Episode 68: Transcript

"Keeping up with culture" — Football, Kendrick, and rap beef

Magda Pecsenye Zarin: All right, so today's topic is staying abreast of current cultural events and how you do that when you're in your 50s.

Doug French: And whether you should try.

Magda: And whether you should try. Well, I mean, okay, I feel like most of the people I know who are in our 50s are up on current events, right? But there's this whole level of cultural stuff that just doesn't make it in front of our faces necessarily unless we have kids or other young people who are putting this stuff in our faces. And my big example of this is the Kendrick Lamar performance. I kind of knew what to expect. I mean I would not say that I'm a Kendrick Lamar fan, but I certainly am familiar with his work. I understood it when he got a Pulitzer Prize. Like it made sense to me because I think his lyrics are just unbelievable. I recognized it, you know, when he was sort of new on the scene and everybody was like, wow, Kendrick Lamar, right?

Doug: That's what everybody was like. Wow.

Magda: Wow.

Doug: Wow. Kendrick Lamar. Oh my. Yeah. I love when you go full Midwestern lady. No, I think it's interesting for two reasons. When we first talked about the halftime show, which I didn't see because I didn't watch the Super Bowl at all.

Magda: Which when you said to me that you didn't watch the Super Bowl, I was like, what? What? Doug French did not watch a major sporting event? Because I think of you as being a person who has...

Doug: Integrity.

Magda: …like chronic FOMOS, fear of missing out on sports. FOMOOS.

Doug: Is that a Greek term?

Magda: Yes, you are a big sports fan and... I think that even if you don't care about either of the teams that are playing, you watch it for the love of the game and for the commentary. Because to you, it's not just the game. There's always some sort of cultural, political, you know, the intrigue of the coaches, all that kind of stuff. And I have to say that that's the only reason that I have been able to continue to discuss sports with you. Like, one of the joys of getting divorced from you was that I no longer had to know anything about the Red Sox, right?

Doug: Well, for the record, I don't know anything about them anymore either, so...

Magda: Oh, poor Red Sox. But I mean, one of the things that you and I do talk about is the politics and the commerce aspects of sports. And I can talk about that stuff with you, even though I have no interest in watching, say, a baseball game on television. If anybody out there wants to invite me to go to a baseball game in person, I'm always happy to go sit there in a ballpark, have a beer on a lovely, clear evening. Let's go. Whatever your team is, I'm happy to root for them. But on TV, it's like, wow, what could be more soporific? But I am interested in it from a business perspective, from a commerce perspective, from a cultural perspective, all that kind of stuff. And I think of that as being like sort of your jam. So the fact that you didn't watch the Super Bowl is just mind blowing to me.

Magda: So when I proposed this show idea to you and I was like, hey, let's talk about knowing what the Kendrick Lamar halftime show was about. I appreciate his work. I appreciate what he's done. Right. And also, our younger son and my younger stepdaughter have been outraged slash amused slash engrossed slash cynical about slash just entertained by the whole Kendrick Lamar feud with Drake, and initially with J. Cole until he figured out he needed to just nope right out of there.

Doug: Where's the beef?

Magda: Exactly. But they've been giving Mike and me a blow by blow, so by the time Kendrick released Not Like Us, Mike and I already knew what the whole thing was about. And the first time we heard the song and he got to the “trying to hit a chord and it's probably a minor” Mike and I just looked at each other and we're like, “Oh, shit.”

Doug: Right.

Magda: I wonder if this was as important a thing a generation ago. Like, did our parents, when they were in their 50s, feel like they knew or didn't know what was going on with youth culture?

Doug: Well, I'm sure they didn't, just because it wasn't for them, and there were so fewer ways for them to even come across it. I mean, the only reason I saw it is I could watch it on YouTube yesterday, and I was intrigued by that, too. I could not care about the beef at all. At the same time though, I enjoy what Kendrick Lamar was trying to do. And I actually, as I was parsing it and reading about it, it felt like I felt when I was parsing, This Is America, but for different reasons.

