Lost on Me: One Man's Attempt to Survive the 'Lost' Finale

Originally published by PopMatters on May 24, 2010

Like millions of other television junkies, I bought the hype; I was reeled in by the ruthlessly compelling commercials and well-placed print ads, and on September 22, 2004, I tuned in for the premiere episode of Lost.

Lost, with its water-cooler plot-twists and world’s sexiest flight manifest quickly became a pop culture phenomenon, burning up internet chat rooms (when they were still around), blogs (they’re still around, right?) and even the print media (which at least the time of this writing is still around.)

I remember saying to myself as the pilot unfolded, “I think I’m hooked.” It happened right around the time the plane crashed, as terrifyingly visceral a scene as I’ve ever seen on the small screen, in spite of my already knowing it was coming. I wondered what would become of the survivors, how they’d turn coconuts into wine, how they’d get along or not get along. I wondered who might take off their shirt first.

And then, well before the final credits sped by, I changed the channel. Something inside me aggressively spurned the show like I’d rejected a baboon heart. It wasn’t snob’s natural aversion to the cultural zeitgeist, because even if I’d instinctively known that was coming, I’m okay with that sort of thing… most of the time, anyway. Yes, I’ve recoiled against hype before, turned my nose up at everything from No Country for Old Men to Radiohead to Pinkberry. But this was different, as I hadn’t yet been inundated with an avalanche of “OMG!!!” praise for Lost when I bailed. That would come later, of course. But when I decided to watch almost anything else, it was just me and my remote and a storyline and cast which failed to keep my attention. Not when there’s probably a cake battle on the Food Network, Lost. Not by a long shot.

So, I got my ass off the island much quicker, apparently, than anyone else who’d either starred in or watched Lost. Because like the pull that island seems to have had on those poor schmucks, so too did that show have a pull on pretty much everyone I know, pretty much everyone you know and pretty much everyone else with even the most tenuous connection to network television.

I stayed away, too, sinking my TV teeth into less befuddling fare likePsych and Flight of the Conchords and The Biggest Loser. But with the finale upon us this week, I thought I ought to give Lost one more shot.

My research such as it was consisted of years of ignoring Facebook status updates friends made about the show, loud commercials I’d managed to tune out and the last 45 minutes or so of ABC’s two hour pre-game celebration before last night’s final episode. I must also confess to having not entirely paid attention to the latter, as there was a Sex & the City II cake challenge on the Food Network, and while I have also managed to avoid that particular cultural phenomenon (with much more bile), a cake-off if a cake-off, and that means Kerry Vincent is gonna be bitchy from beneath her Ren-Faire headband.

I guess a bit of Lost sunk in over the years, in spite of my efforts to keep it out. I’d heard of Locke, for example. And also something happened to that guy who used to be a Hobbit, right? What I’ve heard most aboutLost since it premiered nearly six years ago was how good it was. And what I heard second-most was how goddamn confusing it was. Given I knew almost nothing about Lost, I figured I was in the right frame of mind to catch the finale. Boy, was I wrong.

Even if I hadn’t caught a bit about the alternate worlds stuff, I’d have probably worked it out pretty quickly. I might have assumed one of the two threads was some sort of dream, though once the touchy feely déjà vu flashes began happening, I’d have seen the light. (I just found out producer Damon Lindelof calls these plot devices “flash-sideways” – Thanks, Wikipedia!)

I don’t believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duct tape

Because I haven’t actually watched the series unfold, the questions I have are fairly mundane, and for all I know they were answered ages ago. How come none of the dudes on the island have crazy hermit beards instead of seductive stubble? And while some of the castaways had sufficiently unkempt hair, most looked salon-friendly. And, at the risk of sounding indelicate, why didn’t the fat dude who says “Dude” all the time lose a little weight?

So, I watched the finale. Not all at once, of course, because like I did nearly six years ago with the pilot episode, I petered out before the finale did. I stuck it out, though, finishing it on Hulu this morning. And admittedly I’m probably a bit more confused than your average fan. Didn’t the guy from Party of Five (another show I never watched) open the series looking up from a jungle floor? Nice one!

Despite the soundtrack trying to force me into action, I didn’t feel the tension on the edge of the cliff the way a regular viewer might have. I also didn’t shed any tears when characters who’d hooked up on the island had flash-sideways walks of shame in hospitals, alleys or piano-heavy benefit concerts. But those of you who’d watched every second of every episode and are now wondering what the heck you’re gonna do with yourselves on whatever night the show regularly aired, maybe you bawled like babies. Maybe your couches are still moist with tears and sadness snot at this moment. And that is ultimately how I closed outLost; not by hoping for loose ends to be tied up in a satisfying way, but by wondering if that’s how the fans felt about it.
Some beloved TV shows end on a sour note (I’m looking at you, Seinfeld and The Sopranos). Others, like The Shield, manage to make the inevitable seem revelatory. Still more, such as Arrested Development, fall somewhere in between, unable to say goodbye because those involved in making the show are as bewildered as those who watched it.

How was Lost for you? If you loved the show, did that bit in the church seem less mawkish than it did to a cynic like me? Did you find the tying up of loose ends satisfying and natural or rushed and convenient? Are you bummed there’s no Drive Shaft tour on the cards?

Because of all the mythological hokum, the smoke monster poppycock and the supernatural rigmarole woven through the fabric of Lost, it was already likely bound to become a televised sci-fi tent pole for years to come. The romance and intrigue and – at least what I’ve been told – humanity of the characters helped it cross out of what is often perceived as the narrow scope of that genre and into the mainstream. Lost was hugely successful, and not in retrospect like the original Star Trek series, either. Lost was a phenomenon in its present, and that’s not likely to change. And I guess I can say I was there at the beginning and end of it all, even if the middle is something of a blur.

I wanted to come away from the finale having realized the folly of having had such an itchy remote finger all those years ago. I thought I might feel inclined to start Lost from the beginning, something I could do for free on Hulu, apparently. I thought I’d want to dissect the pilot and see if there were any clues more than 100 episodes ago to point to what happened last night. Instead, I think I’m as finished with Lost as it is with the rest of us. What happened on that fictional island is no more my concern than what led those four wretched Sex & the City shrews to Morocco for their new flick. I’m free of Lost, a show which never really had me to begin with.

Hey, Hey, etc... Why I Love the Monkees

Originally published by PopMatters on March 9, 2010

I’m used to catching grief from friends for some of the quirky stuff I listen to, so whenever the Monkees come up in conversation, I’m always prepared for a lively debate. I’m not naive enough to pretend they were one of rock’s great bands, though I do feel as though their music has been a bit shortchanged by history.

Their groundbreaking series lasted just two seasons, and was followed by a delicious stream-of-consciousness feature film (Head) and an even more bizarre TV special (33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee), which had the lousy fortune of airing opposite the Academy Awards. By this point, of course, the Monkees were hellbent on blowing themselves up from within. Scornful of the ridicule they faced from much of the “serious” rock cognoscenti, the pre-Fab Four made every attempt to shed their bubblegum image and strike out on their own.
 
