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00:00:43.80
Stephen Schneider
morning afternoon
00:00:45.63
Alan Baltis
You’re right. Afternoon. I’ve already lost track of time. So let’s see. I got that up. Let me, I think I’m okay with volume and all right. Yes. Perfect.
00:00:57.32
Alan Baltis
So where were Colleen and I this morning?
00:01:00.06
Stephen Schneider
yes you said that the the country music awards cma
00:01:01.49
Alan Baltis
We went to the art museum. ah that CMA, I hadn’t realized that that was an overloaded acronym.
00:01:08.22
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:01:08.61
Alan Baltis
And actually, it’s not an acronym because you can’t pronounce it. So it’s only an abbreviation. i wish people would get that thing down, which I just did wrong. So, um but yeah, the Cleveland Museum of Art is the CMA to which I was referring.
00:01:20.93
Alan Baltis
And a guy named, ah boy, i hope I get his name right, Takashi Muramada. I hope I got his name right. He has an exhibit there called Chasing the Tale of the Rainbow.
00:01:32.46
Alan Baltis
What an evocative title. um He’s a Japanese artist.
00:01:34.100
Stephen Schneider
think because the other end has the leprechauns and gold.
00:01:39.26
Alan Baltis
exactly And the teeth. and the Exactly. so um He has done like a whole career since at least 93, think, of three i think of Japanese artwork that it kind of also takes in Western influences but brings in a whole bunch of Japanese traditionalists and so has touched on It looks a bit like anime and manga. It looks a little bit like old woodblock prints of you know houses hanging on the side of a cliff.
00:02:11.13
Alan Baltis
Lots of dragons. Um, they, it’s fascinating because he has an incredible ability to kind of switch back and forth between the incredibly cute and the grotesque.
00:02:23.98
Alan Baltis
So he has a character he created called Dob. I don’t know about him because I really don’t follow him above. the hello kitty and everything beyond that you know i mean there’s a couple of characters that have made it now that they crossed over into all of culture as opposed to only japanese culture um it’s a little he looks kind of like mickey mouse where he has a d and a b in his ears and his face the o and um he did a whole bunch of artwork with smiley faces especially made into flowers And so some of the installation was an entire huge wall of the gallery that’s just covered with these smiley flower faces, like thousands, maybe 10,000 that he all did, his all his own work, no assistance, no take a stencil and b blue bloop, bloop, bloop, put them all up there.
00:03:11.14
Alan Baltis
You know I really don’t it like just amazing. And then right next to that, of course, is one that’s made out of all like distorted little skulls. And he did a whole bunch of artwork about the um Fukushima nuclear meltdown that that disaster.
00:03:26.41
Alan Baltis
And so has like mutated, misshapen people. And like that, the the the going back and forth, having foot in multiple worlds. For I would love to have that on the wall in my house. I could look at that every day and see new and and vibrant colors and happy.
00:03:43.42
Alan Baltis
And boy, I would never want to look at this again. It was so disturbing. And so, so I just highest recommendation. If you want to see something that you’ve never seen before, the combination of all this guy’s artwork, and it’s not only many artists, only like they speak through their art.
00:03:59.40
Alan Baltis
he had great placards that talked about like what was he what was he impacted by to do this what was he thinking what was he feeling what was what’s going on in the world that he would have created this interesting and and so like deep and not just and it’s funny he discovered that if you’re going to make a living as an artist and you kind of have to because otherwise you can labor in love and still live in a gantry and eat only nothing but ramen you know what i mean that He has commercialized some aspects of his, like the reason for creating the Dob character was so that he could have, everybody wants a Dob sticker and a Dob plush toy and a Dob backpack and whatever else it might be.
00:04:37.58
Alan Baltis
And so kind of Andy Warhol-esque where he said, you know, there’s no reason that I should be a suffering artist, that I should be a starving artist. I can make things that the world will find interesting enough that they’ll sell by the tens of thousands.
00:04:52.17
Alan Baltis
copies and stuff like that. So, and he talks about it frankly like that. You know what i mean? that That I don’t need to be a kabillionaire, but I sure don’t want to be that I labor in obscurity.
00:04:57.01
Stephen Schneider
Thank you.
00:05:02.48
Alan Baltis
Part of what you want to do is that the world knows your work and that you actually can like feed yourself. And if you want to have a family, that your family is safe and secure. So ah again, all those cool, very smart, very sage ruminations on here’s why I do what I do.
00:05:19.32
Alan Baltis
And then i I kind of, you know, um I have this reverence for all these older masters, you know, 300, 500 years old. I learned a lot from their artwork. have modern masters that i actually apprenticed to or had collaborations with.
00:05:32.28
Alan Baltis
And then also just, you know, I just wanted to do something different. And so I decided to make a whole series of things with the guardian lions that they have. And I missed starting with this.
00:05:43.38
Alan Baltis
You walk into the atrium at the CMA and a place where they’ve usually had like gardens and maybe bamboo or other plants growing, all that’s gone and they have a huge pagoda built. It is a pagoda that has on each of its four inside walls,
00:05:54.66
Stephen Schneider
ice
00:05:57.60
Alan Baltis
um huge paintings representing like the traditional animals from ah Chinese mythology and especially the geology wrong geography of China so that and and I don’t know if I have this exactly right depending on whether you’re pointing at north south east west it is a white tiger and it’s a vermilion bird and it’s a black turtle and it’s a green Why am I not getting it?
00:06:24.100
Alan Baltis
Anyway, you know I mean? By color, by animal type, and like huge, interesting, representational. It’s not just the animal. They’re busy. There’s all kinds of wonderful the vines crawling up and like cascades of water where it really, it’s both realistic and stylized.
00:06:42.73
Alan Baltis
and And honestly, it’s just you walk in there and you’re like, I think I’ll just stand here and look at each of these for five minutes because they’re so rich. There’s so much going on. So, folks, if you’re anywhere near Cleveland and you want to get this accumulation, and then once you finish with the pagoda,
00:06:57.93
Alan Baltis
Then you go down to where the main exhibit is and it’s multiple exhibit halls and kind of chronological because has different periods of his work and stuff like that, but also just meant to contrast with each other.
00:07:09.20
Alan Baltis
He did some work with in silver for big statues. He did some work with um pottery, ceramics and stuff like that. And some of them are really beautiful and some of them really like distorted and disturbing where it’s like, again, I wouldn’t want that in my house.
00:07:24.04
Alan Baltis
Every time I’d see that, I want to fix it or I want to at least not have that brown green color that it is.
00:07:30.39
Stephen Schneider
art Art for the non-OCD.
00:07:30.86
Alan Baltis
know what I
00:07:34.62
Alan Baltis
Yes. thenm i’m not old about symmetry and it must be orderly and stuff like that but i like beauty and like beauty much more than i like grotesquerie and and he talks about he really loves the eccentric and the grotesque and he embraces that and creates it because he wants to know evoke a or respond you know if you’re an artist you know the worst thing is not to be loved or hated it’s to be ignored And so he really talks about, he has done things, his whole wall mural of the aftermath of Fukushima and how, know, all the mythological and scientific and mutated from radiation. know, there’s portrayals of death because I think there’s like 18, no, I think it’s 18,000, but might be 180,000, which is scary number.
00:08:23.16
Alan Baltis
But, you know, there was a, as you know, huge, so a big, um, tidal wave caused by an earthquake hit the reactor and it like totally melted down and released tons of radiation and and killed a lot of people and in fact a lot of the people that chose to work on cleaning it up were like the Japanese elderly that said my life is almost over I can do this good useful noble thing with the last years of my life and they went in knowing that they’re going to die of radiation poisoning so
00:08:56.75
Alan Baltis
what What a noble thing. What I don’t know, could it happen in any country besides Japan where they really have that spirit of community and of contribution and of being useful in your life?
00:09:09.88
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:09:10.25
Alan Baltis
You know, where you like, do you think that the Americans would be lining up to kill themselves so that somebody else could get benefit?
00:09:10.33
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:09:16.93
Alan Baltis
That just doesn’t seem like one of our characteristics.
00:09:19.79
Stephen Schneider
Strong points. Yeah.
00:09:21.18
Alan Baltis
we We have heroes that are willing to sacrifice themselves, but but in a big display gesture, I won the game, not I went and toiled at something really hard knowing that it was going to kill me.
00:09:32.92
Alan Baltis
I guess really that’s the day-to-day bravery of everybody that does that, everybody that works in a Joe job and a service job. and ah you know you’re You’re wearing your body out. You don’t make it to 65 retired. You’re like…
00:09:45.40
Alan Baltis
hurt and gnarled by the fact that you worked in construction or in steel work or whatever it was for your entire career. I know I’m jumping around, but that’s how cool this work was is it really has you think about all these things and read his some of his descriptions and then also say, you know, but that’s not what I got out of it. So did, know, I have a, everybody brings in their own preconceptions and their own life that comes to like to grip with things.
00:10:12.30
Alan Baltis
One of the things was named something like faces kind of distorted, but like looking avaricious, looking greedy. And the name of the pieces was something like a 20-year-old determined to enter the world of finance and make it.
00:10:26.11
Alan Baltis
And it was like, that’s exactly what it portrays. It was really, he really captured that, you know, kind of like give him fangs and stuff like that, you know? So again, if you if you love art and being provoked and being pleased and all that kind of stuff, it’s absolutely worth, I think it’s there through August 31st. It’s still got some time to go. So it’s not like, oh my God, hit it before it runs out.
00:10:50.02
Alan Baltis
But we we have done any number of times where we, Didn’t go until the last two weeks when tickets were already scarce and they things were very crowded. In this case, I really got a chance to get at the time I wanted with each painting and take a picture of it. You have no flash, but otherwise you can take photos.
00:11:04.99
Alan Baltis
And just it was the right pace and everything else. We’ve been to a couple other exhibits where they really kind of had the shovers moving you along because they had to get 10,000 people through the exhibit that day.