Magda: This Is America.

Doug: Childish Gambino.

Magda: Oh, okay. I had forgotten that that was the name of that. Yeah.

Doug: Oh my God. Well, let's talk about social significance, young lady. Well, this is the thing. Like, that was all about, let's talk about violence. Let's talk about Jim Crow. Let's talk about all of the subtle things that were worked into the choreography, what all the shocking things meant. That was an education to me. And I do think that there are some of those themes that come through the whole beef thing. But ultimately, if it's just a beef between rappers, then let them beef. And if beefing sells records, then good for them, too.

Magda: Well, okay, but it's not just a beef between rappers. It is Kendrick Lamar calling Drake out on being a pedophile.

Doug: Yes. It took me a second to decipher what a P3DO was. I was like, oh, yes, got it.

Magda: You were like, “Wait a minute. Was that in one of the Star Wars movies that I haven't seen yet?”

Doug: Or it should be in a parody episode somewhere.

Magda: Yeah, but I mean, you know, okay, so the whole thing is that Drake has this history of having texting and other inappropriate relationships with teenage girls. Apparently after he and Serena Williams dated very very briefly he stalked her for months. But if you listen to the lyrics to Drake's songs a lot of them are just kind of unhinged. Like if you listen to Used To Call Me On My Cell Phone, it's bat shit. It is not healthy.

Doug: Well, he keeps getting beat downs. I mean he keeps losing.

Magda: Yeah, because Drake has significant problems and he needs help. I think the original, like sort of the entry point to insulting Drake was to say that he doesn't write his own stuff. To me, that's the difference between rap slash hip hop and pop music, because in pop music, performers are performing, oftentimes, things that are written by other people. And so there, it's the fact that Drake likes to consider himself a rapper and I would say that Drake is hip hop, not rap, but he really is pop because he's performing things written by other people. And I think that's just insulting. It's insulting to a Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper.

Doug: You've touched on the point that I want to get at, which is I don't care about the beef, but I am interested in the way they're beefing. That's an aspect of the culture that I'm interested in learning more about, just the way that that works. And it's just same thing with sports now. Like you said, I don't care about the outcome, really. I don't care about the sports. I care how they're playing the sports. When they're on the football field, there are 22 stories. There are 22 men with lives, and I'm interested in them. But the whole idea of not watching the Super Bowl, there were just so many reasons not to do it. One, I wanted to experiment. I wanted to see how I would feel. I've never missed a Super Bowl. I was like, am I going to get the DTs? Am I going to miss this?

Magda: Is there going to be like a beam of light that shines down through the window and the voice saying, “Doug, this is The LORD. Why are you not watching football? The game I gave you?”

Doug: Fear my Jomo, God. So there was that. I didn't get it in my house. I cut the cord. I don't have sports in the house nearly as much anymore.

Magda: Okay, but you could have watched it with your antenna. Do you have a digital antenna?

Doug: I could have, but I didn't. I mean, it was also free on Tubi, as I found out.

Magda: Yes, we watched it on Tubi.

Doug: But there was also, it was on Fox, which is Rupert Murdoch. And, you know, I had read a lot about, like, how low can these ratings go? Can we boycott the game? And I was like, you know what? I'll play along with that. And of course, I think Fox is saying they got the highest ratings ever. So who knows? It's a fact-free world now.

Magda: I think the reason they got the highest ratings ever were K.Dot, first of all. A lot of people wanted to turn into this halftime show, and it was both fans, people who always watch the halftime show, and people who want to see the beef. When I watched the halftime show, I was like, oh, most of this has nothing to do with Drake. It's really, really, really very much just that one song that has anything to do with Drake. But I saw this very interesting article in Wired Magazine–and I'll send it to you and we can link it in the show notes–that was like an interview with the woman who was the set designer for the whole thing. And she said that Kendrick had a very specific idea for how he wanted the whole set to look and what he wanted. He wanted the car. So she had to source a car that they could tear apart so they could do that clown car thing at the beginning with all the dancers coming out and all this. And it was really fascinating just about how they put the whole thing together and the symbology.