It began somewhere around the time they recorded their third album. After playing sparingly on tunes for the first two Monkees’ records, the band took over for themselves. With the assistance of Chip Douglas on bass, the Monkees turned into a semi-actual band on Headquarters. It wasn’t a virtuoso collection by any means, especially when compared to many of other rock albums released in 1967. Never mind the Beatles’Sgt. Pepper; that year also saw seminal works drop from Love (Forever Changes), Captain Beefheart (Safe As Milk), the Velvet Underground (The Velvet Underground & Nico), Pink Floyd (Piper at the Gates of Dawn), 13th Floor Elevators (Easter Everywhere), the Doors (The Doors) and the Jimi Hendrix Experience (Are You Experienced?).

Still, Headquarters is the work of a pretty alright garage rock band, one with a keen interest in experimentation. That thread would follow on the band’s second album of the year, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., which featured forays into country rock, vaudeville pop and psychedelia, the latter including what has often been regarded as among the first uses of the Moog synthesizer on a rock song (both on “Daily Nightly” and “Star Collector”).

1968’s Head may be the Monkees’ creative zenith, both on film and vinyl. The script, such as it was, was written over a drug-fuelled weekend in a cabin in the woods with Jack Nicholson. Yes, THAT Jack Nicholson. Nicholson makes a brief cameo in the film as does Dennis Hopper (the two worked together on Easy Rider the following year, a film financed, in part, on Monkee money), Frank Zappa, a very young Teri Garr, a very puffy Sonny Liston, Annette Funicello, Victor Mature, Carol Doda, Toni Basil and American football great Ray Nitschke.

Opening with Micky Dolenz jumping from a bridge to certain doom, the movie sunk like a stone in limited theatrical release, but went on to become something of a cult classic.

The soundtrack features just a handful of original Monkees’ material, but what’s there is among the very best music they ever recorded. “Porpoise Song” is a swirling epic, and “As We Go Along” (with guitar by Neil Young), is a love song of fragile beauty. The oft-marginalized Peter Tork has two songs on the album, including the Indian-influenced “Can You Dig It?” (with vocals by Dolenz) and the sprawling stomp of “Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?” Even the sometimes schmaltzy Davy Jones is in fine form, on the Harry Nillson-penned “Daddy’s Song”. Nicholson compiled the album, gluing the songs together with dialogue and sound effects from the film. The only misstep—replacing the incendiary live version of Mike Nesmith’s “Circle Sky” shown in the film with a flaccid studio recording—was undone when Rhino Records remasted the album for CD release over a decade ago.

Following the disastrous results for 33 1/3…,Tork wriggled his way out of his contract and split. As a trio, the Monkees released two more albums in 1969, much of which included songs recorded as early as 1966 that had just been sitting in a Colgems vault collecting dust. Nesmith’s “Listen to the Band” (originally given a psychedelic freak-out paint job with Tork still on board for 33 1/3…) was the last great Monkees song. The last “musician” in the band, Nesmith left to form his own country rock pioneering outfit, the First National Band. Dolenz and Jones put out one last album under the Monkees’ name before finally pulling the plug.

There’s no question the Monkees were fabricated. But so was the cast of your favorite film, and they made great art together. And when the Byrds or the Beach Boys used studio musicians on some of their now-classic tracks, no one blinked an eye.

While stuffy critics like Rolling Stone‘s Jann Wenner have always pooh-poohed the musical relevance of the Monkees, perhaps their greatest detractors of all have been themselves. Both Nesmith and Dolenz have frequently said in inteviews they didn’t think much of their music, with the former especially dismissive.

However, because they actually sorta gave a crap at the time, it’s impossible to objectively lump the Monkees in with other teenybopper acts of the day. Even if one doesn’t think much of them, they’ve got to at least fall somewhere in the chasm between the era’s rock and pop rather than at one end or the other.

I love the Monkees. Not just because I enjoy watching them on DVD with my eight-year old daughter (her fave rave is Nesmith, though she’s got bobblehead dolls of the whole group), but because I actually do enjoy their music. Some of it is simple to the point of hardly being there at all. And a few of their attempts to create art flamed out when they tried to fly too close to the sun, like Dolenz’ “Shorty Blackwell” (which is a total mess) and Nesmith’s “Writing Wrongs” (which is also a mess, but a curiously satisfying one). Yet there are gems to be unearthed far beyond the confines of a hits compilation. You may even find it’s worth doing a bit of exploring.

Resident Punk (Work in Progress)

For a little over a year, I worked with Legs McNeil, co-author of Please Kill Me and legendary writer who was part of the New York City punk scene in the '70s. I've known Legs since I was a teenager, though it wasn't until I'd written a birthday message to him on PopMatters in early 2011 that we cooked up the idea of working together on a project. That project, Resident Punk, was Legs' autobiography, combining his own writing about his life with my biographical passages. The project is currently on hold, though I'm hopeful we'll pick it up again soon.

Shortly after we took a break from working on Resident Punk, I debuted an excerpt from my portion of the sample chapter at a reading of the Greenpoint Writers Group. The reading, on May 5, 2012 at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn (located at the end of my block, conveniently), was the culmination of a months'-long intensive session where I joined other talented local writers in offering critique of works-in-progress while drinking booze. I'm currently at the beginning of my fourth GWG intensive, working on my novel this time, as I've found the process and camaraderie absolutely invaluable.

The sample chapter was about Legs' relationship with the late Norman Mailer, and the draft from which I read was the culmination of months of interviews, research, writing and exhilarating back-and-forth edits with Legs via e-mail and in person in his home office. The excerpt below is what I read at WORD, and it was enthusiastically received by the crowd. The excerpt opens at the tail end of a party in 1979 following Mailer’s first up-close experience with the punk scene, a benefit for bullet-proof vests for the NYPD. Held at CBGB’s, the show was headlined by the Ramones and also featured Shrapnel, the band Legs was managing at the time.

“We were so drunk we were huddled together on some chairs or the bed, kind of swaying because the room was about to start spinning,” Legs remembered. “Norman finally said, ‘You have to interview me, you have to interview me…’”         

            Norman might have indeed been drunk that night, but he really had meant for Legs to interview him, clearing time the following day to make it work.

            Legs didn’t show up.

            “Norman’s office called Martha Thomases and said, ‘Where’s Legs?’” Legs remembered. “I thought, ‘I didn’t think Norman wanted to really have me interview him, I thought he was just saying that to be nice...’”

            Legs got it together and made it out to Mailer’s nautically-themed Brooklyn Heights apartment the next day.