00:11:15.99
Alan Baltis
There was probably… 500 today I don’t I don’t know i don’t remember but but like there wasn’t a huge line snaking it through the atrium it was 15 of us waiting to get in at 11 o’clock for our assigned time and so you really had so there that’s I think that’s geekery because it really i I love the fact that another thing just to speak real quick
00:11:32.46
Stephen Schneider
Nice. Yeah.
00:11:40.09
Alan Baltis
He really has that ability to absorb all these different kinds of these ways of doing art. So the robe that one of the Buddhas is wearing looks like the like near diaphanous cherry blossom robe that you see on characters in Japan.
00:11:56.87
Alan Baltis
Other times it’s very geometric. Thousands of little dots with maybe slight variations in color or width of the circle. And so it it has… it creates this background of solidity, but not only solidity because it’s got the slight variations in it.
00:12:14.56
Alan Baltis
And then there’s washes of color through it that like, how did he do that without overwriting it? You know what I mean? That’s his knowledge, I guess, of materials and how those things work. And that this is like a combination of acrylic and watercolor or whatever he did. I didn’t really read enough about that.
00:12:30.40
Alan Baltis
But just things looking either very precise or very ethereal or, and like all in service to the piece that he was trying to create, you know? So if you’re going to have a dragon flying through the air and breathing fire, whatever like that, some parts you want to be like the flame should really look dangerous and coming out. But like the the wind that he’s, the passage through the wind that he’s making as he goes, it should look kind of,
00:12:55.19
Alan Baltis
Ripley and ethereal instead of solid lines. And and he did all that. He did all of that so well. So hats off to this guy for being so talented and always learning and trying new things. And just, it sure seems that he’s led a wonderful artist’s life so far. And I hope that he has another 30, 40, 50 years to give us.
00:13:13.59
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? I’m one of those guys that now I kind of want to like, what’s he doing lately? I want to follow his trajectory. I want to get a calendar of his things so that every month of the coming year, i can see, oh I remember that or i saw something similar or you know what I mean? I just, I like the fact that he pleased me, stimulated me.
00:13:32.90
Alan Baltis
And I’ll end with this. So then we go to the gift shop for it. Oh, you know that thing I talked about commercializing? They had a little backpack that looks like a ah a happy flower head.
00:13:46.11
Alan Baltis
And it’s like, Colleen and I played the game. She’s always played I’m like, how much would you pay for that? And then if it’s more or less, you get it to decide. So I might go like 40 bucks on that. 475 fucking dollars.
00:13:58.24
Stephen Schneider
Oh, jeez.
00:13:59.43
Alan Baltis
And I know that the yen is currently strong against the dollar, but that ain’t what’s going on here.
00:14:04.08
Stephen Schneider
ah
00:14:04.38
Alan Baltis
It might be that the only way that they can take these huge installations and tour it around the world is to get people that can’t afford that kind of stuff to kind of be patrons.
00:14:14.75
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? To not only put it up front.
00:14:15.55
Stephen Schneider
Right. Instead of just giving us money to be a patron, we’ll give you something, something, you know, we, we paid 20 bucks for it, but it’s got this, that it’s very unique.
00:14:16.93
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:14:26.25
Stephen Schneider
You know, that, that’s what sells.
00:14:26.97
Alan Baltis
Exactly. we So what Colleen and I do, as we’ve talked about before, we love ornaments. Whatever we go and do and that kind of stuff, you want have a little memory of that. We found, again, a happy, smiley face that it actually had you know two different sides, a different face on each side, and it was like 50 bucks.
00:14:43.86
Alan Baltis
And it was like out of felt or something. um And so we have spent maybe… 20, 30 regularly on something that we’re never gonna be back in Skagway, Alaska. We should get something that says Skagway on it that has a moose or whatever else it might be.
00:14:59.72
Alan Baltis
But somehow this little guy, like as big as a donut, I just couldn’t do it. And now I’ll regret it. Maybe I really will sneak back and get it for Colleen for her birthday or get it for, know what I mean? Because it really, I’m talking about it so much because I really liked it and it really would be nice to have something on the tree that reminds us of this very cool thing that we saw forever.
00:15:21.17
Alan Baltis
And yet there’s 50 bucks. 50 bucks is, know, like that’s, that’s, that I translate that into how many books can I get for that?
00:15:25.85
Stephen Schneider
Well, so, but you know, I talking to my friend Kathy who does the Books A Go Go pop-up bookstore, she takes around, she’s opening an actual storefront in Ravenna.
00:15:29.81
Alan Baltis
How many CDs? That’s, you know,
00:15:42.13
Stephen Schneider
And we were talking about that and her husband said something and she goes, oh, no, no. She said, ah paperback books are typically $16 $20 He’s like, 16?
00:15:51.68
Alan Baltis
Now they are.
00:15:52.27
Stephen Schneider
sixteen I paid five. yeah i said, yeah yeah, that’s what I remember. you know Oh, look, I got five books. 16 to 20 bucks for So seriously, you know swag that specialized at a museum gift store for 50 bucks, honestly, it’s not an outrageous in today’s world.
00:16:09.37
Alan Baltis
That seems just where it should be. If you’re in the museum, if you’re going to this exhibit, you’re already a patron of the arts. You’re already whatever that rarefied atmosphere is.
00:16:15.29
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:16:17.39
Alan Baltis
And, and you know, we really, we’re so happy to be in the place where you could buy a $50 ornament. It doesn’t bother us at all. That’s just, it doesn’t like that.
00:16:27.53
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:16:27.90
Alan Baltis
And then we don’t eat that week. No, we we are okay. And yet I still have, this is one of those signs of, I have, I’ll get over it. I’ll get over like we’re we’re in Skagway and are we going to take the tram up to the top of the mountain?
00:16:42.85
Alan Baltis
Oh, it’s 60 bucks. It’s like, wow, that seems like a lot. And yet I’m never going be back in Skagway and I really want to see what it looks like from up there so you can see the mountains and et cetera, et cetera. So we’re getting more and more the…
00:16:56.97
Alan Baltis
the the budget consciousness, the cheapness that got us to where we are comfortable now, we really have to keep saying, you know, we’ve probably got 40 years left. We can buy an infinite number of $50 ornaments and still not get in trouble with, they put us out of our house, but we’re taking all of our ornaments with us.
00:17:12.79
Alan Baltis
You what I mean?
00:17:13.01
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:17:13.77
Alan Baltis
It’s nothing like that. And yet it’s the patterns of a lifetime. It’s really hard to shed some of these things, you know?
00:17:19.93
Stephen Schneider
Well, and as you guys say, i honestly see that effect, you know, that that old people, ah, back in my day, you don’t have to be grumpy about it, but there is that, you know, I got used to when I first started working in job, gas was this much, that’s set in my brain, books cost this much, fast food was this much.
00:17:20.10
Alan Baltis
Mm-hmm.
00:17:39.69
Stephen Schneider
Well, everything has increased in price and now we got tariffs on top of it, which You know, are just jump up. So, you know, i i my the soaps, you know, we we have like shapes that look like Bigfoot and we sell it at things.
00:17:55.47
Stephen Schneider
And, you know, it’s ah it’s a little bit more than a bar of soap in the store. And those are three and a half bucks, you know, gig. give or take.
00:18:02.73
Alan Baltis
Okay. Right.
00:18:03.67
Stephen Schneider
yeah not not We’re not talking the dirt cheap soap that really isn’t worth the buck 50. We’re talking real good soap.
00:18:08.77
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:18:10.42
Stephen Schneider
um
00:18:10.57
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:18:10.98
Stephen Schneider
So we ask eight bucks for it. My uncle says, oh, well, we make goat milk soap. That’s only a couple bucks for that. You’re right. It only takes you a couple bucks to make it, but I’m selling it. That’s how commerce works.
00:18:22.46
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:18:22.52
Stephen Schneider
I had to pay for a table. I had to pay for my time. I had to pay for the ingredients. like you know It’s covering my
00:18:27.34
Alan Baltis
And it’s ah it’s a Bigfoot foot. It’s not like you’re going to find this in any other place. You know and i mean?
00:18:31.05
Stephen Schneider
Exactly.
00:18:31.46
Alan Baltis
There’s uniqueness to it.
00:18:31.73
Stephen Schneider
Well, it was a soap mold sold pretty right readily.
00:18:32.58
Alan Baltis
That’s right.
00:18:35.31
Stephen Schneider
So you’ll probably find it in a lot of places.
00:18:37.38
Alan Baltis
Okay, and all the cryptid conferences at that.
00:18:39.56
Stephen Schneider
Yes, but but nobody else here has it today.
00:18:42.26
Alan Baltis
Right, right.
00:18:42.60
Stephen Schneider
ah But, you know, and and they’re like, well, soap’s not worth that much. But at these shows, you know, I go to a show and I see somebody. I know what some of this stuff costs because I’ve ordered the same stuff.
00:18:54.99
Stephen Schneider
And I’m not saying people are trying to gouge anyone.
00:18:55.57
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:18:58.15
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:18:58.34
Stephen Schneider
But we we had to look at it with the soaps. When I go to a show and they’re asking us $60 for a table, that means we have to sell almost 100 soaps to break even for the day.
00:19:10.53
Alan Baltis
Yeah, yeah.
00:19:11.08
Stephen Schneider
Because every soap, at least half is materials and you know electricity and whatever.
00:19:17.62
Alan Baltis
It isn’t only your time at the table. It’s all that went into creating those things.
00:19:21.62
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:19:21.86
Alan Baltis
I hear you.
00:19:22.62
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:19:22.64
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:19:22.78
Stephen Schneider
You know, in the books, the same way i look at this and I look at some of the shows is like, well, 400 bucks for a table. I’m like, you have a thousand people that come. That means 40% of them have to buy my book for me to pay for my table.