Doug: That's another cool part. That's what made me think of This Is America. It's the same thing. It's like, this is something. Yeah. This was very intentional and it's important to figure out what he intended.

Magda: Yeah. The other reason I think they got such high ratings is because number one, Eagles Nation, like “Go birds,” right? They are rabid about watching everything. And also, I think everybody thought that Kansas City was going to run rampant over the birds. And then Travis Kelsey or whatever was going to propose to Taylor Swift at the end of the Super Bowl. And I think that's why people watched.

Doug: Well, Swifties, as far as I know, they don't know a time when their team didn't win the Super Bowl. They're like, a Super Bowl win is something that you do.

Magda: Taylor Swift has been winning the Super Bowl since she came out, so, you know.

Doug: Right, but I mean, as long as they've been together, Kelce's won the Super Bowl. So, wait a minute. They didn't win? How is that possible? What's going on, Mom?

Magda: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Mike and I watched it with his daughter, who's 17, has absolutely no interest in sports whatsoever.

Doug: I totally get that.

Magda: Well, she's a theater kid. She's very into music.

Doug: Antithetical to football as a person.

Magda: She's a really gifted artist. Yeah. So we decided to eat dinner in the living room in front of the TV. And then after we did that, the cat got onto her lap. And so then she was trapped in the room, right?

Doug: The best way to be trapped.

Magda: So she was like, “Oh, I don't even know what's going on.” And I told her the story of how in seventh grade I was at Catholic school and we had a gym teacher, Cathy Johnson, who I now realize was a lesbian gym teacher, which was kind of radical, I think, for the Catholics, who was a delightful human being and took pity on those of us who had academic capacity but had limited physical capacity. Like I can't throw or catch a ball to save my life. I just have bad hand eye coordination and nobody apparently had figured out that you could just have kids run and that would be fine because I can run. I just can't throw or catch anything.

Doug: Right.

Magda: So she took pity on us and we had an entire unit where all we had to do was memorize the rules to football. And then there was a written test at the end. And I got a 99% on that test in seventh grade and that saved my gym grade.

Doug: Yeah!

Magda: And I will tell you, of everything I learned in my formal schooling up through undergrad, I would say the thing that I use the most and most consistently is knowing the rules to American football. So thank you, Cathy Johnson. I hope the Catholics were never mean to you.

Doug: You couldn’t catch a disease to save your life. So there's that. Yeah.

Magda: So anyway, I told that story to my stepdaughter and I think she thought it was funny. So then she kind of watched and we explained to her that there are four chances to go 10 yards. Each chance is called a down, blah, blah, blah. She's like, it just seems so–

Doug: I would love to see that. I just, her sitting at your knee as you imparted wisdom in a non-football family way.

Magda: She absolutely picked up on why people do not like it, which is that it's intensely boring to have a bunch of adult men bash their heads into each other to only go three yards. Right.

Doug: Right.

Magda: But she was picking up on stuff. She's like, why does that one guy try to run through this huge group of people? Why doesn't he go around on the outside or just throw it to somebody else?

Doug: “Why throw it to the other team? That doesn't seem like it's useful.”

Magda: Well, she saw the first interception and she said, wait, I was like, yes, yes. So then she started to get why people liked it. Like, right. There was an interception. He caught it. He ran into the end zone. And I said, see that 10 seconds is why people watch football. And she's like, okay, I get it. That was exciting. Right. But then at one point, I don't even remember what had happened in the game, but Mahomes did, you know, like he was just Butterfingers the whole.

Doug: He had the worst game of his life.

Magda: His arms were noodles. I don't know what it was. But something happened and Hannah said, “Oh, this is so embarrassing. If I were one of the Chiefs, I would just cry.” Ha ha! And I was like, the precision with which she just dismantled the entire team of these men.