            “I was really hung over,” Legs said. “And Norman wanted me to climb around in his big apartment, he had all these catwalks to get to the third floor, and you know me and heights. And I was like, ‘No, fuck that, no! I need a drink!’ And Norman got me like gin or vodka, and I was like, ‘No I need beer!’

            With the drink order settled, the pair retreated to Mailer’s tiny office at the end of the hall and turned on the tape recorder.

            The interview covered a lot of territory, including Mailer’s thoughts on the Ramones and Shrapnel show, his distaste for television (“I think the American disease is TV”), existential paranoia and regret. The transcript shows the pair veering wildly and perhaps politically incorrectly into murky waters like gay rights and the Battle of the Sexes.

            “I was railing against gays,” Legs said. “I was young and cute and they were all hitting on me. This was a time when you’d walk down Christopher Street and there’d be hundreds of gays along the sidewalk, three or four deep, dressed in the most outrageous clothing, making catcalls and snide remarks as you passed. Basically they were sexually harassing me, ha, ha, ha!”

            The Norman Mailer interview was published in the September 1979 issue of High Times.

            “High Times was offering me more money,” Legs remembered, “Doing it for Punk Magazine, it just seemed like it would never come out.”

            Though Roberta Bayley took the official photographs for the High Times piece, author Victor Bockris was also on hand to shoot the pair.

            “When I did the photo session for them, there was clearly a real affection from Mailer to Legs,” Bockris said. “Mailer would like a guy like Legs. He loves anti-heroes. And Legs was kind of like an anti-hero. It makes a lot of sense.”

            Legs soon became a fairly regular fixture in the Mailer household. According to Mary V. Dearborn’s book Mailer: A Biography, Legs made an impression on Mailer’s sons.

            “Shrapnel and Legs McNeil were big hits with fourteen-year old Michael and twelve-year old Stephen Mailer,” wrote Dearborn. “When Legs told them to watch Gilligan’s Island, a show he much admired, they did, over and over. The two boys began talking like Legs and parroting his enthusiasms.”

           With Legs entrenched in the inner circle, Shrapnel began playing at parties thrown by Mailer; one was covered in the Random Notes section of the April 17, 1980 issue of Rolling Stone.

            “It figures that author Norman Mailer would go for Shrapnel, a New York punk band whose act is derived from endless reruns of the old Combat series,” reads the opening of the Rolling Stone blurb, written by Kurt Loder. Legs brought him to the party, along with Alice Cooper guitarist Glen Buxton, Tom Hearn, Arturo Vega, and his girlfriend, Lori K.

            Shrapnel began life as Heart Attack before meeting Legs at CBGB’s. According to guitarist Daniel Rey, it took several months and countless beers before the idea of Legs managing the band was even considered. Devising a collective persona based on military games they used to play in the hinterlands of New Jersey, Heart Attack donned modified army uniforms and morphed into Shrapnel.

            “We thought we needed a shtick and were really into Alice Cooper and the stage show,” Rey said. “We were sort of anti-hippie. Hippies were peace and love, and we were like, ‘Screw that! Let’s blow shit up!’ So I guess in that way we were political, though it wasn’t anything more than comic book politics.”

            Those comic book politics extended to their stage show, which often featured a character called “the Gook.”

            “You’ve got to remember, this was a long time ago and political correctness was not on anyone’s mind,” said Peter “Ropeburns” Russell, another Cheshire friend of Legs, who played the Gook. “It was basically an anti-communist rant which had a lot of good features to it but also had a lot of really heavy racist elements.”

            “I was very interested in using all the slang terms from Viet Nam and World War II,” Legs explained, “And re-defining them. I was very influenced by Arturo Vega’s day-glo swastika paintings that were hung in the Ramones loft. I think we thought we could use all that old propaganda and imagery and give it new meaning. And, of course, rightly so, everyone thought we were racists, but we were actually a bunch of white liberals, ha, ha, ha! ”

            “I would write appropriate political slogans on my chest,” Ropeburns recalled, “I remember ‘Thanks for the Canal’ because Jimmy Carter had just signed away the Panama Canal.”

            Punk’s reputation for being aggressively user friendly meant Shrapnel’s live shows were frequently a harrowing experience.

            “Sometimes the crowd got a hold of me and that would get ugly because I couldn’t see anything out of the damn Gook mask,” Ropeburns remembered. “If I got too close to the edge of the stage they’d seize me and pull me into the crowd. Look a lot of drugs were being taken back then and a couple of times I got beaten up pretty badly. But because of the mask thing, my head was okay.”

            Shrapnel arrived early in Brooklyn Heights for the party covered by Rolling Stone, giving them their first look at Mailer’s place. 

            “It was wacky,” said Rey. “The apartment looked like a big ship with all these rope ladders. We had to climb up in this loft and set up our amps.”

           Ropeburns remembered Mailer working on a giant Lego model of a future city. The complex cityscape had appeared on the cover of a paperback edition of Mailer’s 1966 collection of essays, Cannibals and Christians. By 1980, the utopian construction had fallen into disrepair, covered in dust and left to ruin.

            “He was going to order everybody’s life with it, which was a little strange considering how his was,” Ropeburns said. “The different colors were all like different sectors. It was all very kind of ‘50s modern. He and I talked a lot about that, and we were both drinking pretty heavily.”

            Among the party guests that night were Woody Allen, Shelly Winters, Kurt Vonnegut and former light heavyweight fighter José Torres. Shrapnel was unmoved by the heavy dose of celebrity.

            “Woody Allen hid in the bathroom all night,” Legs remembered, “And people keep knocking on the door because they had to pee or do coke or whatever, but Woody wouldn’t open the door. Finally, he opened the door a little and peeked out, and Arturo Vega opened the bathroom door all the way and said to Woody, ‘Boy, you really are shy, aren’t you?’ Then Arturo closed the bathroom door on him, in disgust.”

             The punks weren’t just unimpressed with Woody Allen’s fame, but also their host’s.

            “We were pretty young, so we weren’t starstruck by this famous author,” said Rey. “He was just this cool old guy who could hold his liquor, was pretty funny and had a hot young wife. It was the kind of thing we’d mention to our parents and they’d go, ‘WHAT?!?!?’ We’d be like, ‘Yeah, but David Johansen was there too,’ and they’d say, ‘Who…?’”

            Hearn remembers being far more starstruck at the time by Alice Cooper lead guitarist, Glen Buxton, than he was by Mailer.

            “That to me was really cooler than Norman Mailer, you know?” Hearn said. “We rode around in Glen Buxton’s Trans Am with the t-top off, and he was flying down, whatever downtown avenue it is, going to the Mudd Club, when you get all green lights. ‘Wow, now this is fun!’”

            According to Rey, a wrestling match between Legs and Mailer mentioned by Rolling Stone actually began as a scrap between Legs and Glen Buxton.

            “Norman couldn’t just stand by and watch someone wrestling in his house without getting involved,” Rey remembered. “He grabbed Legs and they went flying over and Glen Buxton went flying on the ground. Someone was bleeding, but it was all in good fun.”