00:19:37.46
Alan Baltis
Yeah, you know, we’ve noticed Colleen and I, we we really, we regularly go to like, we’re on on out on our escapades, we go to galleries and we look at things.
00:19:38.07
Stephen Schneider
You know?
00:19:46.55
Alan Baltis
And one of the things we’ve noticed is that sometimes they’ll start saying, this piece took 200 hours to create. And so it’s like, well, you know, minimum wage is like $7.25 now.
00:19:56.99
Alan Baltis
So that should be worth at least $1,400, but he’s offering it for $300.
00:20:01.32
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:20:01.35
Alan Baltis
And so there’s there’s something about the the value of the artist’s time and, of course, the value of the artist’s experience, to how he got to be skilled enough to even do this thing. And, you know, i I often have a problem with…
00:20:13.63
Alan Baltis
Anything that I could buy that I could do that, even if I wouldn’t, even I wouldn’t create my own ketchup or whatever else it might be. I have a certain price point of like, you know, if I had to do that, what should it cost?
00:20:25.66
Alan Baltis
But then I’m not the guy that has learned how to do the decoupage that is so perfect in this piece that et cetera, et cetera. So.
00:20:32.54
Stephen Schneider
and And you got multiple. So my dad ran into this all the time with his wood projects. he He made tons of these wood things you put in the lawn cut out and he bought like a huge piece of plywood.
00:20:37.61
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:20:41.65
Alan Baltis
Mm hmm.
00:20:43.86
Stephen Schneider
It cost him 75 bucks, cut out a big foot, painted it all black, put a handle on it to help hold it to move the darn thing. Cause it was so freaking heavy.
00:20:51.06
Alan Baltis
Okay. Right. Mm-hmm.
00:20:52.84
Stephen Schneider
And he was asking a hundred bucks for it. He paid 75 for the piece of wood. Now there were some scraps. He made two or three smaller things. So, If he sold everything, he might have recouped 130, 140 back, not counting paint, you know, maybe 125 counting.
00:21:10.03
Stephen Schneider
So he spent 75 and hours of time and he’s asking a hundred bucks for this big, big foot. And people would stop and say, well, I’ll give you 25 bucks for it. And he’d say, that’s not even woods worth more than that. I could burn it and save money. You know what?
00:21:25.59
Alan Baltis
ah exactly
00:21:25.85
Stephen Schneider
And, and people do, I see the opposite though, also where people think, well, you know, this is, they they make a t-shirt. T-shirts are freaking simple as hell to make nowadays in order to get custom.
00:21:38.92
Stephen Schneider
I’ve made you how many t-shirts in the past couple years, you know, they’re easy to do, easy to order.
00:21:41.03
Alan Baltis
That’s right. That’s right.
00:21:44.61
Stephen Schneider
ah they They cost, you know, 15, 25 bucks, on cost. depending on my cost
00:21:50.20
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:21:50.66
Stephen Schneider
I see people make these shirts that it’s obvious that if they just slap something together and they’re like well, I want 50 bucks for it. Well, that shirt’s not worth 50 bucks. You are not Def Leppard selling me a concert t-shirt.
00:22:03.81
Alan Baltis
Exactly. You know, it’s kind of really, there’s like that. Those are two schools of thought, right? It’s, it’s how much does it cost and what’s the value added to it?
00:22:09.49
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right.
00:22:12.57
Alan Baltis
And it’s also what will the market bear? And so, you know, if you’re a collector, then you really always have that idea of, of scarcity or age of, of value to other collectors. It isn’t only what did it cost to produce the comic book?
00:22:24.80
Alan Baltis
You know, it’s pulp paper. probably costs like a dollar 10, but that’s not, it’s the artist and the writer and and the, it is part of a series and all that kind of stuff.
00:22:30.32
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:22:32.63
Alan Baltis
so people that only have one way of looking at things, no wonder they don’t get how much things are relatively expensive. You know, and I guess there’s also a certain amount of that.
00:22:43.06
Alan Baltis
Like, how much is is that of value to the world? You what mean? Like an autographed baseball means absolutely nothing to me. And the price they go for are ridiculous.
00:22:51.09
Stephen Schneider
and people
00:22:53.56
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:22:53.95
Alan Baltis
And yet for some people, that’s a dream come true. And so know what I mean? Everybody has their their algorithm for how do you get to the price of something?
00:23:00.14
Stephen Schneider
usually, usually the people that complain about price of something creative don’t do anything creative on themselves.
00:23:02.50
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:23:07.22
Alan Baltis
Yeah. Right.
00:23:10.23
Stephen Schneider
They’ve never written a song.
00:23:10.43
Alan Baltis
right
00:23:11.71
Stephen Schneider
They’ve never written a book or a story. They don’t even make Plato statues, you know,
00:23:17.61
Alan Baltis
absolutely harlan ellison has a great story about that that he was asked to contribute a story to an anthology or something like that or actually was to do a reading at a place and they were like well you know you’re an artist just come up with something and it was like so let me see i got this straight the electrician’s getting paid right the guy who moved that lectern to i could speak at he’s getting the ticket takers getting paid why am i the guy that’s doing something that not many other people here could do anybody can be a ticket taker etc etc and he just that attitude of you just come up with things out of your head they’re they’re free right they they’re air easy and like actually any number of authors will tell you i stare at the keyboard until blood comes out of my forehead and then a story comes to me yes exactly
00:23:59.74
Stephen Schneider
Just bleed lead on the page. Yeah.
00:24:04.37
Alan Baltis
so
00:24:05.43
Stephen Schneider
It’s the old, you know, I’m involved with writing books. I’m involved with making games. of By the way, play tested a really good game. I hope gets to the market someday ah the other day.
00:24:14.38
Alan Baltis
Very good.
00:24:15.82
Stephen Schneider
um But you get people that come up to you. And i I might go to Origins this weekend, which is a big game fair down in Columbus.
00:24:23.61
Alan Baltis
right
00:24:23.99
Stephen Schneider
And I was talking to some of the people I know that make games and they’re like, yeah, people come up all the time and say, oh, I got this really great idea for a game. And then they, you know, either like give two or three sentences of, well, it’s just, you’re this little marble, but with eyes and you got to get past these dragons. Doesn’t that sound great?
00:24:41.49
Alan Baltis
right
00:24:41.60
Stephen Schneider
No, it really doesn’t. It sounds stupid. Or it’s like, let me tell you about this game. Three hours later, I’m telling, I’m finished telling you about this game that takes 20 minutes to play. You know, like all the time, but, but they’re like, so what do you think?
00:24:54.73
Stephen Schneider
Well, okay. Yeah. It’s not a bad.
00:24:55.95
Alan Baltis
We can partner on this. You can do all the work because I had the idea.
00:24:57.18
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:24:58.97
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:24:59.17
Stephen Schneider
Yes. So we can split it ah yeah The general thing is, and you know this, ideas aren’t worth anything. Nobody wants your idea. Nobody was going pay for the idea.
00:25:10.49
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:25:10.60
Stephen Schneider
They want to, even Shark Tank, you got to have a prototype. You got to show something working.
00:25:15.43
Alan Baltis
right
00:25:15.48
Stephen Schneider
You know, it’s just all the time people are like, oh, I got a great idea for a story. Hold on. Let me… Flip 300 pages of ideas. Hold on. Let me add yours to the back. Yeah, I’m sure that will be the first one I really want to get to and write about.
00:25:30.61
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:25:30.81
Stephen Schneider
You know.
00:25:31.15
Alan Baltis
yeah People talk about that, that any artist is often asked the question, where do you come up with your ideas? And any number of them say, you know, yeah’t but Colleen has a great thing. You don’t so much have a sense of humor as a sense of humor has you.
00:25:44.15
Alan Baltis
If you make jokes about all the time, it kind of become unbidden. And that’s just your way of dealing with the world.
00:25:47.40
Stephen Schneider
right
00:25:49.46
Alan Baltis
And the same is true for any number of people look around and say, Here’s an idea about a game based on going through the turnstile at ah and a ball game or something. And here’s what about, and there are fountains of that, taking it and disciplining themselves to say, out of that hundred, which are the 20 that really might be worth something, which are the five that are worth a ton of time to get to a prototype and all those kinds of things.
00:26:10.82
Alan Baltis
And again, if you don’t have any familiar familiarity with that, I can see how people just have that, you know what I mean? That the ignorance is so,
00:26:23.83
Alan Baltis
it they’re happily short-circuiting them understanding fully the process that goes into creating and really making anything.
00:26:30.22
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:26:31.93
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean?
00:26:32.10
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:26:32.69
Alan Baltis
so
00:26:32.68
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. It takes a lot of time, lot of effort. And I like Stephen King’s old answer. ah He said, well, there’s a little shop in Schenectady. I just send them, you know I want a new idea and they mail it to me, you know.
00:26:45.68
Alan Baltis
every Exactly. Well, how many times have you and I talked about the guy that comes up, and this is straight out of Dilbert, you know what i mean? Develop a worldwide network solution for this business problem.
00:26:56.53
Alan Baltis
I think it’ll take a week. It’s like, no, no, it’s going to take six months. I can tell you why. I can give you the, already I can start giving you the details. But people who don’t, they don’t want to understand how hard it is because they want to be the guy that’s going to sit there tapping on the desk with their project plan in hand.
00:27:13.54
Alan Baltis
You know what mean? So,
00:27:14.82
Stephen Schneider
but no understanding of the the actual work that and is needed to go into some things.
00:27:21.52
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:27:21.72
Stephen Schneider
Trust me, I live in a Dilbert world.
00:27:24.48
Alan Baltis
I had my share of that at Ameritech based on what project I was working on and stuff like that. And and oh for sure, at Progressive as well. And it’s funny, you know Progressive is seen as technologically astute and stuff like that. But I think i’ve told you, when I arrived there, having been really big in Chicago and really big in San Francisco, and then to come, and it was like 20 years back.
