THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.136 - BLINDBOY

Episode Date: October 25, 2020

Adam enjoys a rambling conversation with Irish writer, podcaster, comedian, musician and sometime Rubberbandit, Blindboyboatclub about comedy, music, post modernism, prank phone calls, masks, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and more.This episode was recorded remotely on October 5th, 2020.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and to Emma Corsham for additional editing. Podcast artwork by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/RELATED LINKS60s GARAGE ROCK PLAYLIST (SPOTIFY)A NIGHT IN WITH JOAN AND JERICHA (27th October, 2020)BLINDBOY UNDESTROYS THE WORLD (BBC iPLAYER)THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BLINDBOY (2018, WATERSTONES)HOW BLINDBOY ACCIDENTALLY BECAME MODERN IRELAND'S BIGGEST CULTURAL EXPORT (2020, ARTICLE IN THE FACE)THE RUBBERBANDITS - HORSE OUTSIDE (2010, YOUTUBE)THE RUBBERBANDITS - SPASTIC HAWK (2011, YOUTUBE)THE RUBBERBANDITS - BLACK MAN (2011, YOUTUBE)THE RUBBERBANDITS - LIAR LIAR DANNY DYER (2012, YOUTUBE)THE RUBBERBANDITS - 'COSTA FORCHUN' (2012, YOUTUBE)BLINDBOY ON MENTAL HEALTH - THE TOMMY TIERNAN SHOW (2019, YOUTUBE)BLINDBOY ON LATE LATE SHOW - OUR GENERATION (2016, YOUTUBE)SMOG - TEENAGE SPACESHIP (2000, from the album KNOCK KNOCK - AUDIO ON YOUTUBE)THE KLF - THE MANUAL (HOW TO HAVE A NUMBER ONE THE EASY WAY) (1999, GOODREADS WEBSITE)GUY DEBORD AND THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE (AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE ON HYPERALLERGIC WEBSITE, 2016)THE ADAM AND JOE SHOW ON WOW PRESENTS PLUS (SIGN UP TO STREAM ALL 4 SERIES) NEW ADAM BUXTON... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here, reporting to you from an autumnal farm track in Norfolk, UK.

My dog friend Rosie, half whippet, half poodle, is up ahead. She's just taken a dump. My doggie has just done a dog plop. My Rosie has done two or three. My Rosie has just done some dog plops. I think they were presents for me. A little dog plop song for you there.

Where's Joe Rogan's whimsical dog plop songs? Nowhere. That's where. Oh man, it's a very beautiful day today. Towards the end of October 2020. Very bright, but quite cold. Like my wife. It's just a joke. Clocks went back today.

Extra hour in bed. Thank you. Loved it. But I'm not sure it really makes up for being plunged into darkness at tea time every day for the next few months. But look, quite a long podcast today, so let's get into it. This is podcast number 136, which features a rambling conversation, including bad language, so watch out. With Irish comedian, musician, podcaster, author and TV presenter, Blind Boy Boat Club. Or just Blind Boy. Blind Boy and his friend Mr. Chrome spent the 2000s in the southern Irish city of Limerick, making prank phone calls and later comedy songs, usually in the hip-hop style, as the Rubber Bandits. The duo decided early on that they would conceal their identities,

not only with made-up names, but also with plastic shopping bags, worn like wrestling masks whenever they appeared in public, a practice they continue to this day. And yes, Blind Boy was wearing his bag when I spoke to him via Zoom earlier this month, even though he understood that this was going to be an audio-only podcast. He likes to be thorough. The Rubber Bandits became a household name in Ireland towards the end of 2010 when the YouTube video for their song Horse Outside went viral. And that's when word of the Rubber Bandits began to spread elsewhere in the world too. There's a link in the description of this podcast to that and other Rubber Bandits videos.