            Legs remembered opening up a cut on Mailer’s ear, though he believed it had recently been lanced in a doctor’s office and there was a fresh scab which came off while they grappled. Hearn recalled the fight getting a bit more serious once the blood began flowing.

            “Legs was getting the worst of it because Norman was way bigger,” Hearn said. “But they’re both about equally drunk, I would say. Legs is very slippery, and at the time, well, we were in our 20’s, so he must have had 25 or 30 years on Norman. But, yeah, he was getting the worst of it. No question. And that was standard. When Legs was in a fight, Legs was losing a fight: That’s all there was to that.”

            Shrapnel singer Dave Wyndorf remembered the party getting even weirder as it wound down.

            “We started to mingle, and I’m getting drunk and the crowd is melting away,” Wyndorf said in a 2012 interview with Tom Scharpling of Low Times, “And finally it was just Norman – Mr. Mailer – and us-- the people that would never leave.”

            According to Wyndorf, Mailer decided to impart some existential cake-based wisdom on his young guests, returning from the refrigerator with a cheesecake. 

            “‘I’m gonna teach you how to eat cheesecake,’” Wyndorf remembered Mailer saying. “‘It’s important to eat cheesecake and fuck. You eat cheesecake, you fuck a little…’ And we were like, ‘Yeah, who can we fuck? There’s no one here!’”

            Glen Buxton might have gotten off relatively easy in the wrestling match earlier, but that was about to change.

            “Buxton is looking around and he sees a picture of Norris Church, Mailer’s wife,” said Wyndorf. “And he says, ‘Man, who’s what girl? She’s fucking hot! I’d like to fuck her!’ And Norman goes, ‘It’s my wife!’ and headbutts him like a goat, like a billy goat. Knocks him out.”

            The Rolling Stone report mentioned Mailer giving the guys in Shrapnel the rest of the booze from the party, but Rey said it didn’t leave with them.

            “We drank beer at that time, you know, so we didn’t know what to do with it all,” Rey said. “Glen Buxton took it all home.”

Popblerd's bLISTerd Presents: The 100 Best Albums of the Eighties

Originally published by Popblerd in June 2012 in the series bLISTerd Presents: The 100 Best Albums of the Eighties

I was asked by my friend Big Money at Popblerd to contribute to a list of the best albums of the decade of my lean teen years, the '80s. If there's one thing us music nerds love it's making lists, discussing lists, obsessing over lists, and revising lists until we can scarcely remember what we were listing in the first place. After the votes were tallied, I was given the chance to write about five of the albums form the final cut. I'd included all five in my initial list, and below you'll find my blurbs as well as where the album fell when the votes were counted.

#58: The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

Though its initial reach in the United States was largely contained to college dormitories, in the United Kingdom, the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut signaled a youth revolution. Masterfully weaving classic rock guitars with an acid house sensibility, The Stone Roses was about so much more than bellbottoms and bucket hats.

The Stone Roses is deceptively DIY; Ian Brown’s vocal range is indeed something of a musical liability in a live setting, though on album it works perfectly. But he’s also the coolest motherfucker on the planet. In John Squire, the Roses had their own guitar hero, and in Reni the greatest drummer since…well, since anyone, and with Mani’s soulful bass guitar, the band had a rhythm section for the ages.

But without the songs – those songs, my God… – The Stone Roses would have been a flash in the pan. The soaring chorus of “Made of Stone” (“Sometimes I fantasize when the streets are cold and lonely, and the cars they burn below me”) still sends shivers down the spine, and the 8-minute-plus closer, “I Am the Resurrection”, with its dismissive lyrics (“I don’t care where you’ve been or what you plan to do”) and churning instrumental section is an exhaustively perfect finish to one of rock’s few perfect albums.

#21: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
Having already established themselves as indie’s premiere downtown art-rockers, Sonic Youth’s fifth album,Daydream Nation, saw the group consistently hit what for some has been their greatest strength: Superior songwriting buried under an avalanche of sound.

It’s fitting that on their first double album Sonic Youth would include a song called “The Sprawl,” a Kim Gordon-sung epic with lyrics (“Are you for sale? Does ‘fuck you’ sound simple enough?”) to match the fury of the guitars. “Teen Age Riot” opens the proceedings with more than a minute of gentle guitars and hypnotic singing from Gordon before everything explodes.

Bassist Gordon and guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo share vocal duties throughout, with the latter pair’s standout tracks “Teen Age Riot” and “Eric’s Trip” respectively. Even Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, the Stooges) gets in on the vocal action on “Providence” (though his contribution is through a pair of answering machine messages). The album closes with “Trilogy,” a three-part journey which predictably ends in measured chaos and unbridled energy.

Daydream Nation convinced the music industry that Sonic Youth was ready to destroy the world, and despite a subsequent move to a major label, they never shed their commitment to experimentation and sonic songwriting perfected here.

#19: Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
If not exactly famous, the Talking Heads were certainly well-known by 1983. With four terrific albums under their belt, the New York punk scene’s most artistically enduring act was about to enter the upper reaches of the pop charts. The album’s lead single, “Burning Down the House” hit #9 on Billboard’s Hot 100, and thanks to a quirky video that matched the band’s quirky sensibility, Talking Heads were everywhere.

Thanks to the hypnotic rhythms, a greater reliance on synthesizers, collaborators like Parliament-Funkadelic co-founder Bernie Worrell, David Byrne’s spazzy art school vocals, Jerry Harrison’s understated guitars and the criminally underrated bass guitar of Tina Weymouth and drums of Chris Frantz, everything seemed to come together at just the right time on Speaking in Tongues.

Songs like “Burning Down the House,” “Making Flippy Floppy” and “Girlfriend is Better” still move butts on the dance floor, but for truly lasting brilliance one must turn to “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)”. Byrne’s description of the album’s second single made it sound like something of a reluctant love song, though “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” certainly feels unabashedly and genuinely romantic. It’s a love song even a cynic could love.

#6: Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Released in 1988, a year when the world was in thrall to the likes of Phil Collins’ “A Groovy Kind of Love” and Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth,” Public Enemy’s second album hit like an atom bomb-propelled freight train.

Socially-conscious hip-hop was nothing new by the late ‘80s thanks to pioneers of the form like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. But with the syncopated steps of the S1W and the bombastic beats of the Bomb Squad, the stage was set for the group’s celebrated vocalists to unfurl calls to action not heard since the early ‘70s heyday of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. Chuck D was Public Enemy’s intellectual center, a gruff storyteller balanced by his comedic foil, Flavor Flav. In 2012, with the reality shows and the failed business ventures in our collective consciousness, it might be difficult to believe there was a time when Flavor Flav was an absolute essential piece of the puzzle, but one listen to “Cold Lampin’ With Flavor” or any other track on which he emerges from the furor should help set the record straight.