00:27:44.29
Alan Baltis
the technology they had and their attitude towards like, when are we going to get the latest update out? Well, they would think of what’s the cost of it versus well, the latest update includes all these things are going to save how much time and and have fewer errors and all that kind of stuff.
00:27:58.72
Alan Baltis
And just there was a different attitude about embrace it not only embrace but like really use use of technology to keep your competitive edge and sometimes when when they got there maybe through a competitive edge but then they think well we got the secret sauce now and there’s no need to keep innovating that’s a classic thing about big companies they need to have internal skunk works that break all the rules because otherwise you get people that are really good about well i have 28 fungible resources and I put them here and here and here and here and I don’t have to worry about having any stars because that already exists and we’ll just kind of ride it out and it’ll be our cash cow but the whole rest of the world is happy to say you got like two years before I catch you and pass you so you better keep ahead so anyway
00:28:41.42
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. That’s whole whole stories right there.
00:28:45.95
Alan Baltis
exactly so let’s see what else we have on our list what what I gushed at the start what’s your what’s your big thing
00:28:52.82
Stephen Schneider
Well, let’s see. now um Not a whole big lot of big things in the past week or so, but I did discover a new band. um Not necessarily the best band ever, not necessarily for everybody.
00:29:06.61
Stephen Schneider
ah They are very 90s rock-like, but not alternative, you know, classic guitar rock.
00:29:12.19
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:29:15.13
Stephen Schneider
it They are called Winery Dogs.
00:29:17.97
Alan Baltis
I have an album of theirs.
00:29:19.41
Stephen Schneider
Okay.
00:29:19.47
Alan Baltis
it’s Isn’t it like, um, Sammy Hake? No, who’s in it?
00:29:23.71
Stephen Schneider
Very close.
00:29:24.11
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:29:24.63
Stephen Schneider
Yes. ah Richie Cotson is on guitar.
00:29:28.03
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:29:28.23
Stephen Schneider
ah And he, I know him from poison. He played on a poison album when the band kind of broke up.
00:29:34.30
Alan Baltis
okay
00:29:34.44
Stephen Schneider
um ah Portnoy is on drums and it’s, it’s a name I know, but I didn’t look it up and I couldn’t tell you what bands he’s been in.
00:29:43.34
Alan Baltis
he’s He’s in Dream Theater. He’s in it’s Atlantic.
00:29:45.05
Stephen Schneider
There you go.
00:29:46.24
Alan Baltis
He’s with Neil Morris.
00:29:47.15
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:29:47.20
Alan Baltis
He’s a great drummer. Okay.
00:29:48.60
Stephen Schneider
i knew I knew I’d seen run into his name.
00:29:49.28
Alan Baltis
Very good.
00:29:51.08
Stephen Schneider
I’m like, oh, and then Billy Sheehan and billy sheen on bass.
00:29:51.94
Alan Baltis
That’s why i just discovered the album. Okay.
00:29:55.18
Stephen Schneider
And that’s one of my ah favorite bassists that I followed.
00:29:55.34
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:29:59.14
Stephen Schneider
um I met him once. I sent a question into his Q&A column in Bass Player Magazine that he published.
00:30:05.71
Alan Baltis
Okay. Okay.
00:30:06.100
Stephen Schneider
I’ve seen him a couple of times when he played with David Lee Roth, him and Steve Vai. There is a concert.
00:30:12.84
Alan Baltis
i was yeah ah Also, he’s the as you know, he’s the basis for Yes, and he’s like Chris Squire’s protege in many ways. You know what mean? That he was the heir apparent, but they got along really well, so it wasn’t like him pushing Chris out. Chris died, but he’s he did a band like…
00:30:28.100
Alan Baltis
Cinema, civilian, he’s done all kinds of stuff. When there was a real ah burst of tribute albums in the 90s that like we’re going to do all the Genesis and Pink Floyd and Kansas and whatever else we love.
00:30:40.100
Alan Baltis
He was involved in tons of those projects because he’s really versatile and really has whatever that gift of music to be able to say, Who would be good to do this tribute? Call this guy up and have him do the vocal.
00:30:51.51
Alan Baltis
Call this guy up and have him do the bongos. You know what i mean?
00:30:54.09
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:30:54.11
Alan Baltis
He’s really been a great linchpin for all that kind of stuff. Dave Kirshner is another guy that’s like that, that has connections to everybody and brings his pals in to make a great album. You know, that kind of thing.
00:31:03.72
Stephen Schneider
Right, right. So yeah, Winery Dogs, is I love that you’ve run into it already and have some.
00:31:08.73
Alan Baltis
Yes.
00:31:09.35
Stephen Schneider
I just discovered it.
00:31:09.55
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:31:10.63
Stephen Schneider
I was listening to Extreme and it was on Spotify.
00:31:12.95
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:31:14.02
Stephen Schneider
you know That is one thing. I have ah ton of albums. You have a ton of albums. I can easily sit and listen to my albums that I’ve listened to for 40 years over and over again and all that.
00:31:26.02
Stephen Schneider
But one of the benefits of Spotify is when you listen to something, they say, you might like this also.
00:31:32.67
Alan Baltis
that’s I used to love Pandora.
00:31:32.93
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:34.89
Alan Baltis
When I would put songs in to see things for Pandora, and they turned me on to tons of good bands that I had never heard of before. So I totally agree. there are They’re a great thing for doing that suggestion algorithm, you know, and I might also like, so very good.
00:31:44.19
Stephen Schneider
yeah yeah yeah So yeah, winery dogs, you’ve already heard of them. Great. I’ve been listening to them. ah It’s fun. And it’s, you know, it’s a three piece band, ah crunchy rock, ah nothing outrageous, ah nothing like pop hits, ah but and you know, nothing that’s like, none of that going on.
00:31:55.39
Alan Baltis
right
00:32:07.65
Stephen Schneider
So, you know,
00:32:07.80
Alan Baltis
You captured that so perfectly. Yeah.
00:32:09.65
Stephen Schneider
yeah yeah so not that there’s anything wrong with that. I like some of that also. I’m just saying that’s not what this is.
00:32:17.85
Alan Baltis
now prog seems to be one of those fields where there really is a bunch of cross-pollination between various different people so that like there’s a band called transatlantic that has like the keyboardist from spock’s beard and the bassist from merillion and you know all these good players and black light syndrome was like bazio levin and stevens if i remember right like and it’s funny i just listened to steve stevens Van Halen was so beloved and dominant as the guitarist that he had a whole bunch of people in his shadow that now because of his death, you’re getting to know Nuno Betancourt. You’re getting to know Steve Stevens again. You’re getting, you know what i mean? Like Steve Vai.
00:32:57.24
Alan Baltis
There’s all kinds of people that should have been getting guitar worship for all this time. And I’m so happy that Nuno and Xtreme, they’re still going. And man, I think we mentioned, I saw them in Living Color in a kind concert up in Detroit.
00:33:06.17
Stephen Schneider
what
00:33:10.22
Alan Baltis
One of the best shows I’ve ever seen.
00:33:11.58
Stephen Schneider
And that was recent.
00:33:13.13
Alan Baltis
Exactly. They’re still going.
00:33:14.15
Stephen Schneider
It was
00:33:15.28
Alan Baltis
their their Their latest album with the gorilla on the cover, it’s so strong.
00:33:18.16
Stephen Schneider
sixth. it is.
00:33:19.98
Alan Baltis
Oh my God, it really is like, i love Porto Graffiti because it’s to me it’s one of those perfect albums.
00:33:20.10
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:33:23.90
Alan Baltis
There is not a bad cut.
00:33:25.55
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:33:26.06
Alan Baltis
Out of a dozen cuts on the album, it’s just fantastic.
00:33:29.30
Stephen Schneider
I was blown away by six.
00:33:30.25
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:33:31.02
Stephen Schneider
I was never a big extreme fan back in the day ah with, ah you know, the first three albums back in the eighties, nineties. um it I was like, okay, they’re fine. They’re good.
00:33:42.26
Stephen Schneider
The hits are okay. I may have heard the air stuff. My son loves porno graffiti. said, it’s a great album. I think it’s a good album. But when i heard six, I’m like, these guys are 60.
00:33:53.61
Alan Baltis
Thank
00:33:53.81
Stephen Schneider
These guys are amazing. They’re better than this. It was at the time, some of the best rock and roll I had heard in years. That was new.
00:34:02.67
Alan Baltis
I totally agree. And in fact, Porn and Graffiti suffers from the ones that got the most radio airplay were wholehearted, right? And know what mean? It like, they’re softer songs.
00:34:13.27
Alan Baltis
And then when you put the album on, and it’s like, these guys are pyrotechnic. They’re really, and and good variation in their songs and stuff like that. And Gary Jerome, their great vocalist, was the guy that Van Halen stole for a while when they handled…
00:34:25.98
Stephen Schneider
Right. Third album, three…
00:34:27.62
Alan Baltis
Third album, exact three. And so the fact that they’ve got like shared components with some other really good bands, but they do their own thing. um Gary Trone did a one called Tribe of Judah, if I remember right. You know, we’ve laughed about it. We are the people that read the lighter notes. And then when you see, oh, I know this guy from this other thing, I’ll give it a try.
00:34:47.68
Alan Baltis
And once in a while, it’s like, man Steve Walsh when he was no longer in Kansas made like three great albums one in particular called glossolalia the title doesn’t attract you the album cover is a very weird southwestern painting and yet oh my god it’s so good that might be one of those albums that like whenever I don’t know what I want to listen to let’s go listen to glossolalia again because and black butterfly there’s three that are just and and He got to be like an elder statesman of broad rock.
00:35:16.98
Alan Baltis
And so who does he have playing on there with him? People from Dreams Theater. people you know like It’s just the coolest thing that these guys are like, oh my God, I got a chance to play with Steve Wolf. And so you can, I just love that of And my cruise to the edge is loaded with that, that people like Dave Kersner, who I mentioned, and like ah Phil Collins’ son, there’s any number of people that they just seem to be like Jason Bonham, you know, John Bonham’s son, that they have this ability to attract other people.