But here's a short clip of Horse Outside, just to give you a little flavour. Horse Outside, which appeared on the Rubber Bandits' one and only album, Serious About Men, released in 2011, which, as well as some of their early phone pranks, also included a number of tracks that, despite being weird and funny, managed to touch on serious subjects like drug and alcohol abuse, violence and perceptions of masculinity. Blind Boy's masked appearances on Irish TV throughout the 2010s, both with Mr. Chrome and on his own,

often featured articulate and thoughtful discussions on these topics, as well as other issues including housing, immigration and mental health. Blind Boy explored some of these areas further between 2018 and 2019 in a series of programmes for BBC Three that combined investigative journalism and surreal humour called Blind Boy Undestroys the World. Since 2017, Blind Boy has been putting out a podcast that, as you'll hear, initially started as a place for him to read some of the short stories he writes, which so far have appeared in two published collections. But the podcast now mainly features monologuing on a wide variety of topics with this long-standing facility for combining the serious and the silly. My conversation with Blind Boy was, as I said, recorded remotely at the beginning of this month, October 2020.

And amongst other things, we talked about music, prank phone calls, how cognitive behavior therapy works, and what makes people take some comedy more seriously than other comedy i love to analyze comedy we also talked about blind boy's time at art school or art college if you prefer and that led us into lots of good studenty chat about modernism post-modernism power of language to maintain power structures. And yes, this is the second podcast in a row where I mention my use of the word actor versus actress to describe a thespian woman. A woman. When is someone going to give me a prize?

But we started our conversation by admiring each other's beautiful pod caves via Zoom back at the end with details of a new playlist for you and a bit of goodbye waffle but right now with blind boy boat club here we go We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. okay can you describe where you are i'm in my studio man i'm looking at your studio oh yeah you've got those old school panels man you've got those old school abbey road style panels and i have the more the more modern ones with the lights yeah these are sound baffle panels that blind boy is looking at and they are just basically wooden frames covered in hessian that absorb most of the reflective sound and my ones are more they're kind of the more modern ones which are like they're made of plastic and styrofoam and all this shit whereas you have that old school

that abbey road look it's quite nice do you know about sound i mean you are a musician and you're technically minded but do you understand the way that sound works the physics of it not as much as i'd like i mean i'm an audio producer but i'm more kind of like yourself. I taught myself how to do it. So I know that sound is fucking symmetric. It's just vibrations of air and music is symmetrical vibrations of air. Most of the time, like when I'm using EQs or using any of these sound production equipment, I'm going by my ear. I'm going by what I know and my intuition.

But I don't know the... i'm shit at maths as well so some of it freaks me out when i see numbers and stuff you know at one point i thought i'm gonna learn how to produce properly and i'm gonna understand sound and then i'm gonna make a number one hit a bit like the klf you know no that's what i read i read the klf's book right but that's way better than just an art that's the manual by the klf yeah that's one of the fucking greatest books ever written how to write a how to write a novelty song did you read that yes describe that for people who don't know about it so the klf were this incredible band that were more of a dada type art collective than a band really uh by bill drummond i can't remember

the other dude's name jimmy cortey jimmy. Jimmy Corti. And they used to be record execs, I believe. And they formed this band, the KLF. And they decided to write a novelty song. What was it? Doctor and the Tardis? That's right. Doctor Who. Yeah.

Doctor Who. Using that track by Gary Glitter. Rock and roll. Yes. They had, unfortunately, by Gary Glitter rock and roll yes they had unfortunately used Gary Glitter and they had

but they basically distilled how to get a number one song it sounds like here's a cynical manual about how to write a novelty song

but it actually is quite an incredible document about pop music and what makes a good song and what makes a song catchy

and if anyone's interested in making music i'd always suggest to read it it doesn't even it's just a good book man it doesn't matter if you like music or not it's a great piece of work that's right did you read it before you started making music i read it during while i was in the process of making music i mean for me music and the stuff with the rubber bandits i've always loved pop songs i love what i love about the music that we were doing with the bandits especially a song like horse outside is like we were very very serious about the music but we were playing it in like comedy venues in like edinburgh and shit like that and it was really good because it's like you get to do

the same joke over and over again because it's part of a song and it's catchy. You know what I mean? It's like you get all this mileage out of one joke because it's attached to a melody, which I find quite interesting. But you got fed up with doing the gigs after a while, didn't you? Didn't you have a sort of Beastie Boys syndrome of getting too popular? And then you started getting audiences who weren't really picking up on some of the more nuanced aspects of what you were doing. Yeah. So like we started off as kind of like an underground act. Like I don't consider what we were doing comedy music like 10 years ago.