Doug: See, now the information transfer happening here, right? She's teaching you about the beef. You're teaching her about the game. It's a wholesome family night. I totally get it.

Magda:Exactly.

Doug: But now, did you talk at all about Tom Brady? Because that's another reason why I had no interest in watching the game, because I've seen him call a game a couple of times, and it's unlistenable.

Magda: Well, I said on Facebook, “Tom Brady is the football version of Alexi Lalas.” Unwatchable. Just unbearable. Well, you know, Alexi Lalas, right? The former soccer player who's now the soccer announcer. He's miserable. He's just, ugh. And Tom Brady is like, I mean, okay, I've never liked Tom Brady and I should because, you know, it's great to be a Michigan Wolverine. But I just have always found him insufferable and kind of disconnected. Like, it seems like there's kind of nothing there, nothing connected in there to me.

Doug: Excellent football player. Does not belong in the booth. And Fox paid him $375 million because of his name and not because of his talent. And he shouldn't be there.

Magda: Well, okay.

Doug: One, because he sucks. And two, because he co-owns the Las Vegas Raiders. So there's a conflict of interest there.

Magda: Oh, yeah. He shouldn't be allowed to be an announcer if he has a financial interest in any of the teams in the NFL. That's... That seems pretty elementary.

Doug: Well, I think in our lifetime, people are just going to get the word “should” out of the vocabulary in general. There'll be no such thing as should anymore.

Magda: I don't know.

Doug: But that was another reason to not watch the game.

Magda: His Botox looks great. My friend Dawn pointed that out. She was like, “his Botox is right on point.”

Doug: It's still funny when handsome people feel like they need to alter what's already so handsome.

Magda: Well, I mean, if that's all you got going for you.

Doug: That and tons and tons of personal wealth and seven Super Bowl rings. I mean, you'd think he could stand alone by his work ethic and his achievement. I wonder if he felt like ugly compared to his ex-wife. I wonder if that traumatized him.

Magda: I think what we're seeing now in this country overall is is that there are a lot of adult men who have no idea who they are or who they could be if they would just be borderline decent people.

Doug: Well, that's like eight other podcasts. Absolutely. I think about the state of men nowadays and all I do is just curl up into a ball and get under a blanket because man, manhood is in deep, deep trouble and it's only getting worse.

Magda: So, OK, I would like to say for anybody who didn't watch the Kendrick Lamar halftime show, you can watch it on YouTube. You do not have to be into the music to understand that it was really cool and it was visually very arresting. Like visually, it was the most beautiful Super Bowl halftime show of all time, because usually the Supertime halftime shows are like explosions and glitter and all this stuff. And this was not that. This looked like performance art to me, but it was also just him traveling through a video game that was his life, going from his song to his song. And there was a lot of symbolism in it. There is a woman who's a teacher who created a lesson plan, and it looked to me like it could be kids from maybe first grade on up through high school. I think you could take it any level you wanted, to watch the show and analyze the symbolism and the meaning and how things were enacted in it. So we'll link to that lesson plan also, because even if you're not teaching kids, if you're like, wow, I do not get the hype around this at all, looking at the things that she picked out for kids to look at in the lesson plan, I think is edifying. I also want to say that I was surprised at how many people on the internet were saying things like, “Well, that show sucked.” Because I think–

Doug: Because it wasn't for them.

Magda: Exactly. Like, it just, that's so immature. The phrase that I tried to teach our kids was “Don't yuck somebody's yum.” Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that it doesn't have any value. It just doesn't have any value to you. I had a number of friends who said, “Wow, this is absolutely not my style of music, but this was really well done.”

Doug: Right.

Magda: That to me is a valuable comment. Like they could say, like, “I don't have any idea what's going on here. And I can just tell that there's something going on here. I don't know what it is. And I think it was really well done.” So I just want to say that if you're an adult who said “This sucks” in public, first of all, number one, you don't have to put every thought that comes into your head, it doesn't have to come out of your mouth or onto a keyboard. But also, don't yuck somebody else's yum.