00:35:29.87
Stephen Schneider
well
00:35:44.33
Alan Baltis
Hey, let’s just give this a try. And then their album of all improvisation is better than a lot of people’s written material. You know what I mean?
00:35:51.66
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:35:51.76
Alan Baltis
They’re such a delight to discover things like this.
00:35:54.35
Stephen Schneider
sir
00:35:54.40
Alan Baltis
So that’s pretty cool.
00:35:55.45
Stephen Schneider
So Reese showed me something a while back. It was a, one time on stage thing. i forget the song, but it was Clapton on guitar, Jeff Lynn on drums.
00:36:07.13
Stephen Schneider
And I’m, oh I’m, I’m an idiot. i Paul McCartney on lead and bass playing, but Paul McCartney was playing guitar.
00:36:15.03
Alan Baltis
Oh my! Okay, right.
00:36:19.41
Stephen Schneider
He was playing acoustic.
00:36:19.55
Alan Baltis
How
00:36:20.81
Stephen Schneider
And then on ah base was Keith Richards. And, And Rolling Stone magazine said, why are you playing bass instead of what?
00:36:26.13
Alan Baltis
interesting is this? Yeah!
00:36:32.23
Stephen Schneider
Waters? Or is that the bassist? I forget. i forget his name. I should know it.
00:36:35.93
Alan Baltis
Waters is basically for being Floyd, exactly. But McCartney was pretty beat.
00:36:37.67
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, no, no. But for Rolling Stones, the bassist for Rolling Stones. ah Yeah.
00:36:40.99
Alan Baltis
Oh, Wyman. Bill Wyman, right?
00:36:42.60
Stephen Schneider
Why? Yeah. what Why are you playing instead of Wyman?
00:36:43.48
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:36:45.24
Stephen Schneider
He’s like, are you kidding me? ah Get a chance to play with these guys on stage? Screw Wyman.
00:36:50.54
Alan Baltis
you I’ll play i’ll play you know ukulele.
00:36:50.77
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:36:53.06
Alan Baltis
I’ll do whatever you need me to do.
00:36:53.21
Stephen Schneider
yeah ah It was hilarious because, I mean, Keith Richards, he did a fine job, you know, holding down the the root note, but he’s on stage playing with Clapton, McCartney, and Lynn, and he was overjoyed.
00:37:04.55
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:37:05.66
Stephen Schneider
It’s it’s a really good little thing. I forget the song they played.
00:37:07.98
Alan Baltis
have to look for that because I haven’t seen that. i When Traveling Wilburys were out, you know I think they only had the one album, but that’s another I’m like, they didn’t
00:37:13.97
Stephen Schneider
Two. they had They had number one and they had number three.
00:37:18.90
Alan Baltis
Okay, I did not know. ah I think I only have one, so i yeah I got to seek the other one out. Thank you for that lead, okay? But, like, when those guys get together, and each of them is a giant, like, who doesn’t want to play with Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne?
00:37:27.94
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. but
00:37:33.15
Alan Baltis
Like, you people would…
00:37:34.39
Stephen Schneider
George Harrison.
00:37:35.15
Alan Baltis
George Harrison, like, how did i leave the Beatle off?
00:37:37.85
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:37:37.87
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? How out did I… There’s such heavyweight music going on there.
00:37:40.10
Stephen Schneider
Well, Tom Petty.
00:37:42.78
Alan Baltis
Yeah, exactly.
00:37:42.79
Stephen Schneider
Did you say um ah that?
00:37:43.70
Alan Baltis
Mm-hmm.
00:37:44.100
Stephen Schneider
Those are another great example that I don’t think of them as some hit songs with some other songs. I think of as the album because listened to the whole album every time.
00:37:52.99
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:37:55.72
Stephen Schneider
I, I, there, every song is good. Even the ones that weren’t hits, they’re, they’re so good.
00:37:59.100
Alan Baltis
I agree.
00:38:01.05
Stephen Schneider
And they were, they mixed it up. So it wasn’t the same guy singing every time. and you know,
00:38:05.62
Alan Baltis
That’s exactly right. When do you have that amount of talent, it’s like everybody gets a turn. You know what I mean?
00:38:08.66
Stephen Schneider
Well, yeah, I mean, you got like some of the worst voices. And i mean, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and you know, they’re all singing.
00:38:15.26
Alan Baltis
All right.
00:38:16.67
Stephen Schneider
and And people are like, really? Can we just like get acoustic inter men instrumentals? of you know
00:38:23.86
Alan Baltis
Exactly. but So the I just went, this is kind of funny, I hadn’t, there’s a band called The Buggles that was Jeff Downs, Trevor Horn, that then they were the ones that replaced John Anderson Rick Wakeman in Yes to make the drama album.
00:38:32.25
Stephen Schneider
Oh, yeah.
00:38:38.71
Alan Baltis
What a fantastic album. But they have not only the first Buggles album and what’s its claim to fame, Video Killed the Radio Star, which is of course the first song ever on MTV, but their second album called Adventures in Modern Recording, I’ve loved that forever.
00:38:44.45
Stephen Schneider
Leo killed the radio star.
00:38:52.60
Alan Baltis
m My current Skynet is a little bit crowded because I have all my A to Z CDs, but I have stuff kind of stacked in front of them. Where’s the buggles at the very bottom of my very first a to B rack?
00:39:03.92
Alan Baltis
And i wanted, I hadn’t ever digitized it. And I kept putting off digging it out because I’d have to move a bunch of stuff. Well, finally I said, it can’t be that only my CD is the way I can listen to this.
00:39:15.87
Alan Baltis
So went out on YouTube, found the complete album, and just was jamming here at my desk with, listening to Vermillion Sands, listening all these great songs that they did. And then I was like, well, what’s other albums that they never got digitized? I don’t even have the CD.
00:39:31.16
Alan Baltis
A band called Intergalactic Touring Band that I might have laughed about in the past. It’s one of those things, kind of like the very first Alan Parsons Project album, where it wasn’t a band yet. He talked like 100 different artists and said, I need you to do the bass part on this song. I need your vocal over here. i need And he really cobbled together, being this great producer, all of these perfectly jigsaw matched songs.
00:39:54.26
Alan Baltis
intergalactic touring band is kind of like that where who sings on the album Annie Haslam from Renaissance Meatloaf um ah Larry Fast plays synthesizers and like I don’t I don’t remember who the guy was that did all this but I think it might have been the only album that he ever did but he had that same ability to like think of what would be perfect here and then get on the phone and say hey can I have you know an hour of studio time with you So I hadn’t heard that album probably since college, right? So 83 to now, my God, 40 And it was so long ago that I actually didn’t remember exactly the track order.
00:40:30.09
Alan Baltis
And so I had this wonderful new experience of like, no wonder I fell in love with this. Is that who I think it is?
00:40:35.33
Stephen Schneider
nice
00:40:35.93
Alan Baltis
It really is Annie Haslam? She’s got one of the purest, most angelic voices. Her and Annie Lennox might be my two favorite lady vocalists. Not as strong, for instance, as Ann Wilson from Heart, but just their their their voice is perfect.
00:40:51.16
Stephen Schneider
Oh, her, her and Wilson’s recent rendition of the stairway to heaven.
00:40:52.71
Alan Baltis
They can do it, you know?
00:40:57.84
Stephen Schneider
Have you heard it?
00:40:57.96
Alan Baltis
Right, well, Robert Plant was like tearing up because it was so good.
00:41:00.62
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.
00:41:01.67
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:41:01.95
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. I would add Nora Jones to that list.
00:41:02.66
Alan Baltis
So,
00:41:05.74
Alan Baltis
okay. I don’t mean to slight, there’s plenty of great, I like Bonnie Raitt’s voice.
00:41:06.38
Stephen Schneider
And um
00:41:10.31
Alan Baltis
I like, you know, there’s certain ones that just, why um
00:41:10.50
Stephen Schneider
yes. oo Who has John Paul Jones been touring with? um
00:41:17.92
Alan Baltis
let’s see. Well, Robert Plant was with, I don’t know,
00:41:23.77
Stephen Schneider
i
00:41:23.88
Alan Baltis
i have because i have I have them too. Exactly.
00:41:26.22
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that’s who that’s what I’m thinking of.
00:41:26.68
Alan Baltis
A great country artist. Let me see. It’s kind of funny. eye
00:41:34.66
Alan Baltis
Alison Krauss.
00:41:35.47
Stephen Schneider
oh Yes, she’s another one to add to that list.
00:41:36.29
Alan Baltis
but Exactly. And they made some great tunes together.
00:41:38.83
Stephen Schneider
And ah what’s her name from Sugar Land?
00:41:39.02
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:41:41.79
Stephen Schneider
I think has a pretty strong, good voice.
00:41:44.07
Alan Baltis
Okay. And so much, I just, it, I love where, don’t know, Robert Fripp worked with um his then not yet wife in band called like Sunday All Over the World, because some people just say, i have to work with them.
00:41:59.09
Alan Baltis
I want to be there seeing them sing, because how do they… How is it that they sound like an angel? How is it that they sound like a devil? You know what I mean? It’s like Kate Bush’s voice is, I don’t know that it’s wonderful, perfect, but it’s distinctive. And she does things that nobody else does. And so it’s like, I just want to be there when it’s done. I want to see the i want to be in the room, as they say in Hamilton, you know, be in the be there where the room where the decision is made. And m bear with me we just went to rock roll hall of fame what a wonderful thing in cleveland we not only have a great art museum we have this thing we just went to the snl 50 music opening party they have a huge exhibit where they have they’ve had like 1900 acts in the course of 50 years and if you think of that 50 years worth of music that really is the history of music in my life so they almost anybody that
00:42:49.45
Alan Baltis
Like Adele broke because she was on SNL. Elvis Costello got in trouble because he sang a song they said he shouldn’t sing. And all these other examples, King Crimson was on there, Paul McCartney, everybody’s been on there.