It was more music that happened to be funny, you know, because the thing is when you do comedy music this strange thing happens where if you and music is unique as an art form for this and i can't understand why and i'm sure it's something you've thought about too which is when you make music funny for some reason the artistic value of it becomes devalued in people's eyes like you can make a film funny you can make a book funny and it doesn't devalue the artistic worth but as soon as a piece of music also has funny lyrics people feel guilty about liking it and call it a novelty track and I never understood that because I grew up listening to like Randy Newman I consider Randy Newman to be a short story writer who used humor as part of his music

so it was really frustrating to be releasing stuff and caring about the production and caring about the songwriting and having it written off as novelty but we had this song called Horse Outside which got really really popular and it attracted the wrong audience it was like a Beastie Boys thing it attracted an audience the bros yeah the bros and we're from limerick in ireland and limerick is a place in ireland that has a it has quite a negative image it's seen as kind of a violent place and that's an incorrect assumption about the place it was kind of created by the press so our work was trying to parody this to try and parody the media image of where we were from but then all of a sudden these people start showing up to the gigs

and it's like oh you're laughing at us because we're from limerick it's kind of like alf garnett when alf garnett was taking the piss out of racists and then all these racists show up and agree with him so we got the fuck out of ireland then we went to london we started gigging in like soho theater playing to different audiences to smaller, because it's more fun. It's no fun playing to a large audience who don't get the joke. It is fun playing to a small audience who do get it. It's interesting what you were saying, though, about humour in music making it somehow less respectable or less likely to be taken seriously. You said that it wasn't the case necessarily with other art forms, but I don't agree.

I think that it usually indicates that something ultimately will not be taken seriously, at least in terms of a critical response. You know what I mean? Like people can agree that certain films are funny and brilliant and, you know, Bridesmaids is an amazingly funny film, et cetera. But I don't think anyone, not yet anyway, is really taking it seriously as a movie compared to a great movie by whoever it might be, Truffaut or I don't know. Do you know what I mean? I've thought about that too.

I think it's the same wherever humor pops up, even though to actually make something work as something funny is arguably the most difficult and the most valuable thing that you can do. Do you think sometimes we use the word satire to protect against that? Because if you say, oh, it's not comedy, it's satire, which is like comedy, but smart. Exactly. And it's not really, do you know what I mean? I had this thought recently when I've been reappraising the career of Enya you know and i look at what enya did enya took irish folk music then she got some synthesizers and created a completely unique sound but enya doesn't have she's got lots of album sales but she has no critical respect she's uh she's called new age but then you've got Brian Eno, who pretty much did the same shit,

but Brian Eno gets to be called Ambient. New Age, do you know what I mean? Yeah. Why isn't Enya allowed to be called Ambient Music? New Age music to me suggests this is not for enjoying aesthetically, it's for the background. It's for when you get a massage. Yeah.

But then Ambient is different. that's exploring what music means even though brian eno is like here's an album for airports you know what i mean yeah and it's one of these things that i wonder how we use language to categorize art as this being serious and this not and when you strip them away it doesn't make sense it's usually just a question of altering the presentation, isn't it? Just shifting people's expectations. And that is part of the job. I think you come to understand as a creative person, as an artist, that's part of the job is to manage people's expectations. It's not just about the actual piece.

It's how do you present it? What is surrounding it? What is the frame? You're so right about the actual piece. It's how do you present it? What is surrounding it? What is the frame? You're so right about the satirist thing. Yeah. Because Chris Morris is a good example. Yes. I talked to him.