Doug: Well, first of all, you're not an adult.

Magda: Right.

Doug: I mean, that's where we are, though. I mean, just like everything else, you should just look at someone doing something, and if it doesn't hurt you or anybody, then just let them do it. I mean, go ahead and do that thing. Enjoy peanut butter and oysters, whatever. If that's your jam, eat it. I'm not going to eat it. It doesn't hurt me. I don't care.

Magda: Right.

Doug: But I will push back and say no one will ever touch Prince 2007. Colts Bears.

Magda: Okay, but?

Doug: Halftime show that will dwarf all ever halftime shows in perpetuity I'm in.

Magda: Okay, but that was because he was Prince, right? I would say.

Doug: Yes.

Magda: You could take the Kendrick Lamar piece, the 13-minute performance art piece, And you could actually take Kendrick Lamar himself out of it and just have the dancing and the visuals and the music. And it would still be a really stunning piece. So to me, it was way more than Kendrick Lamar himself. And what it makes me think is I would love to see a Broadway show or an opera written by K.Dot. Because if he can envision this sort of narrative, you know, he's kind of the center. But you know how Lin-Manuel Miranda writes things that he doesn't have to be in? I think Kendrick Lamar can do the same thing.

Doug: Well, I have to say, first of all, whenever you say KDOT, the first thing I think of is the Kansas Department of Transportation. For what that's worth. But I think you're right in that respect. The performance itself stands on its own. I mean, I guess if we're distinguishing Kendrick Lamar from Prince, I just think Prince was...

Magda: Oh, that's worthless. I mean, that's like saying, which do you like more, baseball or a banana?

Doug: Well, except that Prince had more universal appeal back when you could have universal appeal. There's no way that anybody, the NFL books for the Super Bowl halftime show ever again will have universal appeal. So part of that is a project of its time. Kendrick Lamar did an amazing show, mostly for Kendrick Lamar fans. And for casual people who are interested in the social impact of what he said, I've read some interesting things that I'll post in the notes. I think Josh Johnson's stand up about it was very funny.

Magda: Yeah, Josh Johnson is just the peak for me. Everything he does is just hilarious and really insightful.

Doug: Someone posted somewhere on social media, “Next year's halftime show is going to be a jar of mayonnaise with a Confederate flag in it.” And can we also talk about Harry and Sally eating at Katz's Deli and putting mayonnaise on a sandwich?

Magda: Oh, God. No.

Doug: Oh, God. No, no, no. False.

Magda: It's bad. I think that commercial would have been funny 10 or 15 years ago. But there is a significant segment of adults in the United States who do not get the reference because they haven't seen the movie. I think they waited too long. You can be 25 or 30 years old and never have seen When Harry Met Sally.

Doug: Yeah. Also, when it came to like. “Should I watch this?” I was like “Okay, I guess there are commercials, too” and then I thought “I don't give a hot crap about the commercials.” I don't like commercials.

Magda: The number of AI commercials was troubling. I do not need to see an AI version of Martha Stewart dancing around in sneakers.

Doug: See, I didn't see that. And I guess, I mean, I'm sure I could go ahead and seek out what the best ads were. But remember when Matt Damon debuted that Fortune Favors The Bold by crypto?

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: How'd that work out? You know, I mean, being marketed to is terrible. And I don't want to be marketed to anymore. I've got Chiefs fatigue, right? I don't want to see a three-peat. Nothing against the Eagles, but I grew up a Giants fan. I'm a northern New Jersey kid. I grew up despising the Eagles, so I don't care about them. I'm happy they won of the two teams. I'm happy it was decisive, but I ran out of reason. Instead, Robert and I watched Emilia Perez.

Magda: You went from incredibly populist to niche.

Doug: It seemed like the exact opposite thing to watch, yes.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: Now, of course, I'm reading about all the shit that the actress has gotten into, or that they've dug up about her, and how she's essentially torpedoed her chance to win anything.