00:43:01.06
Alan Baltis
So Fred Armisen was the invited musical guest and it couldn’t have been a better choice. He’s really got this ability like to to, he came out there and strummed the guitar and say, here’s the way strumming guitar changes, because I’ve been all over the world, and Australians do it different than the Dutch do, than the Mexicans do, then and he really captured the…
00:43:21.91
Alan Baltis
What makes those things distinctive, that it’s on the backbeat or that it’s you like always a strong note and then ah a slight return and whatever else it might be. And he did drum sounds from like 30 years of punk from like 69 to 99. And it really was.
00:43:35.73
Alan Baltis
That sounds exactly like the cramps. That sounds exactly like the Sex Pistols. He’s this musical chameleon, but he has this incredible ear and gorgeous.
00:43:43.87
Stephen Schneider
Who was that?
00:43:44.87
Alan Baltis
Fred Armisen, he was on Saturday Night Live for like 11 years and and has all that musical talent, but of course he’s a very funny guy as well.
00:43:46.15
Stephen Schneider
I’m going look them
00:43:52.71
Alan Baltis
He also did a show called Portlandia where, um of like makes wonderful affectionate fun of Portland. You know what I mean about how artsy trendy it is and stuff like that. But he was just so charming. And of course, he had Saturday Night Live anecdotes and talk about, you know, so there are me and Will Ferrell were and whatever else it might be.
00:44:12.63
Alan Baltis
It was, he had the crowd in the palm of his hand for an hour plus that they were just so happy to be whatever you’re going to say, do play next. We are so happy to be here.
00:44:23.32
Stephen Schneider
Nice.
00:44:23.69
Alan Baltis
That was really a cool thing. And we ran through the exhibit. We have to go back and do our usual read every placard, really look at like they have all those 1900 artists. They have tapes from everything.
00:44:34.35
Alan Baltis
ah SNL was wonderfully generous about the exhibit really does cover everything.
00:44:35.70
Stephen Schneider
Wow.
00:44:39.88
Alan Baltis
I don’t think, and maybe there’s a certain amount of Disney-esque things where they won’t let certain things on because nowadays they’re not acceptable or because there’s ah some kind of rights violation.
00:44:50.81
Stephen Schneider
Mr. Robinson Neighborhood.
00:44:52.87
Alan Baltis
Like that, you know, but like, so we need to go back and like just spend a day there at this exhibit because, you know, I’ve been watching Saturday Night Live on and off my entire life. But just think of that, that if you go back to who was playing with when George Carlin was first on the show, it would have been like 74 if it’s 50 years.
00:45:10.77
Alan Baltis
So who was big in 74? m um I’m just, you know, they and also Lord Michaels and whoever the people are that were the music coordinators there, they were very much finger on the pulse.
00:45:21.07
Alan Baltis
So it wasn’t only kind of like the Super Bowl all shows where it’s the super popular things or it’s the legends from the past. They regularly because they were doing it weekly. You can fit a lot of new acts in if you’re going have 50 choices for the year.
00:45:33.44
Alan Baltis
And so they had all kinds of. punk and grunge and and just as as disco, as things change over the course of time, it’s kind of like time capsules of every single one of those years and decades and so forth.
00:45:44.71
Alan Baltis
So I kind of like, I got to go and just, it’s not going to take a day. It’s going to to live in the 1900 act.
00:45:49.95
Stephen Schneider
Right. Can you imagine trying to go and watch every episode of Saturday Night Live?
00:45:57.44
Alan Baltis
even just the musical interlude is still going to be 10 minutes times 1900, 19,000 minutes. Let’s see, divide divided by 60, divide by, I’ll have to see what how many hours that’s going to take.
00:46:03.05
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:46:08.62
Stephen Schneider
That’s going be a bit.
00:46:09.81
Alan Baltis
But I’m going to like, i’ I’m sure they have a little like song computer that you say, don’t remember, but was, let’s see, was Joan Jett on there?
00:46:17.35
Stephen Schneider
Probably Wikipedia, I bet.
00:46:18.95
Alan Baltis
They probably have a a complete listing somewhere. So I’m just, that was a very fun time. And I’m not only that event, but now I’m so encouraged to like go into the vault, go into the archives and say, well, I’m going to try to, know, they, a lot of times they actually did have like,
00:46:36.23
Alan Baltis
not only did they have the artist musical artist, sometimes they would take place in sketches. So you’re going to see like Mick Jagger in a sketch. Or as you know, you know, the whole Blue Oyster Cult, more cowbell thing.
00:46:49.12
Alan Baltis
Well, then they had Blue Oyster Cult on and they had them really do it.
00:46:52.36
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:46:52.40
Alan Baltis
Don’t fear the reaper and stuff. know what mean? So I’m, I’m, I’m just, Is there a better history of rock and roll over the course of my lifetime than those every week without fail 52 times a year for 50 years?
00:47:04.64
Stephen Schneider
Well, and, and, and you get reflections of society with the political sketches and what’s comedy, you know, and Andrew Dice Clay in the nineties, but not now, you know,
00:47:06.03
Alan Baltis
That’s amazing. ah
00:47:11.71
Alan Baltis
Absolutely.
00:47:18.97
Alan Baltis
they They had one of the, they had, um, dumb what would you call it, like trailers, if you will, for the exhibit where they had a 20 minute, here’s the kind of things you’re going to see. And then of course they had like Sinead O’Connor tearing up a picture of the Pope.
00:47:31.84
Alan Baltis
And that would what that caused controversy in the day.
00:47:32.07
Stephen Schneider
Oh God, yes.
00:47:35.29
Alan Baltis
And so I’m just from that little sampler, those little tastes of, I remember that, I remember that. but Scott and I were going back and forth with, could we get, could we name everybody that was on the show? And I think we might, between the two of us, have gotten everybody.
00:47:49.14
Alan Baltis
And then they really made a point of having some obscure ones. So you’d be like, yes there was a time when susie and the banshees were big and maybe they’re now touring on the nostalgia thing but they weren’t big for like 50 years they were big for like three you know what i mean so anyway yeah exactly so that was i i i’m glad i remember to talk about that because again the geekery aspect of having it be that everything is available and that they really they brought all the people that had worked on the exhibit out onto the stage as kind of a thank you
00:48:00.92
Stephen Schneider
yeah Flash. splash
00:48:19.28
Alan Baltis
And it wasn’t two or three, it was like 20. And so the that you’ve got all these people that are the music historians and the designers of the thing and the the tech people that made sure you really can, three key presses away, bring up, know what I mean, King Crimson.
00:48:33.15
Alan Baltis
I’m just, when we’ve been to the National Comedy Center, I’m amazed at how cool they’ve made it. That you really have the ability to like, Can I watch a clip from Alan King on the Ed Sullivan show from 60 years ago?
00:48:46.49
Alan Baltis
Beep, boop, there it is. And anything, almost anything, whatever they have in their archives. And one of the tragedies, as you know, is there was a time when they were not saving things.
00:48:57.46
Alan Baltis
They were taping over old shows to make new shows. And so that’s why some of the Doctor Whos were lost. And that’s why all kinds of stuff. but But having said that, it’s amazing how much, if you want to watch Red Fox doing his act, not his Sanford and Son. If you want to watch, um and I’m trying, you’re like, Alan King, you never hear his name anymore.
00:49:16.47
Alan Baltis
But yeah there was a time when he was absolutely headlining Vegas, much, much, you know, drawn that that that people would turn it to into Ed Sullivan just because Alan King was going to be on that night and stuff like that.
00:49:20.53
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:49:27.74
Alan Baltis
So I love where we’re talking about with Rhino Records as well. It’s cool that someone is like, I’m going to put together the ultimate box set of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It’s going to go back to their mud crutch days. It’s going to have live performances. its can have studio outtakes. But for whatever reason, Mike Campbell was totally on that day. And so it’s worth it. Thank God they captured this guitar riff.
00:49:50.24
Alan Baltis
and Maybe it appears in the prototype version of that, and then it’s really in a song. But I just love where someone is willing to do all the work and say, out of all that, we’re going to capture the A-list top 5%.
00:50:02.92
Alan Baltis
um There’s just something very cool that that’s not all being lost, that actually it’s as soon as we had digitization, as soon as we had ways of archival media, that it wasn’t, oh God, scratchy old vinyl or something like that, that we really do have the ability to save and cut and paste between things.
00:50:19.84
Alan Baltis
i love when someone is a good curator of that kind of stuff and comes out with the, I don’t know, there’s going to be one more Genesis box set, I’m sure, coming out with, well, here’s some live performances and maybe the BBC recordings and here’s some, you what i mean?
00:50:22.92
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:50:34.52
Alan Baltis
They still have the ability to say, you got anything in your attic? You got anything in a truck?
00:50:38.42
Stephen Schneider
well
00:50:39.08
Alan Baltis
but No, there’s too many different things, you know?
00:50:39.20
Stephen Schneider
Well, did you see what Springsteen it was spring sceneen right announced?
00:50:41.27
Alan Baltis
Mm-hmm.
00:50:45.20
Stephen Schneider
That he had material in his closet, essentially, and he’s releasing eight albums from back in the day.
00:50:53.23
Alan Baltis
ah that’s I just read a similar thing, and this this is really the geeky part. Prince was amazingly prolific.
00:51:00.81
Stephen Schneider
oh God, yeah.
00:51:01.26
Alan Baltis
Paisley Park, he had 100 times as much material as what he released. Apparently he had it stored in a vault that really had one of those things where if you try it any number of times the wrong way, yeah like like in ah in a spy movie, it shoots bolts into things so that you’ll never be able to get in. Maybe even like lights things inside on fire.