He doesn't like being described as a satirist because I think he can sniff that it is slightly bogus. Yeah. And because also, you know, a lot of his stuff is fucking silly and daft very silly yeah when i was a kid like seeing the stuff that you and joe were doing definitely gave me a good foundation in silliness i mean and what i loved about what you were doing and what reeves and markmore were doing do you know what i think you lads showed me how to be funny without punching down at anybody oh that's a nice thing to say do you know what i mean it's and and as a result your stuff survives reeves and martimer

stuff survives but quite a lot of stuff that i thought would survive things like fucking friends um just comedy that i laughed at lots of stuff it's like oh shit this for some reason this doesn't survive now but the stuff where it's straight up this is just silly and what we're pointing fun at here is the rules of reality that did survive now brass eye has survived because it was as comedy is just really really clever sometimes actually i wonder is brass eye it hasn't it hasn't outdated because of anything problematic it's just outdated because news has changed so much it was of its time in that sense you know but i don't know could brass brass i exist now well

with the day-to-day especially i think i said to chris when i was talking to him that watching it at the time it felt as if this was going to change the way that news was done on TV because it was going to make all the ridiculous pomposity and overblown, over-the-top entertainment aspect of news so clear and so embarrassing that they would never be able to do that again. And instead it had the opposite effect. Oh wow, that's an amazing point. I never considered that point till now.

You're so deep and you made me think. And now I'm going to change my life somehow. Thank you very much for your wonderful, deep and amazing point. You're deep and amazing point. You're deep and amazing point. Did you go to art school, Blind Boy? I did. I did an undergrad in art school.

I did graphic design, which I didn't like very much. So the only thing that art school taught me that was of any importance, it taught me failure, right? It taught me that an essential part of any creative process is you have to embrace and include failure as part of what you're doing. If you're scared of failure, then you won't try anything because the outcome of failure is too extreme so you have to fail every single day if you want to create anything and to understand this is just part of the process you must fail but then as well I had quite bad mental health problems when I was in college I had bad depression and anxiety and stuff but luckily because it was college it's like you get free counseling in college if you need it

so while i was in art college learning art i was also attending the counselor each week working through anxiety and depression learning what these things were learning what a panic attack was and by the time i got out of college i didn't want to do art anymore so i went to train to be a psychotherapist because when i was experiencing really bad anxiety i didn't want to do art anymore. So I went to train to be a psychotherapist. Because when I was experiencing really bad anxiety, I didn't think it was possible that I could ever not live like that anymore. Do you know what I mean? I thought it was like, this is it. I've got anxiety.

This is how I am. I didn't think I could be changed. But then when I went through a process of change, and I was able to understand what depression was, what anxiety was, I then became someone, I won't say say cured because that doesn't really exist I became someone who lives their life free of depression and anxiety and I just wanted to do that for other people I was like how the fuck do I do this for someone else so I did that but then horse outside happened then at the same time like I was messing around with comedy and music and that just became big and when it became big it's like psychotherapist or tour the world

singing and having fun so i went with that but i went back to art college in 2015 to do a master's degree i did a master's degree in kind of internet memes and critical theory and stuff like that you know as a way to understand art better at an academic level wow that sounds fascinating and what kind of stuff were you talking about and reading about then because i was at art college in 1990 i started my degree and then it was all post-modernism jean baudrillard sliding signifiers all that shit yeah were they still talking about that kind of stuff in my master's so I did I did quite a bit of Baudrillard in my master's around post-modernism but the thing is now what we refer and it's something that informs my process at what I do

some people refer to what now is as metamodernism. So for people listening, modernism is post-industrial revolution. When we started to put faith in science, we believed that science and truth could solve everything. You know what I mean? It's like we had cars, we had flying, but then you start to apply science to things like housing. flying but then you start to apply science to things like housing you know you build these big giant council estates and think oh if we just put everybody there and give them this everything will be okay and then post-modernism happens around the 1960s with the rejection well before that post-modernism would have started with dada in the around 1916 but we see it coming to its for all in the 60s it's where humanity rejects the sincerity of modernism the faith in science and then becomes ironic but right now they say

that what we live in is metamodernism which is informed by the internet as such whereby we have sincerity and irony existing alongside each other perfectly and what I kind of studied in my master's and what I was interested in is I believe that because we live our lives scrolling through our phones that what this has done is it's made us quite literate in being able to handle sincerity and irony at once because if you look at your facebook feed you could have your friend's wedding then someone could share a horrible isis video then you scroll down again and you've got some cats and we have to be literate to do these things and how i then tried to bring that into my own artistic process was i have a bag in my head i look like a fucking clown but while also being

a clown can i speak about something as important as suicide or mental health with sincerity and allow the humor and sincerity to exist alongside each other at once in a type of fluxus and that's what that's what you'd call meta-modernism and it's what people say is what that's what we're at right now it's why you have people like barris johnson and trump who are effectively clowns but they're also politicians give me an example if you can of some well-known pieces of modernist art and then maybe a few pieces or artists who would exemplify post-modern okay so, so a good example of modernism, not so much art, but writing, we'll say.

