerned.
And now 25 years later, all of these elements that make up the band are sort of ascendant culturally, and they have kind of become a legacy act in my brain in terms of all the stuff coming together.
Do you think that Damon understood when he started the band that that's what he was doing?
Was this a really deliberate attempt to get ahead of where he saw music going, or this is just a weird thing he decided to do that sort of blew up?
it's a good question i think when he started the band at least as far as i you know uh recounted in my research he was thinking of it as just a way to make a different type of music without the baggage of being in blur i was very conscious of the fact that blur was so uh successful for for having a certain type of sound i think he specifically mentioned that you know if he wanted wanted to make a reggae song as Damon Albarn, as Blur, that would be weighted with so many expectations and stereotypes.
He struck me as someone who was intensely aware of his own iconography as a rock star, so to speak.
And Gorillaz, to me, without being able to read his mind, I think one of the things that makes him such a great pop musician is, as with any sort of pop musician, is their ability to kind of latch on to stuff that is happening before other people even are aware.
Or maybe not the qualities of a pop musician, but someone with excellent taste.
Someone who is able to kind of have his finger to the pulse and sense what is out there.
Because 25 years ago, I mean, it's not like hip -hop was only popular 25 years ago, or anime, for example.
But anime was a little, I would say, undercover in the broader culture.
The notion of the internet being this kind of unifying force for all these different currents, that was very much new.
But there are certainly people who were a little bit more hip to what was going on.
And it's not a struggle for me to imagine he was one of them.
How invested are you personally in the virtual band, the anime aspect, the cartoon backstory behind this band?
Do you get the sense also that the people in that crowd at the arena show, are the biggest fans of this band really invested in the cartoon aspect?
Or are there some people who don't really engage with that at all?
It's not necessary.
Me personally, I was never particularly invested, but there is certainly a through line and a consistency to the backstory, not just sonically, but certainly visually.
I mean one of the really impressive things about the show is that there's so the band performs as a standard band band plays It's just Damon and all the members on stage but they have a video screen a backdrop that is constantly playing different footage and a lot of it is mostly collage from their existing music videos and What I was most impressed by was the sort of evolution of the animation I mean you start out in at the start of their career.
It's very like flat thick lines 2d And you go all the way to the modern day and it's very sort of 3D rich, developed, colorful, full bodied.
I cannot speak to the importance of the mythology to anyone, but you have to imagine that it's one of those like Easter sort of a surface, you know, as deep as a lake.
But be interesting enough to look at for the kids who really want to get into it.
uh not to generalize by young people these days but i feel like if you make lore sort of appealing um appealing and consistent there's certainly people who are going to get into it uh for a time at least so you got into gorillas first and then went back to blur and i'm just wondering what that experience was like like what does gorillas give you that blur doesn't and maybe vice versa when gorillas first came out i was in grade school i think or maybe i was i was was in grade school and i was into anime and i was into music as a concept of as as something that i heard on the radio and kept abreast
of in my uh you know sort of uh schoolyard rhythms but uh sort of like the the bigger just the the things that you become more attuned to as you get older like where a band fits in or the sort of this album being better than that album like none of of that really appealed to me uh but clint eastwood i mean most fundamentally it it sounded cool and they looked cool it was an interesting even by the standards of uh you know i at the time i was pretty familiar with like manga and superhero comics and all that stuff and the look of the gorilla stuff was very striking and then and it still is now it
is not dated visually to me whatsoever it was like cutting edge and it was just it was strange there was a a weird undertone to it and i think you know my only awareness of blur at that time is i knew that they were like the woohoo band uh song too being like very omnipresent for a little bit that is certainly something that like speaks to the i mean the saw is that uh please correct me if i'm wrong in this but as i understand like song two was written as kind of like a laugh at like oh look at how simple we can make it for it feels pretty sardonic yeah yeah and then of course the fact that it
took off hugely in America like Rude to his point but you know it's a from the other side of it like a thousand bands could have attempted to write a song like that but this one took off in the way that it did and I think that is the kind of quality of pop inventiveness that he had to you know make it look make it look and sound cool I mean it's not to it's easy to overthink it when when you're you know paid to do it but I am always struck by this quote that Tom Petty once had about the birds he was writing about them for a Rolling Stone retrospective and he just said not to be shallow but they
were the coolest guys around they just looked at the coolest they had the best outfits the best hair like they were just good to look at he's like that's why they were so big that's why we liked him like they sounded great they looked great like what more do you need right gorillas the birds of the 21st century i'm always saying this so it's validating for me i think back to it was a couple coachellas ago right where blur played and they sort of bricked right like the crowd was sort of dead and damon was super mad like it's interesting to me that the huge success of the gorillas has not really
helped blur that much among young people maybe i'm wrong about that but like do you get the sense that a lot of people a lot of kids like you got into gorillas then went back to blur or is there sort of a wall between these two projects to this day i think it's so different i mean but it because yeah i forget this i'll never forget this i met uh someone i was talking to some people at the concert and i met this father and daughter duo and the dad was like an old punk who was like i loved blur and his daughter was like i heard her his daughter was like oh you know i really like my dad's music but then
like gorillas but i like anime myself more um it's not that i think that there's a huge divide between it but i guess from a surface level there is i mean one is a more conventional rock and roll band and gorillas have lots of like sonic elements to it that are just not uh found in blur and then the visual thing is just completely different and frankly i think this is part of the reason why they've uh courted a younger crowd i mean they can sort of uh cover up the fact that they are are a bunch of uh you know no no slight to any asian white men in the world but they're a group of asian asian white
men and the sort of visuals being able to hide behind the like graphics of it is um it sort of distracts from that uh from that that fact of it um but you know i mean i think not just what was it's not just that the crowd was uh diverse or like younger it's that they lost lost their minds at every single song.