Even its sleeve – with Chuck D and Flavor Flav behind bars – is provocative, and coupled with classic songs of anarchic angst like “Bring the Noise” and “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back isn’t just one of the finest hip-hop albums of the ‘80s, but is one of the best albums by anyone in any genre of any era. Public Enemy nearly matched it in quality with their next album, Fear of a Black Planet, but they never had so much shocking power as on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

#5: Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
If the Clash’s London Calling had the power to singlehandedly destroy everything lame from the entire decade that preceded it in 1979, then perhaps the same can be said of Paul’s Boutique. Released in the summer of 1989, the Beastie Boys’ sophomore album may not have fully abandoned the sophomoric wordplay of Licensed to Ill (“I stay up all night, I go to sleep watching Dragnet/Never sleep alone because jimmy is a magnet”), but there was an undeniable maturity in its meticulously constructed grooves.

Paul’s Boutique is as compelling a case for the art of the sample as anything ever recorded, with easily recognizable sounds (Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” on “Egg Man”) effortlessly mixed with decidedly less so (the beat from “Egg Man” was lifted from Lightnin’ Rod’s “Sport”). Many of the album’s backing tracks had already been built by the Dust Brothers before the Beastie Boys found them, but together the collaboration – along with co-producer Mario Caldato, Jr. – created a masterpiece.

Though one might feel compelled to attach a sense of the maudlin to the music of the Beastie Boys with the recent passing of Adam “MCA” Yauch, all these years later it is impossible to listen to Paul’s Boutique without being overcome with joy. They would go on to record more classic material, but the Beastie Boys were never better than on Paul’s Boutique, an album which perfectly captures the curious comfort of the musical schizophrenia of city life.

Mountain Jam: May 31 - June 3

Originally published by PopMatters on July 13, 2012, with photographs by Mike Katz

It’s been called “little Bonnaroo” and with some of the key acts heading off from upstate New York to rural Tennessee the following week, it’s not an entirely unfair claim. But while the pair share a hazy hippie vibe and even – I learned later – some of the same food vendors, Mountain Jam is an entity all its own.

This year’s incarnation of the annual Mountain Jam festival was the eighth. The first Mountain Jam was a one-day concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of WDST, a Woodstock-based independent radio station whose eclectic format is indicative of what the festival eventually became. Govt. Mule headlined the inaugural Mountain Jam and they’ve been the sole musical constant ever since. Warren Haynes, Govt. Mule’s guitarist and leader, co-produces the festival with WDST, and his considerable fanbase comprises much of the several thousand in attendance. So dedicated to Govt. Mule are these fans that they dutifully stood in a torrential downpour on Friday night; their slick ponchos glowing in the night with each flash of light from the stage.
If Govt. Mule is an annual constant for Mountain Jam, rain (or the threat of rain) was a constant for the four days of the 2012 festival. The threat was there through most of Friday, though it didn’t really come down until that night, just prior to Govt. Mule’s four hour set on the East Stage. James Murphy, former lynchpin of LCD Soundsystem and one of Mountain Jam’s most intriguing bookings, carried on with his late night DJ set on the West Stage that evening, though the rain kept many of the revelers cowering in their tents while hoping they wouldn’t slide down the mountain and into the tiny village surrounding the ski resort.

The Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, is one of the country’s most renowned open-air concert settings. The gorgeous scenery and natural acoustics provide a unique experience for those wishing to commune with nature while they have their synapses shredded by music. Hunter Mountain during Mountain Jam should also be mentioned in that conversation. With the two primary stages (the larger East and smaller West) sitting side-by-side at the bottom of a verdant stretch of peaks, the natural setting carries the sound up the hillside and, presumably, into the heavens above. I learned this while on a long ride up the ski lift, one of the best ways to really get a sense of the surroundings as it carries riders over the crowd and beyond the RV and premier campsites, halfway up the mountain to the base camp of a zip line. I also learned it as I eventually got tired of being cold and wet during Murphy’s set and listened to the second hour shivering in a tent I feared would be obliterated by the volume and awesomeness of the beats.

The longer the weekend went on, the muddier the hill became, and even with the best efforts of the festival’s organizers by laying down shitloads of hay, people still slipped and fell in the mud. Of course the longer the weekend went on, the less people actually seemed to care whether they were covered in mud anyway. Yes, there were showers (three narrow stalls per gender for $5 a wash) but their lines never matched the length of the lines for coffee in the morning.

Mountain Jam is billed as a child-friendly festival, and I suppose if you’re cool with your kid inhaling lots of pot smoke, it’s not the worst place in the world. There was face-painting and a couple of kid-specific tents for kid-specific activities. Even some of the music was geared towards kids: Ratboy Jr., a local act in the wry tradition of They Might Be Giants who drop the Jr. when they play for grownups, was one of the musical highlights on the small stage in the Awareness Village, playing late-morning sets on Saturday and Sunday. I also saw four kids that were maybe in the 5th or 6th grade in the tall grass halfway up the mountain, perhaps bent on escape or on a hopeful Stand By Me-style search for adventure.

Did you go to college at any time between 1968 and…well, now, I guess? Picture the hippies. I’ll do it too: I was in college in the early ‘90s and I played drums in a funk band. A lot of the kids who came to see us play were contemporary hippies with long flowing robes and matted blonde dreadlocks. They wore hemp necklaces and corduroy pants with long quilted panels running down the sides. If that sounds familiar to you, guess what? They still look like that! Mountain Jam in many ways felt like college, though fortunately the comparison ended there and I wasn’t subsisting exclusively on ramen noodles so I could spend what little money I had on records, pot, and beer.

Though the name smacks of jam bands, Mountain Jam’s lineup is considerably more eclectic. Not that one shouldn’t expect lengthy guitar solos over meandering musical passages, because there is plenty. But this year also featured a stellar performance by the Roots, a band who, while not uncomfortable with the concept of jamming, are decidedly crisper and on point than the term “jam” might indicate. The Roots were one of the weekend’s highlights, a blast of electric energy just before the rains came down on Friday night. How they do what they do – house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, jetting off to destinations unknown for weekend gigs, ?uestlove’s weekly DJ set at Brooklyn Bowl, and steady stream of Twitter commentary nearly every minute of every day – is a mystery. Keeping up with their itinerary is exhausting enough, so imagine what it must be like to actually be in the Roots. But none of that matters once they hit the stage, because it’s pure bliss. The Roots even found the time to work in tributes to the recently departed, opening with a go-go-infused take on the Beastie Boys’ “Paul Revere”, simultaneously honoring Adam Yauch and Chuck Brown.

Mountain Jam also paid tribute as a whole to Levon Helm, a friend of the festival and a musical legend with deep roots in the area; Helm passed away earlier this year, and renditions of his solo material and songs made famous by the Band were heard (with encouragement by producers) from many of the artists during the weekend. Govt. Mule brought out the surviving members of the Levon Helm Band for the second half of their Saturday night set for an emotional, celebratory performance.