So the work of James Joyce. So James Joyce's Ulysses is seen as one of the greatest pieces of modernist art. What you see with Ulysses that would make it modernist is Joyce, essentially, it was written around 1911, and Joyce was looking towards developments in science. So you had the new developments of the work of Sigmund Freud in understanding the human unconscious mind. Another thing with James Joyce is you had cinema.

Cinema was an emerging new art form. James Joyce himself actually opened up the first cinema in Ireland. So Joyce is writing his book and the way that language is written in the book Ulysses Joyce sometimes isn't writing the words as they emerge from a person's mouth instead what he's writing is how the words form in the person's head before they come out so he's looking at stream of consciousness there he's looking at the freudian concept of there is an unconscious mind that within your mind there are these unconscious forces that we don't fully understand from our childhood from trauma and these things inform what we say and what they mean so joyce was

incorporating the human unconscious mind you'll also also see it in surrealism from around that period. Surrealist art. Salvador Dali. Dali was looking at Freudian dream analysis. And taking ideas from science. The sincerity of that scientific idea. And then applying it on the canvas. You'll see this with impressionist fucking art.

Monet. The impressionists were the first painters who like the thing with painting is that oil paints were really complicated to make and they were cumbersome but then when the industrial revolution came around in it's been around like the 1700s but when tubes of paint started to be produced around 1820, for the first time artists could leave the studio and bring a little easel and all these oil paints in tubes out into the field. And then what people like Monet started doing was looking at the new science of optics

and looking at the science of light and trying to bring these things into their artwork. And what they were doing was responding to the challenge of the and trying to bring these things into their artwork and what they were doing was responding to the challenge of the new invention of the camera it's like you've got a camera now it can take photographs of reality what can painting do well what painting can do is you can look at how light works yeah so those are all examples of modernist works right they seek the truth and sincerity in science and applying this to art. And then what would be considered to be the moment post-modernism, after modernism?

Most people talk about Duchamp and the urinal. There you go. Marcel Duchamp and the urinal. I think it's 1915, 19... No, it'd be after 1916, because 1916 was the... Marcel Duchamp was a founding member of the Dada art movement and they founded that in 1916 so I think it was like 1917 for the toilet it was at the height of World War I now the thing with World War I and the beauty of art in general art always reflects the society that it comes from so if you think of World War I World War I was a very modernist war it was a war of modernism because what you have is war has been around since humanity has been around war is not

new but with world war one it was industrialized war the machine gun for instance okay previously you had a cavalry going against it was kind of fair but now all of a sudden you have this weapon that can kill hundreds of people in a second or you have bombs that can do the same thing so marcel duchamp and this is why they said this is the birth of post-modernism duchamp's thing was there is nothing as irrational and absurd as a gun that can kill a hundred people or a gas bomb that can kill a thousand this is absolutely absurd and irrational and people are dying so therefore i can't have any sincerity in my art i must respond to the irrationalism of this modernist war with the with something equally irrational so he said i'm getting a urinal and I'm putting it in a gallery.

I'm signing it and I'm calling that art. And everyone's head exploded. It's like, what do you mean? Where's the painting? Where's the sculpture? This is just a toilet that you found. And now it's in a gallery and you're calling it art? And Marcel Duchamp was, yeah, this is art now.

And then why is it then... Is that taking you back to college? Yeah. yeah this is art now and then why is it then is that taking you back to college yeah well i mean your ability to recall all those things and to respond to that question is fucking impressive did you get good grades i did i i try love it like i fucking you know i love it and i love so when i create anything whether it be a book whether it be a song whatever it is i am coming from the unconscious of my mind. I'm not thinking about it.