Magda: Okay, well, I don't know anything about that.

Doug: Yeah, well, the actress apparently was tweeting about George Floyd in pejorative ways, and you can read all about that if you want to.

Magda: Oh, no.

Doug: Because that's another thing. The Oscars are coming up, and I'm indifferent to them, too. And that's an overall theme that I'm really wrestling with the idea of what to get involved in, what to care about, how to stave off that feeling of cultural obsolescence right now. Granted, it's a big story that the Oscars have a bunch of films that nobody's seen. No one has seen The Brutalist. No one has seen Honora, which apparently now is the front runner. Nobody has seen Emelia Perez. You talk about a sports junkie. I used to be an Oscar junkie. I used to go to parties.

Magda: You used to be such an Oscar junkie. Oh, my God. When you and I first met, you were going to like Oscar parties and you were like studying up before you went to the Oscar-watching parties and stuff like that. This was your jam.

Doug: And I rooted for people to win. Yeah. It's an interesting transformation that I'm recognizing in myself. The idea that, you know what, if they win, that's wonderful. But it would help if I had seen the movie. And I think that's just the way that movie culture is fractionalized like everything else. You know, when you nominate 10 films, there's a good chance that 90% of the population has seen one or two of them, maybe.

Magda: Right.

Doug: Yes, I have felt great when my team wins, and I think every team that I grew up liking has won something significant. I mean I think the last thing I'll ever enjoy sportswise was when UVA won the hoops national championship, and that was six years ago. It's worth a little shot of dopamine at the time, but then I forget and I forget when they lose, too. So maybe that's just age saying It's great to have these little peaks and valleys in life, but in the end, it all comes down to who you're with and who you love and who loves you and all that kind of stuff. I'm getting ridiculous in my older age.

Magda: I mean, that makes sense.

Doug: And so I'm not unhappy about it, but I'm actually pleasantly surprised that when it came time to blow off the SuperBowl, I did and I'm fine. Man, well, this got interestingly, this came to a halt.

27:06

Magda: Yeah, I mean, so, okay, to get back to what is the topic of this, my question is, how do people our age find the line between being informed about cultural stuff that's not necessarily our specific culture, and just letting it go. Right. Because I think that you didn't have any idea about the whole Kendrick/Drake thing. You're not really up on Kendrick. Like if you heard a Kendrick Lamar song at the grocery store, you wouldn't know necessarily that it was him, that kind of thing.

Doug: Right.

Magda: And you were totally happy with that until I said, “Oh my God, did you see the halftime show? It was art.” And then you're like, wait a minute, what? And so I enjoy knowing about it, even though I stopped being interest in, rap beefs, I don't know, like 20 years ago, like I certainly was interested when it was like, LL Cool J beefing with somebody else when they were just like, “I'm the greatest rapper” in like 1989.

Doug: Right, but I think you nailed it. It's like you were talking to the kids about it, and that was a bonding moment with them. Just like, you know, Robert and I talk about all kinds of stuff that doesn't pertain to me directly, but I still feel better knowing about. And I'm sure Kendrick Lamar will come up over dinner somewhere or over cocktails, and I will feel happy to be able to talk about that, maybe bring in the nature of This Is America, which I read, apparently This Is America started out as a diss track against Drake.

Magda: Yeah!

Doug: And then Donald Glover was like, wait a minute, that's actually a pretty hard thing to say. This is America. I could play with this. Let's make it something much more culturally significant. But I'm like, wow, Drake is the hub of a lot of distaste.

Magda: He is. He is the hub of a lot of distaste.

Doug: Is that why he shaves a heart into his hairline? He wants to just be all love?

Magda: Well, I do remember, I don't know, like 10 years ago, I observed that Drake had a lot of songs that were like, “I have a lot of haters.” And it's like, if everybody hates you, like maybe that's you.

Doug: Maybe it's you.