00:51:23.16
Alan Baltis
they had someone one come in that was able to figure it out so that they thought they might lose all of that incredible archive and now they have access to it and so maybe we’re going to see sadly posthumously because i wish to god he was still a around but he did all kinds of amazing things you can kind of say well that sounds like back in the day of little red corvette that sounds like the days of purple rain and on and forward kind of backwards and forwards in time i would love to hear
00:51:40.21
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:51:51.58
Alan Baltis
Jethro Tull had a couple, he was one of the earliest CD box sets that I got where, my God, there’s things on here that are as good as anything he put out. He was so prolific, he had so much material.
00:52:01.65
Alan Baltis
But back then on vinyl, you could do like, what, 20 minutes on a side, maybe 25. And then, know, you still, yet you’re you’re your needle got skinnier or whatever else it might be to find out that.
00:52:06.75
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:52:13.08
Alan Baltis
they They had, i think, like the Chateau disaster tapes. It was like the show, you know, it was a French thing. And it was right around the time of living in the past and passion play. And, know, like really is bardic rock and roll time.
00:52:26.22
Alan Baltis
And so many songs were just amazing. my i but you should have you can’t You can’t put out four albums in a year and make any money because you’ll exhaust the public’s buying power. But that’s how much good stuff he had when they were at the height of their powers.
00:52:39.78
Alan Baltis
And I keep hoping that there’s going to be that kind of thing for all kinds of people, you know?
00:52:40.35
Stephen Schneider
Well, yeah you can’t do that unless you’re the Beatles or Rolling Stones, because each of them had years. They had two, maybe three albums out a couple of times.
00:52:51.48
Alan Baltis
and that’s true too you know what i mean ah for for having said you can’t do that there were people that did exact tell i think credence clearwater revival had like five albums in three years loaded with hits you know what i mean that they’re really they were just making some of the best music out there so anyway i just i love the fact that they keep on finding things like hey you know without realizing it he did live in this flat for a while and we didn’t realize that he put things in the attic or put him in the wall like thurber did or something like that and that
00:53:01.15
Stephen Schneider
Right, right.
00:53:18.19
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:53:19.40
Alan Baltis
and And also with digitization and all the incredible cleanup things they can do now, it doesn’t have to be, oh God, it was on a cassette tape and it’s weathered over the years.
00:53:27.61
Stephen Schneider
It’s on an Einstein wax.
00:53:29.36
Alan Baltis
you say It’s on a wire spool or something, you know what i mean? and And instead they can…
00:53:34.40
Stephen Schneider
Edison, not Einstein.
00:53:35.07
Alan Baltis
did something Right, right, right. So i’m I’m looking forward. Like, remember, they did like John Lennon, they discovered a track, Free as a Bird, maybe I think it was.
00:53:46.96
Alan Baltis
And then they kind of recreated a Beatles song by as an imagine it and all the results went to charity so it wasn’t a cash in you know what I mean like I don’t know I’m one of those completists that I still regret that to this day one day I’m gonna gentle giant put out like a 36 CD box set for like 300 bucks
00:53:50.66
Stephen Schneider
last year. Well,
00:54:06.17
Alan Baltis
it’s like, I just don’t have the money right now. And now, of course, it’s going for 500. But I so much want it. I love their music. They really did experiment all the time. So I’m curious as to what were they doing in it was various different periods of time.
00:54:16.68
Stephen Schneider
well
00:54:18.84
Alan Baltis
And one day I’m going to be like, there’s no better use of 500, $500. I can’t believe I’m saying this.
00:54:23.15
Stephen Schneider
right Brian Wilson just…
00:54:25.12
Alan Baltis
can buy a ah backpack for that from the art exhibit. Oh, boy.
00:54:29.34
Stephen Schneider
Brian Wilson just passed, so we’ll probably see some Ultimate Beach Boys collection coming.
00:54:29.41
Alan Baltis
yeah
00:54:32.45
Alan Baltis
oh boy you know, he’s got things in the vault and that that there will be loving, hopefully not cash in but loving archiving of all those kinds of that’s right.
00:54:42.50
Stephen Schneider
I would hope. Yeah.
00:54:44.10
Alan Baltis
That’s right.
00:54:44.09
Stephen Schneider
And okay. So you were talking nostalgia. I got something you may have heard of.
00:54:47.07
Alan Baltis
Right. Okay.
00:54:48.98
Stephen Schneider
I’ve, I’ve been watching a bit recently. It’s called friendly TV. It’s focused on shows from like the fifties, sixties and seventies and they stream them.
00:54:58.52
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:54:59.85
Stephen Schneider
You can subscribe to have on demand or you could just watch for free, whatever they’re showing at the moment. But the best part is they do Saturday morning cartoons. So yeah,
00:55:09.43
Alan Baltis
Oh, man. See, I would love to watch. i Man, how long has it been since I saw the Herculoids? Or, you know, the Heculean and Jekyll.
00:55:15.26
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Now they don’t have a lot.
00:55:17.19
Alan Baltis
Okay. Yeah.
00:55:17.96
Stephen Schneider
They don’t have a lot of the cool stuff from like the seventies, eighties.
00:55:22.32
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:55:22.38
Stephen Schneider
A lot of it is the stuff that’s now going into public domain and stuff, but there’s enough.
00:55:27.30
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:55:29.13
Stephen Schneider
I mean, they have some Scooby-Doo’s on there.
00:55:31.37
Alan Baltis
okay
00:55:31.39
Stephen Schneider
ah You know, there’s enough in there that Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, um little Lulu, ah you know, yes.
00:55:38.13
Alan Baltis
Exactly. I used to love Woody Woodpecker. I used to love Heckle and Jekyll, you the white cracking.
00:55:41.35
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:55:42.24
Alan Baltis
Exactly. to Old Tom and Jerry. old There was a time when there was every way that you could have a cat and a mouse go at it, they came up with it.
00:55:44.73
Stephen Schneider
They have that.
00:55:49.81
Alan Baltis
So it was Pumpkin, Puss, and Mushmouse. And it was Savoir Faire. And, know, I’m trying to think of, I can’t even think of all the various different Klondike cat, right? Klondike cat.
00:55:59.32
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:56:00.04
Alan Baltis
And just all that, all those hijinks.
00:56:03.04
Stephen Schneider
Which, I mean,
00:56:04.04
Alan Baltis
that they make work with itchy and scratchy on the Simpsons, you know, the ultra violent itchy and scratchy. But anyway, yes, exactly.
00:56:09.90
Stephen Schneider
but Tom and Jerry on crack. so
00:56:13.58
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:56:13.81
Stephen Schneider
So you may have heard this, that the bad thing is max HBO max owns the, the Looney tunes, Mary medley stuff.
00:56:13.88
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:56:19.71
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:56:22.96
Stephen Schneider
And they had all of it as much as is available up on max for several years. Well, they’ve taken it all down and they’re talking about just locking it away because it’s a tax write-off. But if they do that, they won’t be allowed to bring it back out.
00:56:37.67
Stephen Schneider
So
00:56:38.66
Alan Baltis
So that could be lost to us. I mean, I know that Disney did, they had a very concerted thing of, we put out Dumbo and we let everybody watch it like on DVD or theaters.
00:56:40.04
Stephen Schneider
It could be lost.
00:56:48.97
Alan Baltis
And then we take it away. We stopped selling it. We, and, and, and, you know, demand builds because I’ve wanted to watch Dumbo and I couldn’t find a copy.
00:56:52.97
Stephen Schneider
the
00:56:56.69
Alan Baltis
And they did that with all kinds of their archive.
00:56:58.17
Stephen Schneider
For years, put it back in the vault, get it out of the vault at total marketing thing.
00:57:00.49
Alan Baltis
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right. Right.
00:57:04.74
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. So we’ll, we’ll see. I know Colin was pretty upset though. He said he’s been doing an animation thing, watching the history of animation. And when he got to the Looney Tunes, he said the gold ah collection is really the one to get because it has the most amount that is unedited that they didn’t like cut bad things out that would offend people.
00:57:20.89
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:57:28.90
Alan Baltis
Right, the bow is arising to make sure that there’s no Nazi reference or no zippity-doo-dah or whatever else it might be.
00:57:29.09
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:57:32.21
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Right. So he said it’s like 400 cartoons in the golden collection.
00:57:35.37
Alan Baltis
Okay. Okay. Interesting.
00:57:38.53
Stephen Schneider
So that’s the one to get if you, you know, like I got to get some Bugs Bunny in me.
00:57:43.80
Alan Baltis
You know what? I’m one of those guys that I didn’t always only like. The Bugs Bunny and the Huckleberry Hound and whatever the the main things that were on TV and stuff. I always liked the things you only saw in theaters, like Speedy Gonzalez and and Pink Panther. The Pink Panther cartoons were…
00:58:03.66
Alan Baltis
I know they had them on TV as well. So I’m trying to think of Tijuana toads were another one of those that was like, well, nowadays it’s not acceptable because, oh my God, maybe drug use. Oh my God, speaking in thick Mexican accents and that kind stuff.
00:58:16.28
Alan Baltis
But I remember them being hilarious. And so, you know what I mean?
00:58:18.81
Stephen Schneider
right
00:58:19.91
Alan Baltis
if youre If you look at it with modern sensibilities, I could see how they’re not going to work for you. But if it didn’t is a nostalgia thing and you’re like, you know, I watched all those cartoons and I didn’t turn into a Mexican hater.
00:58:31.28
Alan Baltis
I didn’t turn into a druggist. So there’s a certain amount of, you know, memes can affect you, but they don’t run your life. They do not control you from injection.
00:58:38.84
Stephen Schneider
Exactly. if you turn into a horrible person, maybe you always were.
00:58:41.09
Alan Baltis
yeah and Honestly, that’s my excuse is that, you know I saw a guy shoot somebody. I always wanted to shoot somebody. So I watched those things, you know, right, right.