I'm coming from a position of flow. But I love to get the work afterwards and to analyze it with artistic rigor from many different perspectives and try to understand, like, what was I trying to do here or what does this mean? You know what I mean? what does this mean you know what i mean so learning about art and learning about art movements and learning about why art is important can help you as an artist you know yeah no i love doing it but it doesn't always stick no and i'm not always able to you know recount it thereafter post modernism is fascinating though and i've noticed that recently it keeps coming up in online discussions particularly from people on the right who are fed up with what they call relativism cultural relativism or cultural marxism yeah and they're taking post-modernism to mean that there's no

the divisions between high and low and truth and fiction have all been erased in this kind of mulch of of um you know just sort of saying oh anything goes it's kind of punk almost these people don't understand what post-modernism means they think that post-modernism is an agenda rather than simply a way of analyzing what kind of what's happening. That's what I understand postmodernism to mean. Marcel Duchamp didn't decide I'm going to be a postmodernist, but rather he responded to the conditions of the world. And what we refer to as his is what he did. We then refer to it as postmodernism.

to as his is what he did we then refer to it as post-modernism the foreign the term cultural marxist too it's a term that's rooted in anti-semitism right the nazis were using that phrase they called it cultural bolshevism they believe the people who say what say cultural marxism believe that there is a marxist agenda that has been deliberately planted into universities as a way to make culture Marxist to precede a revolution. And in a way, like, it's the critique of capitalism. You know, why should we not critique capitalism? Critical theory, cultural Marxism, its correct academic phrase is critical theory cultural marxism is its correct academic phrase is critical theory it's simply a way of critiquing capitalism and consumerism is the dominant way of existing since since the late industrial revolution we have been living within capitalism and consumerism so why should we not

critique that and ask if that's a healthy way to exist or not? And on one hand, they're right. But on the second hand, it's like it's just a critique of capitalism. And there's structuralism and post-structuralism caught up in that whole debate as well. Derrida. Jack Derrida. Yeah, I'm not too familiar on my Derrida. Neither am I. But as far as I can tell, post-structuralism, you're sort of looking, you're dismantling absolutely everything.

You're dismantling the way language works and the way words play a part in maintaining certain societal and institutional structures, often to the detriment of certain marginalized communities. And so, you know, you're thinking about that's why, whereas I might once have called a female acting person an actress, now I started calling them actors because someone pointed out to me like, well, you don't call a female doctor a doctress. Exactly. So it's one of the weird ways that we subconsciously marginalize women. And when it was put to me, I sort of thought, yeah, that makes sense to me.

I mean, it's not as if I have now completely overhauled all my terminology at all. I just happened to have fixated on that one and adopted that one. What you just did there, thinking about the word actor and actress like feminist theory got to that it's like by stripping back the meaning that word and you go back further you realize ah i wonder why this exists oh there's a power structure here and this

power structure is is called patriarchy and that's really useful then because then you get to understand things like i'll give you a lovely example of um how to use that way of thinking with words and it goes back like a thousand years if you think of english language uh food so chicken right a chicken is an animal that lives in a field but when you have it on your plate it's called poultry okay a poultry doesn't live in a field but a chicken lives in a field then you think of like beef it's beef when it's on your plate but then when it's out in the field it's like a cow or a bull you don't sit down and eat cow and if you want to find out like what's that about and you use structuralism to go, where is the power dynamic there?

You go right back to 1066. The Normans, who would have spoken a kind of an early version of French, took over England from the Anglo-Saxons. And the Normans had the power and the Normans had the money and the Anglo-Saxons didn't. So chicken and cow... Can I just say at this point, though point though blind boy that i do call it chicken

when i'm eating it really yeah oh yeah some people do call it chicken okay well in a restaurant it's poultry sandwich it's poultry in in a restaurant but the normans who spoke a bit of french were eating the food so they had poulet poultry a poulet is a french word beef buff french words and then the anglo-saxon word is chicken cow and bull because these people worked in the fields and right there you have class structure with how we speak about food a thousand years later and i think that's incredible and what that tells us about history and that stuff really excites me and I enjoy it but some people will say you're a cultural Marxist by deconstructing because it is what I'm doing there is that's straight up Marxism it's like I've unearthed an unfair power structure

where the Anglo-Saxons were invaded by the fucking Normans introduced the doomsday book huge brutality and you've done it just by thinking about chicken and poultry. You know what I mean? So in a way, like it is, it's a Marxist critique. But why is that a bad thing? Well, I suppose my dad would say when he was alive that it's a bad thing because you're in danger of rendering everything meaningless. You're in danger of rendering everything meaningless. If you go down that line too far, then nothing means anything anymore. It depends where you come from.