Magda: At a certain point, like if literally all you can write about is people hating you, take a look. Maybe find a therapist, see what you can do about that.

Doug: Anyone dissing on a Toronto Blue Jays hat is like, maybe he hates Drake.

Magda: Right. I have realized that I feel like there is a resurgence in musical artists that have a lot of quality things to say over the last few years, over a lot of genres. And I didn't feel like that 10 years ago, like 10 years ago, it felt to me very, like extremely poppy. Just like in the bad version of pop. I love pop music and I think that it is really culturally significant in a lot of ways. But I felt like we were just in that sort of Party Rock era for way too long. And there's so much more quality out now. I mean, you and I both love Chappell Roan. I even love Sabrina Carpenter. I think her pop songs are just excellent. And I think she as a human being really understands what she's playing with in a way that a lot of those pop, you know, what would you call them, pop princesses? of the 2000s didn't know.

Magda: When I first heard Doechii's new album, or excuse me, mixtape, I was just blown away. I was like, oh my God, she's like the second coming. Then when she won the Grammy and people are like, what is this about? I was like, oh, no, no, no, you got to listen to this, right? Because I am an old white woman. And yes, I'm a hip hop head. I am a rap head. I love that stuff. But I kind of tapped out for a while because it just wasn't saying anything to me. But if you listen to Alligator Bites Never Heal, the journey that she is on, the way she has encapsulated what it's like to be a woman in the United States is unparalleled. And just having that music now and being able to listen to it to me is absolutely life-affirming. And I think that it's the music and the art that's going to get us through the oligarchy. And we got to lean in. Like if you're feeling hopeless, lean into youth culture a little bit, because that's what it's always been.

Doug: With you on Chapel Rhone, I listened all the time to that Harry Styles album, which now seems, I don't even know, it seems like it came out in 1968, given where we are in the world.

Magda: Well, also, I mean, he's not American, right? So there's a different perspective.

Doug: That little Spotify thing at the end of the year said, wow, you're a big Harry Styles fan. I'm like, oh, crap. Well, yeah, I am. I like that Shaboozey record.

Magda: I like the Shaboozey record too. There's a huge resurgence in country music right now. Willie Jones, I love Willie Jones. And Orville Peck. I love Orville Peck, right? But it's not the same, you know, it's not these like Carrie Underwood types that I'm listening to, or that I'm interested in or that are doing anything interesting at all.

Doug: Apart from the mayonnaise and the Confederate flag, I actually do wonder whom they're going to cast in San Francisco for Super Bowl 60 because that's got to be... A real challenge. And, you know, it's a TV show. So they brought in Kendrick and he killed it and they brought in some amazing ratings. I wonder, man, can you imagine that they brought in Chappell Roan for the Super Bowl?

Magda: That would be amazing. I think what's really revolutionary about Kendrick Lamar is that he's still in the mix. Usually, traditionally, they have brought in people who are sort of, it's like post-peak. So they're either in a lull in their career or they're sort of on the downslope. Right. Like, I mean, when they brought in the Rolling Stones, like within the last 10 years or something like that, didn't they? I don't even remember when they had the Rolling Stones.

Doug: Hey, they brought in Coldplay. I mean.

Magda: Yeah, but they brought in Usher.

Doug: Usher was last year.

Magda: Yeah. And Usher hadn't released anything in who knows how long and all the songs he performed, we were like looking them up and it was like, oh yeah, those were songs 15 years ago, right? So the fact that you can still actually hear those Kendrick Lamar songs on the radio and he was performing is kind of radical for the Super Bowl.

Doug: Well, there were so many opportunities. I will always regret that they didn't bring in more dad rock, you know, back when they were starting to make the Super Bowl halftime show a thing because for so long it was just marching bands. And imagine if they brought in, like, Steely Dan. Rush. Man.

Magda: Hey, I love Steely Dan. I figured out that Steely Dan regulates my brain a little bit.

Doug: Interesting. How so?