Mountain Jam was also the first official reunion show of the Ben Folds Five, who ran through their greatest hits in front of fans who’d traveled far and wide to see it happen. Folds was in predictably gregarious form, regaling the crowd with wry stories between even wryer songs from the group’s staggeringly catchy back catalogue. While the North Carolina-bred band is in the midst of recording a new album, they stuck strictly to the classics, only letting up long enough for Folds to throw his stool at his piano - a decidedly punk move for a guy who used to earn a paycheck as a judge on an NBC singing competition show. Of course, if you haven’t heard “Army” or “Song for the Dumped”, you might not know he had it in him.

One of the festival’s breakout acts, Gary Clark, Jr., had already lain waste to the kids at Coachella, and was one week away from doing the same at Bonnaroo when he unleashed his guitar fury at Mountain Jam. Clark, who grew up in Austin, Texas, has already made a name for himself in the blues community, but has lately expanded his reach thanks to incendiary live sets like the one on Friday afternoon at Mountain Jam. If he’s uncomfortable with the comparisons to Jimi Hendrix, Clark sure isn’t showing it, as evidenced by his blistering instrumental run through “Third Stone from the Sun”.

Another breakout performance came from Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, a Daptone Records-affiliated soul outfit and one of the all-time feel-good stories in the history of music. Bradley, a singer in his mid-‘60s with a heartbreaking-but-triumphant life story, was discovered singing as a James Brown impersonator named Black Velvet by Daptone co-founder Gabriel Roth. Bradley, a.k.a. the Screaming Eagle of Soul, has since recorded a debut of all-original material, which he showcased at Mountain Jam along with crowd-wowing dance moves possibly honed during his Black Velvet days. Bradley’s sincerity and humility are as genuine as his absolute love of performing, and his voice – and his band – killer. Even if you ignore how totally fucking gratifying it is to be able to celebrate Bradley’s rise, the guy is just dynamite.

The festival’s final headline slot went to Steve Winwood, a dynamic performer since his teen years in the Spencer Davis Group. Though his performance came at the end of a lengthy stateside tour, Winwood was in fine voice and spirit, running through classic material spanning his long history, up to and including cuts from Nine Lives, his 2008 album. Winwood brought out Haynes for “Gimme Some Lovin’” – a singular highlight from an exceptional festival-closing set.

Despite often dismal weather and an abundance of exceedingly over-patchouli’d patrons, Mountain Jam was a pretty terrific festival. In its eighth year, it shows no signs of faltering. With a clear dedication to offering a wide range of musical options to its audience, one can only hope it carries on for many years to come. With great local acts like blues of the Connor Kennedy Band, hotly-tipped indie artists like the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the Simone Felice Band, genre-defying outfits like Break Science and EOTO, and jam legends like the Tedeschi Trucks Band, there really is something for everyone at Mountain Jam. Now, about all that rain…

Paul Weller: 18 May 2012 - New York

Originally published by PopMatters on June 1, 2012

In 1982, fresh off the buzz of his band’s first number one album in the U.K., Paul Weller broke up the Jam. That he moved on to further commercial success with the blue-eye soul of the Style Council is hardly the point, at least in this context: Paul Weller is unafraid of shaking things up and going against the grain.

The Best Buy Theater in New York City is a deceptively large space in a terrible part of town for live music. Leaving a show is like getting knocked off a surfboard by a massive wave, the sea of tourists moving in all directions in the heart of Times Square, and if you want to avoid being pulled by the undertow into Madame Tussaud’s or Toys R’ Us, you’d better steel yourself for a struggle. Outside, it seems as unlikely a place on earth as any you might find for an artist to perform his latest album in full, especially when that album is Sonik Kicks.

Paul Weller has been around a long time, and if you’re a fan from the Jam through the Style Council on up through his many years as a solo artist, you know in your heart that his generally accepted title – the Modfather – is more an honorary degree than a testament to his having stayed in one place for all this time. Weller may be known for writing classic songs, but they’re hardly all cut from the same cloth. Even so, Sonik Kicks, if not a difficult album, is possibly one of the most sonically adventurous of Weller’s entire career. And while it reached the toppermost of the poppermost in the U.K., it’s not exactly tearing up the charts over here. So opening a 2 ½ hour concert by running through the album from start to finish, while not a revolutionary concept, is still a daring proposition.

Up front, on the rail, the fans were out in full force. Weller performed just two shows in the U.S. on this visit, both at the Best Buy Theater on consecutive nights one weekend in mid-May. As such, Weller-heads (or whatever they call themselves) have traveled for the show. They might have done that anyway, but then again maybe not. Would the fan from Boston who claims to have seen the Jam and Style Council way back when, who aggressively bellows “Oi!!!” and “Are you ready?!?!?” in a phony Cockney accent have made the trip down if Weller was playing a little closer to home? Maybe. But with the tour really more of a two-night stand, there is the air among the fandom of something special, something worth riding the rails in a t-shirt from some past Weller tour or other.

If Weller was going to play all of Sonik Kicks in this manner, he at least had two things going for him. There was a fairly partisan crowd on Friday, May 18, at least in the first pit closest to the stage. It also helped that Sonik Kicks is so fucking good.

If he has any interest in shaking off the Modfather mantle, Weller shows no signs on the surface. He’s still sporting a mod hairstyle and is still dressing to the nines, his suit a sharp number that might have been crafted for a nearby production of Guys & Dolls. Weller’s band – some of whom have been with him for years, including Ocean Colour Scene guitarist Steve Cradock – is also sharply dressed, but it’s clear from the moment he hits the stage that the Modfather is the coolest motherfucker in the room.

The Sonik Kicks set was killer, and while I went in familiar with the material, I still got the feeling that those who hadn’t yet found their way to the album were captivated, especially by the high-energy numbers like “Kling I Klang” and “Dragonfly”.

The band returned for an acoustic run through some of Weller’s back catalogue, taking the front of the stage on a row of stools like a sharper, less hirsute, Crosby, Stills & Nash along with a string section. It opened with a rapturously received “English Rose”, the first sign that the Jam were not off limits in Weller’s repertoire, and closed six songs later with a stunning “You Do Something to Me”.

Weller plugged back in for a final run through more of his timeless tunes, with “22 Dreams”, “Stanley Road” and “Wake Up the Nation” highlights in the first run through. One fan who’d yelled “Town Called Malice!” at least 100 times over the course of the night was rewarded in the encore, which also included the Jam’s “In the City” and “Art School”.

On the street, actually in the city, fighting through a million people craning their necks to figure out where the ball drops each New Year’s Eve, the air was still crackling. Weller is more than just an institution, but an active genius still capable of creating vital music. On one night in May in New York City, Weller’s sense of adventure was more than matched by a terrific performance with his band.