It depends where you come from. I mean, yeah, everyone is trying to, you know, from his point of view, he was probably keen to. Well, he was a conservative and he was probably keen to. I guess that from his answer.... I guessed that from his answer. I completely guessed it from his answer. He was... I mean, that's the conservative ethos is let's protect these things. Let's protect traditions. And I mean, it usually indicates that they want to protect what they already have.

And let's not fuck around with a system that is massively beneficial to our gang. But... I had the exact opposite from my dad. So the English that I speak is called Hyberno English, which means it's English, but spoken by Irish people. So some of the grammatic structure and how I speak is rooted in the Irish language, which is very different grammatical structure. So I'll say things like, my dad used to say this to me, I'll say something like, are you going to the shop you are now I've just asked the question and answer the question at the same time and my dad who's his father would have been in the 1920s

he was like a captain in the IRA down in Cork and fought British soldiers and my dad used to tell me you always have to search and look at language for evidence of colonialism he was going with post-colonialism and he would say to me the reason Irish people say are you going to the shop you are is because we were interrogated so viciously throughout our history by landlords or british soldiers that we developed a way of speaking english whereby we're essentially being confusing and then you take that further and we you have like negative stereotypes of irish people that existed in britain of irish people as being ridiculous or stupid but then it's like yeah i can see why people would think we were ridiculous or stupid because we're speaking this consciously confusing type of English because historically 800 years, we don't know what answer will get us killed.

He's like, no, you must ask. You must continue. But if you're that as a conservative, he's like, we must conserve. We must not ask. Because if you ask too much, then structures from which I benefit, maybe that's what becomes meaningless. Do you know what I mean? And that's why this stuff is important. Yeah.

And he wasn't doing it, I should say as well, not to sell him out totally, because he was a thoughtful guy. He was a kind person. He wasn't a conservative because he didn't give a shit about anyone else in society. He was a conservative because he genuinely believed that overall it was the best way to make a society that was beneficial for the most number of people. Sure, not everyone, and some people were going to get massively screwed over, but he could live with that because overall it made sense. Tradition was honored. There was some structure to things. Things were not constantly being

dismantled. You could wake up pretty much every day and the world would be more or less the same as it was yesterday. I mean, the idea that there was once a world where that was true is strange i mean it's for me it's a bit like remembering what my life was like before i had children it was like oh yeah i remember see i don't have kids yet so i don't know about that i'm scared of having kids because i'm like how the fuck do i write all day how do i get to? How do I get to be incredibly selfish with my time? Because to create, you need to be selfish with your time. How do you do that? All it comes down to is being a creative person and you'd find it.

And the experiences you had as a father would feed into what you do. That's what I'm hoping. With me, it's in a very direct way. And I just tell stories about having kids, which is probably annoying for some people. But it would be different for everyone. It would alter your perspective on the world in a way that fed your creativity. And what age are your kids? I have a daughter who is 12 and two boys who are 16 and 18.

Oh, that's pretty cool. Well, they're not really distractions. They're practically adults now. Yeah. No, it's great. I can have proper conversations with them're not really distractions. They're practically adults now. Yeah. No, it's great. I can have proper conversations with them. I like them. They're cleverer than I am.

They're nicer than I am. They're introducing me to things I would never have found out about otherwise. They understand your work and your space. Yeah. I mean, they think my work is stupid a lot of the time. I did a song the other day. And sometimes I'll just go through library music and I'll just start singing over the top of it. And I did one and I spent quite a long time

doing it, layering up all the harmonies and stuff. And I thought, oh, this is pretty great stuff. And by the end of the day, I thought, well, I'm going to play it to them because, you know, in COVID times and even before COVID times, a lot of this stuff, there's no audience I can play it to. I'm just making it for myself. Maybe some of it will go into the podcast. Yeah. But now, especially I'm not even on social media, so I don't really get any direct feedback. And I played it to them before supper.