33:55

Magda: Okay, so if you're not a Steely Dan fan, you're not going to get this. But it's the way–

Doug: And we can't be friends.

Magda: Well, you know, there's that whole slogan, like, “Steely Dan is your favorite band's favorite band,” right? Right. It's because they're so jazz-influenced, so precise, and so anal in like almost a punitive way about–

Doug: Everything.

Magda: Precision. Yes. But then you're getting these weird jazzy chords. It's like creating a very regulated box and then letting weird, crazy shit happen within the squares of the box. And that turns out to be regulating to my ADHD brain.

Doug: That is a very synesthetic approach to that. I appreciate it. Because I do think there's also comfort in precision.

Magda: I can tell you exactly the moment and exactly where I was the first time I heard a Steely Dan song. And my brain just went, and I was like, oh my God, what is this? I need to hear more.

Doug: Where were you? What happened?

Magda: I was in my grandparents' basement, which was their rec room. The TV was on. I was 11 years old. The song was Peg and it was the chords that Michael McDonald was singing in it. And then the, you know, the beginning part [sings] the, but the like [sings[ part in the background of that that I was just like, oh, I don't know what's happening, but my brain really seems to like this.

Doug: Have you seen the video of Donald Fagan and Walter Becker at the mixing board just talking about Michael McDonald's backup vocals and how long it took for him to lay them down and what they made him do, how many octaves he had to reach to create those harmonies?

Magda: Did you watch the Yacht Rock documentary?

Doug: I haven't, which I should.

Magda: First of all, they talk about the fact that calling it Yacht Rock is completely stupid and it has nothing to do with yachts. That was just those web comedy sketches, right? But then they talked about that whole genre of music and they interviewed Michael McDonald for the documentary. You know, he's been a professional musician since he was like 14 years old. He was performing in bars for money as part of the house band, that kind of stuff. Right. So he's just like working musician, figured out everything for himself, all this kind of stuff.

Doug: And he's got amazing chops. Yeah.

Magda: And so when a friend called him to come over and audition for Steely Dan, he was scared, but he was excited. They heard him play. They heard him sing. They were like, oh, this is great. And they decided to use his voice as another instrument. So a lot of times on the Steely Dan songs that he's on, it's him singing. And then they instead of doubling it, they just sextuple it. And he or he would sing chords on different tracks and they would use the chords of his voice. But he was like, it was so difficult. He had no idea what they were going for. And so he was like, he would do a take and not know if it was what they wanted or not. And at one point he just said to Donald Fagan, just play what you want me to sing or sing what you want me to sing and I'll sing it.

Magda: So he was just kind of echoing back because he couldn't even get his footing in what they wanted to do musically. And that to me is stunning because I think of Michael McDonald as somebody that you could put anywhere, be like, oh, it's a totally different tonal scale than you're used to. And he would just be like, what are the parameters?

Doug: That's the beauty of really talented artists when they get totally over their skis or feel over their skis when they're working with somebody else. At which point you tell yourself, yeah, but this is a band named after a dildo. Let's just calm down.

Magda: But you can only name your band after a dildo if you know that you're a really, really good band.

Doug: And on that note, you know, when you start talking about dildos, that's the time to wrap it up. Would you concur?

Magda: Yeah, absolutely.

Doug: And I did not have dildo on the bingo card.

Magda: Well, good.

Doug: But that's the way these conversations go. One of my things I should learn to do is stop referring to bingo cards. I've done that way too many times recently, and you've heard the last one. So anytime I mention it again by accident, I'm editing it out. Enjoy this while it lasts.

Doug: Well, thank you all for listening to episode 68 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been Kendrick Lamar, cultural obsolescence, and indifference to the Super Bowl and JOMO. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe there for our weekly episode every Wednesday and our newsletter, Friday Flames, every other Friday. We're going to leave a lot of stuff in the notes. There's a lot of extended reading and watching if you're interested in what you just saw on Sunday. And we'll put that in the notes. We will see you next time. Bye-bye.