The Sklar Brothers: The Hardest-Working Twins in Showbiz

Published by PopMatters on April 27, 2012

If it’s true comedians are narcissists, imagine what it’s like to be Randy and Jason Sklar. It’s not just because they’re identical twins, though they most certainly are that. It’s because they’re brothers who work – and travel, and perform, and hang out—together, and the banter is so innate in their live performances that it’s only natural it spills over into their post-show conversations. Perhaps a funk over how a recent performance went might have lasted half as long if there weren’t two of them volleying it back and forth. 
Last spring, the Sklar Brothers came to New York for a handful of shows as they prepped material for their latest album, Hendersons and Daughters. On a Friday night, they performed a pair of shows at Gotham Comedy Club, a wide room set up like a carpet-covered coliseum, with overly intimate tables and overpriced drinks.

The Sklars’ journey to becoming standup comics began in St. Louis, Missouri, where they grew up as fans of local teams like the Cardinals. 
The first show was dynamic, with the brothers hitting a rhythm early and riding it to the end. The second show, by their own account in its immediate aftermath, was a mess. It was late and the crowd was a combination of drunk and disconnected.

“It kind of bummed me out, I hate to say it,” Jason admitted. “Sometimes certain jokes go over better, but I felt like it was fucking work. It was so brutal. We were battling up there and it was not fun.”

“The mics were way too low,” added Randy. “Your mic should be powerful so you can make it hard for people to have a conversation, period. That’s the way it should be, to the point where if they’re rude enough to want to talk to each other, they’ll have to talk as loud, and then they get spotted and they’re fucking gone. Why did you come to a comedy show if you wanted to have a conversation? There’s a great bar downstairs.”

Later, in a sorta-okay-but-not-great bar next door, the Sklars held court with a few friends and a few fans. They’re really nice guys, Randy and Jason. I met their former accountant, maybe. Also a nice guy. The Sklars surround themselves with impenetrable niceness, perhaps, because it shields them from lunatics and assholes, from people shoving a business card in their hands, or giving them the vague celebrity recognition patter.

“I know you, don’t I?”

This was more slur than statement, and it came from a woman who leaned over a bar stool putting her frosted hair between Jason and I. She was in a group of two couples, the dudes growing increasingly hostile as she struggled in vain to put a name to the face.

“I know you … you’re from ...”

“That happens all the time,” Jason said later, and I’m sure he’s right. Earlier I’d told him a story about visiting my father’s apartment in Chelsea in the brief months-long window when the Sklars starred in their short-lived MTV series Apartment 2F. On our way to a since-shuttered Cuban diner, I spotted the brothers coming out of a building and realized I’d seen them before. Unlike our new friend in the bar, I hadn’t bugged them at the time. I did later, though.

The Sklar Brothers as they’re collectively known on comedy albums and in comedy clubs recognize the value of being cool to their fans. I crossed that threshold during the first season of Cheap Seats, a sports comedy show on ESPN Classic. The show, which ran for four seasons between 2004-06, starred Randy and Jason as network tape archivists commenting on clips from old sports broadcasts (with a very loose interpretation of “sports,” as evidenced by episodes on spelling bees and poker tournaments. If it sounds a bit like Mystery Science Theater 3000, the Sklars acknowledged that, and the stars of that show appeared in an episode of Cheap Seats, evoking some sort of comedic M.C, Escher painting (a reference point familiar to fans of the Sklars as well.)

In the third season of Cheap Seats, the show held a contest with the winner having an episode of the show shot in their home. I entered, but didn’t win. I did receive a signed photo and a t-shirt, both of which I still have somewhere.

Right around that same time, I sent them an e-mail asking them if they’d wish my then-wife a happy birthday. She’d become a fan through Cheap Seats, and I figured maybe there was an outside chance they’d hit her up with a MySpace comment, which should at least tell you how long ago that was. Instead, the Sklars sent her an e-mail, two or three paragraphs of the most hilarious shit I’d ever seen. That’s how cool these dudes are.

Randy and Jason talk about their fans a lot on their podcast. They read letters they receive in a segment which used to open the show but has since been moved; the advice came from a fan. They talk about the fans who come to their standup performances and shout out “Henderson!” and “Osbaldiston!”, both of which have their origins in hyper-enthusiastic sports play-by-play calls.

With Sklarbro Country, the brothers’ weekly podcast devoted to sports, comedy, and indie rock, Randy and Jason are fulfilling a destiny hinted at by the Beastie Boys, circa Check Your Head/Ill Communication, when the hip-hop/punk collective rocked vintage Knicks tees, built a basketball court in their recording studio and sporadically published a magazine devoted to music, comedy, sports and popular culture called Grand Royal.

“This is the dichotomy that lives inside of us and has always lived inside of us,” said Randy. “We are at once kids who grew up playing catch in the front yard for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. And we are also perfectly at home watching Mel Brooks on TV and learning every line to Airplane! and loving standup comedy, and loving musicals and Broadway shows. That’s who we are.”

Jason said he sees that dichotomy as part of their bigger picture goal of dealing with perceptions and misperceptions.

“Our career has been spent deconstructing what people’s assumptions are of twins,” he said. “We have spent a career trying to mold a different perspective on twin-ness and a more nuanced, real perspective on twins that isn’t just for show, joke and what we all sort of know. And I feel like we’ve applied that to everything we do. Why does a sports show have to have Joe Satriani as the opening guitar riff for it? It doesn’t at all. In fact, it could start with a Belle and Sebastian song that makes you sad. Or a Best Coast song, or a Mazzy Star song, or something that makes you sit down and go, ‘Huh, that’s really thoughtful. That’s really neat.’”

“When we look at [Phoenix Suns point guard and raconteur] Steve Nash, I bet there are friends in Steve Nash’s life who don’t even know he plays basketball,” said Randy. “I like that. I like when guys say, ‘This sport is not my entire life.’ And that’s what we’re trying to get people to do.”

“It was high school,” said Jason, before citing an early inspiration. “Richard Lewis; loved that special with the piano and the brick wall. It was at the Improv I think. He was so good that special, and showed what comedy could be.”

“[Jerry] Seinfeld, [Garry] Shandling,” Randy added. “We loved Shandling. We just were into that stuff, so we would do people’s bits not knowing that’s not what you’re supposed to do. We would just do it for our friends in high school and whatnot and get huge laughs because these are phenomenal bits that people came up with. And then there was a talent show in the school. A lot of it was material which we just stole, which is just terrible. We didn’t know that wasn’t what you were supposed to do. But some of it was stuff that we wrote and we were encouraged by it.”

Soon, the Sklars were comfortable enough with their act to put it on videotape, a recording which they sent to the Disney Channel in the hopes of making it on to a young comedians’ special.