Every single cut got a huge reaction.
This was not, it was not like, it was not just a singles only thing.
It was like the fifth single off their sixth album would get like huge screams. I mean, they were treated.
And I think like, this is the energy that must've made it, must make it so fun to do is that Albert is such a rock star.
You know, he is such a performer and understands like a crowd so deeply, and he was just losing his mind i mean it was the energy was so high -pitched and it seemed like he'd never flagged and you know as i can imagine as a musician like that feeling must be incredibly gratifying to like be performing to a sold -out crowd of like diehards who know the song i mean they're dare i say that they seem more enthusiastic than like blur fans um although granted i've never seen them perform i'm just talking out of my mouth but it i think that's It's got to be true.
It's mind -blowing. The charts always tell you so much, but like Blur, Gorillaz have sold so many more records and just had pop hits the way Blur never did, up to and including Woo -Hoo.
That doesn't tell the whole story, but I don't see the youth coming out for Blur the way they clearly are coming out for Gorillaz.
So that's got to tell you something.
There's a subplot here with Feel Good Inc and also Clint Eastwood, like dell the funky homosapien and de la soul like these are their biggest songs you know these are their most played highest charting most streamed songs now like what do you make of the gorillas project is sort of this weird way to like give a hit song you know to these beloved but sort of underrated rap stars yeah well alburn has talked about like enjoying collaboration quite a lot And being able to Like Gorillaz Their touring outfit is really an impressive Number of people, I mean they were bringing They just have a lot of people
Who play with them And I think to that notion On a sentimental level it is a testament To the kind of like Power of a certain Facelessness, you know, I mean so many musicians So many people who Are on Gorillaz songs Probably had their biggest, yeah Their biggest hits as you say with with uh them and their identity had nothing to do with it you know they're like their hipness or whatever the relevance all these sort of like invented qualities that the label said to say probably were like oh you know if you want someone to be a guest on the song they have to have a certain amount of profile um yeah
but with the gorilla and again these guest stars i mean they're treated like unbelievable superstars by these kids again i mean i let uh you can imagine that some of these uh guest artists like their own records would not have the same level of traction with the audience when they came on stage and started singing their hook you know people lost their minds um and it is nice and it's in a collaborative sense it's um i don't know it's easy to root for you know uh not to not to be corny about it but uh i think just you know it's it's it's not easy to have a career in music uh and to still be able
to like bring so many people along years later i think is a very nice thing you know and a second wind you know like a second band you know a second band that sort of outstrips your first like god bless oasis you know but like oasis does not there is no equivalent to this for oasis or really anybody who was in brit pop at the time with damon albarn yeah and and albarn seems someone uh like someone at least in in interviews that i've read and watched who is very fluid in his identity and is not very self -aware does not say you know he says he can say ostentatious things but it's it's very much
like a performance on some level like a knowing and knowing awareness yeah and um it's just nice i mean it really seems like grill is is just something that is like very nice to indulge.
I mean, you think about it from a certain perspective, he's getting to write music that draws from many, many different sounds.
He's getting to collaborate with a ton of people.