00:58:52.77
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:58:53.60
Alan Baltis
right
00:58:53.87
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, it always cracked me up. you know ah Heavy metal is going to ruin our youth. D&D is going to ruin our youth. And this is coming from the people that used to play cowboys and Indians.
00:59:01.01
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:59:04.31
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:59:04.77
Stephen Schneider
yeah yeah
00:59:05.88
Alan Baltis
I had that discussion countless times about how that there’s no way that it really has exactly the impact. I think that there is something about if you watch nothing but violent cartoons as a kid, then you act out more because it kind of rewires your brain.
00:59:20.81
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:59:20.89
Alan Baltis
but But it isn’t that it will automatically turn you into a Satanist or a communist or a you name the thing that we were accused of, you know.
00:59:28.73
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:59:29.26
Alan Baltis
Oh, well.
00:59:30.32
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. I mean, I played how many hours, days, years of doom, and I haven’t shot up a school once.
00:59:35.50
Alan Baltis
um exactly it’s it’s a quick i have been working my way i think i mentioned i got back into comic bookville for three months and so i really did compile everything together that i received from eminem and i’m working my way through i’m only up to k no i’m off to when i read ah a magazine a comic book called kid venom
00:59:45.15
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:59:57.24
Alan Baltis
There’s been a whole bunch of younger versions of various different things that’s meant to appeal to, i kind of, well, this in particular appealed to the manga crowd.
01:00:07.48
Stephen Schneider
Mm-hmm.
01:00:08.03
Alan Baltis
And it really was not good. By that meaning, it violates all the Western ways of telling stories, like you get from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comic Books, that it was…
01:00:20.37
Alan Baltis
fractured and the imagery was like too many close-ups of faces but not what’s really going on to cause the conflict and the stylization was such that because I don’t have a lot of that Japanese culture in my background.
01:00:35.27
Alan Baltis
Colin would have gotten a lot more of it because he has been immersed in it. But I just I got to the end of it. It’s like this was the biggest nothing burger I’ve read in a long freaking time. I couldn’t tell you what the plot was about. i couldn’t tell you the main characters and their relationships and why there’s a conflict.
01:00:52.79
Alan Baltis
It was so much not my style. and And I would even go so far as to say if that was people’s first introduction to comics, it would be no wonder they would say, what are kids getting into here?
01:01:06.26
Alan Baltis
This is so discordant, so fractured. There’s no narrative pulse to it. There’s no story arc. There’s no character arc. I just was like, wow. But I guess there is a demographic.
01:01:19.25
Alan Baltis
If that’s what they want is the combination of maybe Marvel characters, but put into a the manga verse. And that’s kind of what it was. And so I’m willing to bet that as I work my way through, there might be others that are like that, you know, that knew that they had a Spider-Man version that was like, you know, and it’s…
01:01:37.29
Alan Baltis
they I’ve read comic books that were parodies of that kind of stuff. And so when I saw some of the artwork today at Today’s Museum, I remember reading was like the the way that they would translate Japanese into English, but badly.
01:01:48.46
Alan Baltis
Pleased to die, radio boy. you know, I am being so dead. and that and that kind of stuff. And it was like, hi I’ve tried manga and anime number of times, and it doesn’t work for me.
01:02:01.90
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:02:01.95
Alan Baltis
I’m sure it breaks Colin’s heart because he loves it. And really, there it is great mythology there. I did read certain things when they were being directly brought over and translated. I really liked Lone Wolf and Cub.
01:02:13.42
Alan Baltis
I really liked, I mean, certain things, but but other things were just like, wow, it’s taking a long time to get through this.
01:02:13.57
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:02:20.25
Alan Baltis
Is it that everything there is glacial paste? Is it that it’s all post-apocalyptic, that everything is a dystopian future and everybody gets mutated and everybody has odd haircuts?
01:02:31.15
Alan Baltis
You know what i mean? It just was. It wasn’t like the streets of New York, like so much of Marvel is.
01:02:32.98
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:02:35.97
Alan Baltis
It was, I don’t get youth culture in Japan. And so, you know what i mean? i It just it didn’t speak to me. It didn’t it didn’t work for, i don’t have a Hello Kitty thing. i don’t have a whatever.
01:02:48.80
Alan Baltis
I’m trying to think of one of the ones I tried that were just, whereas when I was really young, I remember really liking Astro Boy and Tobor the Eighth Man. know, were a couple of things that were Japanese cartoons they brought over and badly translated, but you’re a kid and it wasn’t, I didn’t have the sensibility to say, oh, this is terrible.
01:03:07.99
Alan Baltis
but but
01:03:08.30
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:03:08.81
Alan Baltis
I mean, it was entertaining, I guess.
01:03:11.82
Stephen Schneider
So that reminds me, ah Amazon Prime added a new channel that’s 24-7, all the time, Ultraman, that you can watch Ultraman.
01:03:22.44
Alan Baltis
Because there’s so many of those in the can. Exactly that.
01:03:24.40
Stephen Schneider
There’s so many of those.
01:03:25.72
Alan Baltis
Exactly that. I will give that a try because I’m curious, but it’s another one those things like, am I really going to watch? Is that the only thing I’m to watch?
01:03:36.24
Alan Baltis
I’m going to watch them all.
01:03:36.39
Stephen Schneider
No.
01:03:37.38
Alan Baltis
That’s the only thing I’m going to watch for the rest of my life.
01:03:39.37
Stephen Schneider
900 some episodes or whatever.
01:03:41.01
Alan Baltis
hundred
01:03:42.30
Stephen Schneider
ah
01:03:42.36
Alan Baltis
there’s There’s a series, Perry Rodin, a paperback series that was being translated from the German. And when it was up to like 120, it was up to a thousand in Germany. It really was like a pulp that kept going. So it was published like weekly.
01:03:55.76
Alan Baltis
And that’s the only way you can accumulate those numbers. and and And I read a hundred of them. And yet they weren’t like, I’m going to plow through and do hundred to a thousand.
01:04:06.34
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:04:06.83
Alan Baltis
Oh, well, 101 through 1000. I didn’t mean to skip.
01:04:09.84
Stephen Schneider
Well, right.
01:04:10.77
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
01:04:12.18
Stephen Schneider
Well, the ah ah hundreds where they kill Glenn. So, all right, man.
01:04:15.62
Alan Baltis
but exactly
01:04:18.72
Alan Baltis
So this was a great episode in terms of how much should we stop touched on and like the new end of nostalgia and all that kind of stuff.
01:04:19.17
Stephen Schneider
So
01:04:22.72
Stephen Schneider
a lot of, a lot of fun geekery.
01:04:25.72
Alan Baltis
So So let just that, what’s a mystery? My recommendation for this week, I think I mentioned it a while back, Mystery, a band out of Canada that I discovered at one of my Prague stops. When I go back and listen to a couple of their albums, they really are good. And why haven’t they made it bigger? Because Canada, because Prague, because whatever that thing is that Rush took all their air, I’m not sure, but boy, mystery.
01:04:51.63
Alan Baltis
Highest recommendation. There, that that’s mine.
01:04:55.19
Stephen Schneider
There’s a new series starting soon ah called countdown with Jensen Ackles. So like excited for that.
01:05:00.78
Alan Baltis
Okay.
01:05:01.62
Stephen Schneider
And him and Padalecki and Misha and Jeffrey mor Dean Morgan are all in the boys season five. So whenever that comes out.
01:05:09.72
Alan Baltis
I have been, there’s a couple things. I’m like the rookies. Colleen and I just sat down to watch the next rookie and we didn’t realize the season was already done for this year.
01:05:18.29
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:05:18.53
Alan Baltis
And we were like, just looking at each other distraught.
01:05:20.55
Stephen Schneider
We did. Yeah.
01:05:22.85
Alan Baltis
So now we have to look for what’s going to be our next to rewatch the residents. I’m looking forward to the continuation of the boys, all kinds of things I’m looking for the next series.
01:05:29.24
Stephen Schneider
did Did you try the tracker with Justin Hartley?
01:05:34.91
Alan Baltis
No, I haven’t. I finished Reacher, but I haven’t done tracker yet. So I’ll do that next. Okay.
01:05:38.51
Stephen Schneider
And speaking of Reacher, they announced the next season.
01:05:38.55
Alan Baltis
Okay.
01:05:41.40
Alan Baltis
season four, I think they even said which of the Lee Child’s books it’s based on, right? So, yeah, but…
01:05:44.95
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I forget the name. And they’re doing a spinoff with Neagly.
01:05:49.67
Alan Baltis
Excellent. Okay. cause She’s intense. That’ll be good.
01:05:52.12
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
01:05:52.73
Alan Baltis
All right.
01:05:52.98
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah, you know, obviously, Rich then will probably have some little cameo somewhere in there, even if she just calls them for something, you know.
01:05:54.91
Alan Baltis
Very good.
01:05:59.25
Alan Baltis
Right. Exactly.
01:06:01.74
Stephen Schneider
ah They have to. You got have the first five minutes of the episode or something.
01:06:06.37
Alan Baltis
Right, they’ll meet the bar to exchange information, have a big fight, clear the bar, and then on he goes.
01:06:06.49
Stephen Schneider
You know, that’s what they…
01:06:11.01
Alan Baltis
So honestly, it’s the golden age of television and movies, man. There’s so much quality stuff being made and niche stuff that really is not just has to appeal to the mass crowd. um i We never struggled to find things, given the infinity of things that are available on Netflix and and Amazon Prime and Max and whatever else, we’re still not watching crap.
01:06:30.70
Alan Baltis
We’re still watching good stuff almost all the time. It’s wonderful to be alive now.
01:06:33.42
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:06:34.68
Alan Baltis
So, yay.
01:06:35.07
Stephen Schneider
Yep. Yep.
01:06:35.75
Alan Baltis
All right. Take care.
01:06:36.43
Stephen Schneider
right. Talk to you later.
01:06:36.79
Alan Baltis
Thanks for taking. Okay. Bye-bye.