“I remember Skippy from Family Ties was going to be the host of the show, Marc Price,” said Jason. “The production company called us back and I’ll never forget talking on the phone with them. They didn’t talk to our parents, they talked to us. And they were like, ‘We’ve looked at thousands of tapes and you guys were in the top ten of tapes we saw.’ I think that stands to reason. How many kids are doing standup?”

The show was never produced, but it was enough to get Randy and Jason interested in taking it further. Though on course to become attorneys, the brothers continued honing their act during their time as undergraduates at the University of Michigan. After graduation, they were accepted to law schools but instead moved to New York to pursue standup. Which, in a very roundabout way, brings us to the present.

The Sklars are the hardest working twins in showbiz. They regularly travel the country performing standup and have three albums to their credit, the most recent—Hendersons and Daughters— released in 2011. In addition to their own forays into television (Apt. 2F, Cheap Seats), they’ve appeared on Law & Order, CSI, Grey’s Anatomy, Entourage, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and plenty of other scripted TV shows. They’ve been regulars on Chelsea Lately and on radio on the Jim Rome Show. They’ve done a handful of films, though the less said about most of them the better. They’ve done internet series (Back on Topps, Held Up), been on cartoons (The Oblongs) and guested on podcasts.

An upcoming History Channel series, The United Stats of America, will see Randy and Jason using statistics (and, presumably, comedy) to figure out where the country has been and how it got to where it is today. Six episodes have been produced, though there’s no indication on the network’s website as to when they might air.

Outside of semaphore and puppetry, there are few avenues they haven’t traveled down as performers. And, I don’t know: Maybe they actually have done puppetry.

Sklarbro Country, the weekly podcast, is perhaps the twins’ greatest labor of creative love. It shows in the comfortable rhythm they have, not only with one another but also their guests, often a fellow comedian, sometimes one from their close circle of friends. But there’s also a lot of hard work that goes into producing an episode of Sklarbro Country, and perhaps larger ambitions than one might realize.

“What we’re trying to do as well is extrapolating the human story, and what is it saying in a larger theme, and how can we attack a larger theme so it’s not totally based in the story,” Randy said. “Like where does all the championship memorabilia go for the team that loses? That’s an interesting concept for us, and how is that deceiving for the people who live in villages around the world?”

They also understand that it wouldn’t be an easy transition, melding the material in the podcast with their standup performances.

“
I think we’re even kind of afraid to do some of the stuff we do in the podcast on stage with a regular crowd, but I would love to,” said Jason. “We would love to figure that out.”

What you hear when you download an episode of Sklarbro Country—which is free, by the way—is the result of a lot of hard work behind-the-scenes.

“The first 20 minutes of that show, we write,” said Randy. “That’s super rare. It’s written based off of us improvising. First we’ll start talking about the story and say, ‘What’s the angle?’ And we start talking and coming up with jokes and write them down. And then we’ll tighten it and make it a little clearer. We write a very detailed outline, which a lot of times has fully written out jokes. But we also go off it.”

No matter how hard they work, though, they still have to deal with what every performer faces: Negative feedback.

“I’ve heard criticism where people say like, ‘These guys don’t disagree with each other,’ but I don’t know that we have to,” said Randy. “There’s enough of that shit on the air right now. There’s Around the Horn if you want disagreement, and sometimes PTI. But that’s not necessarily what we do. Maybe there is some merit to what people are saying. We take every little criticism as though there’s some truth behind it and we’ve got to figure it all out. I think it’s who we are.”

The criticism may have directly yielded another sport-comedy endeavor with Point/Point, a series of video shorts on Jockular.com where Randy and Jason spoof the standard charged patter of sports shows by vehemently agreeing with one another.

In an effort to bring their many worlds together, Randy and Jason have dipped their toe in the water with the odd live performance of Sklarbro Country, including an appearance at this year’s SXSW. Festivals, they explained are a lot of fun. But for responsible family men, they’re also tough to justify.

“What’s hard for us is that we have families, and it’s hard for us to be like, ‘We’re going away this weekend. We are going to make a total combined $50. They’re paying all our expenses, though,’” Randy said. “That doesn’t mean anything in a marriage. ‘You take care of the kids. What I’m going to do is hang out, listen to music, smoke some pot, hang out with all my really fun comedy friends. You deal with the kids and I’ll talk to you periodically, but it’ll probably be too loud because bands will be playing and you’ll feel completely alone.’ You can’t do that unless you have the most understanding spouse ever or unless … unless nothing. It’s just too much to heap on somebody, and we have to ask ourselves what does it do, to what end. Yes, it’s super fucking fun. There is no more fun than performing at a festival in front of a thousand people who are psyched.”

Jason picked up the thread.

“You go to a festival, and they’re like, ‘The car is ready for you,’ and you hop in the car with Tig Notaro and Kyle Dunnigan and Rich Fulcher and we sit there and we fucking gag around and we just honestly do Carson impressions and joke around and just are so silly and laugh our asses off,” he said. “It’s so much fun, it’s what we love. There’s something about that that I miss. So we’ve got to do one every once in a while.”

Connecting with other comics is important to the Sklars. On the night of their appearance at Gotham Comedy Club, Jay Mohr—in town to film an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent—turned up between sets and staying for much of the second performance. It meant a lot to Randy and Jason.

“Richard Lewis is up at Caroline’s tonight, and he could have easily gone up there and hung out,” Jason said. “He could have done nothing, he could have just hung out with people from the set, from his crew. He came here and hung out and gagged around with us and made fun of us while we were selling t-shirts from the table. And it was fucking great. That’s part of this business that we truly love. We feel like we’ve worked hard in this business to achieve a certain level of respect from our peers. And I think we’ve got it for the most part. I mean, there are always going to be people who don’t like what we do or think we’re funny.”

“I think that’s diminished a lot, because we’ve hung around and kept making stuff,” Randy said, and to prove a point, the Sklars talked about a work-in-progress idea, the practice of constant consideration of material that could both make them laugh and move their careers forward.

“The Jersey Shore people went in and negotiated their contracts for a lot more money, and I would have just loved to have been a fly on the wall for that negotiation,” Jason said. “They’re saying like, ‘Snooki wants $50,000-per-episode, she wants a percentage of international sales and back end DVD stuff.’ And the business affairs person from MTV is like, ‘Alright, well there’s got to be conditions.’ And the lawyer is like, ‘Fine, what are the conditions?’ and she’s like, ‘Seven drunken hookups.’

‘Obviously, fine. She’ll do that in one night.’

‘One condom-rip pregnancy scare.’

‘Who rips the condom?’

‘Producer. Pre-ripped.’

‘Fine. What else?’

‘She’s got to take a shit in the bed.’

‘No, she’s not going to shit in the bed.’

‘Fart in the minifridge?’

‘On camera?’

‘Off mic.’

“We’re just beginning to work that out,” said Randy. “I think there’s something funny in that, but we don’t know what the answer is yet.”