He's kind of able to do it while being a little faceless, you know, because all the promotional stuff, all the photos are just kind of under the auspices of this characters and they're hugely popular, you know, and it's young people who give a shit.
It's not just the same old like crowd who want to hear the same old songs.
And as some, as a guy who's dipped his toes into so many different things like whether or not it's solar records or writing scores like it just has to be very gratifying to find a vehicle that allows you to uh kind of do whatever you want in a sense uh and it's funny you say like these he's an older white man he's collaborating with a lot of older white men but because of the image of this band like the band doesn't age right if i went to see this concert now like you did you know i'd see the band on stage like the the cartoons from 2001 and as you say like the art style has evolved but this just
this project has a youthful feel to it because he is able to slink into the background strategically you know when that's good for him and good for the band absolutely uh you told me you were gonna maybe do a new york times profile at gorillas but it fell through like if you did have a chance to talk to damon like what did you want to know you know what were you hoping to ask him what insight are you looking for for him and how this has all happened?
I did want to ask him who he has more fun performing for, who you would rather play a show with these days.
I strongly suspected that it would be Gorillaz, which is, I mean, Blur's a great band, obviously.
We could talk about them all day long as well.
But I was very curious just to know about his perspective as someone who uh seems very skeptical of nostalgia and wanting wants to do new things but you know how do you actually do that without being self -indulgent uh and and i did yeah i did just want to bluntly get on the record like who would you rather you know gun to your head who would you rather play a show at coachella so to speak i think when the band started like when i went back and read a lot of press like there was an idea like this is what music is gonna be now like this is the future you you know, the internet, you know, anime, cartoons.
Like, I'm wondering if you think of Gorillaz as an influential band.
Can you think of anybody else, any artists, major or minor, that you feel are in this mold, either sonically or sort of visually?
Well, the cartoon band thing to me is one of those things that I feel like you can't do it without knowingly...
Right. It's kind of their lane.
It seems quaint today, day but you know I'm not the first person to mention that like back in the day so to speak like the divisions between what your son was and what your son wasn't was very not only taken very seriously at like the institutional level but by fans themselves you know you had to sound like this I mean I remember interviewing a couple years ago I talked to Dave Grohl for a piece and And he said he swore that I would be shocked by the number of A -list stars who had recorded albums that were totally different from the music that they were known for.
These guys who would basically just go into the studio and make music that was something like, this is purely hypothetical, but it's like Justin Timberlake making a death metal album or Lady Gaga making her reggae record. again those those are not real but you know stars who are very boxed very boxed into their awareness of like what is expected of them um but you know today that is there's so many younger artists who um that does not that just doesn't seem like an issue for them whatsoever well just to wrap up i mean i think a vampire weekend right if you want to talk about back in the day you
know the discourse course around you know the first at least vampire weekend record was there was an undercurrent of like how dare they you know it's it's just they were so comfortable the band was just trying different things and trying these different genres and they just they didn't have you know and they weren't agonizing about it at all you know and a lot of it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way but i think that you know vampire weekend were right to think that you know like with a certain amount of respect you know and knowledge and genuine enthusiasm like you can just try anything and maybe
that's another way that damon sort of being in the background when he wants to be helps you know like if damon were front and center and that's what you were looking at as you were listening you know to like dirty harry or something like that the dissonance might freak you out a little bit because it's a cartoon band you know like the genre hopping makes a lot more sense i guess yeah it's it sounds as just as simple as like not having their own faces in front of it but as you say that's probably a huge component i mean it's just people don't get hung up on the identity as deeply uh and and certainly
his vitality when he's performing just seems like so uh unden it's so undeniably charismatic i mean again he was really treating it like he was playing playing like Wembley or something and just like going at every inch. I think at multiple points he went into the crowd and was just sort of like walking around and singing and really engaged.
It felt like a full contact sport.
And, you know, there's a sort of veteran charisma to that.
I mean, someone who's been playing these shows for years and years and years and really just like knows how to conserve his energy.
Like it's almost like, you know, it's like watching, I was going to make a terrible sports analogy, but it's like well you know watching one of those or second pro wrestling or watching some like veteran basketball player who just like knows how to like pick his spots and understand what is demanded at the moment yeah veteran savvy is damon elbarn yeah well this has been fantastic jeremy thank you so much for talking we really appreciate it of course thanks so much to our guests this week jeremy gordon thanks to our producers bobby wagner jonathan kerma and justin sales thanks to olivia creary
for additional production help and thanks so much to you for listening and now let us all go listen to feel good inc by gorillas we'll see you next week