No, nothing. I mean, absolutely nothing. I don't know what I was thinking. My eldest son sort of nodded. He was so sweet. At that moment, I loved him absolutely nothing. I don't know what I was thinking. My eldest son sort of nodded. He was so sweet. At that moment, I loved him so much. He just sort of smiled and he nodded. He was like, yeah, yeah.

My wife didn't respond at all. Oh, my God. My daughter rolled her eyes at the swears. There were a couple of very deliberately jarring swears in it. And she just rolled her eyes. Oh, my God. But, I mean, what was I expecting? You can't do comedy for your friends and your family.

That's not what it's about. Yeah. Did they ever watch old episodes of Adam and Joel? No, they've never seen it. What? Now, I know you have this issue at the moment where it's not digitized or something. Or you're in the process of digitizing this. Yeah. issue at the moment where it's not digitized or something or you're in the process of digitizing yeah well you know funnily enough here's a good plug for the production company that made that

program world of wonder have a service a streaming service for all their shows which includes rupaul's drag race all these documentaries they've made over the years and pop culture programs and they have a streaming service called wow plus or something like that i'll put a link in the description and you can stream the adam and joe show now because they kept the rights adam when you were making like uh like the star wars sketches and stuff were you aware of like what you'd learned in art college and aware that what you were doing was post-modernism or were you thinking of like dada or duchamp or anything like that when you were doing it or were you simply like this is funny and I'm unaware of the influences?

That's a great question. I've been waiting to be asked a question like that for so long. For someone to take me seriously enough to ask me something like that, that I might cry. A bit of yes, a bit of no. I think I was more aware of all that stuff because I'd been to art college. So my head was all stuffed with all that. And initially, I remember thinking, yeah, this is a great idea. I think Joe thought of the idea, first of all, because we were looking for ways to keep us off screen because we weren't too confident as on-screen performers.

We were too cheesy, really. And so Joe said, let's do spoofs. We'll use the Star Wars toys. We'd seen the Karen Carpenter story that Todd Haynes did with Barbie dolls. Okay. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. So we use the Star Wars toys. And I was thinking that the idea should be that it wouldn't be funny, that we should do like serious little dramas with them. And so it would be like domestic arguments or little snapshots of daily life. In the Star Wars universe or not in the Star Wars universe? Well, maybe not even in the Star Wars universe. The thing is that we didn't do it like that in the end. But that was my idea. Like, let's do something arty and sort of serious, a bit like Todd Haynes's thing, because Todd Haynes's film Superstar wasn't straightforwardly funny. Some of it was quite moving. And well, you know, it's a sad story, the Karen Carpenter story. And so he was trying to reflect that. But he was doing it in this superficially campy and ludicrous and funny way. And I thought, yeah, we should be doing that too. And let's have these little toys that are part of a entertainment, popular culture, reflecting the reality of the kind of conversations that people really have. And that'll screw with people's heads.

that people really have and that'll screw with people's heads. And Joe was like, yeah, or we could just do some funny jokes. See, that's the problem because what you're doing right there, when your initial idea of, we'll say, taking these packaged characters that exist and represent Star Wars

and putting them in kind of serious situations, that comes from a post-modernist movement called the situations international and it's called detournement so what you were doing there was detournement taking something that has a meaning then taking this thing and all you're doing is placing it in a new context and all of a sudden this huge new meaning is created with it yeah because art college forces you to think like that you see that's why i was wondering like if you if you're Because art college forces you to think like that, you see. That's why I was wondering, like, if you're in art college and you do something, your tutor's job is to go, now contextualize this in terms of postmodernism.

Contextualize this within modernism. What are you trying to do? So it kind of gives you brain warms in a way. Yeah. Where I can't do anything now without analyzing it from that perspective. And for me, it's okay because i understand it but for other people that can be a real distraction and they don't like it at all it can be deadening because what you really want well what i really want and what i aspire to is

you know something where you're not overthinking everything something that comes from the heart something that's just silly and instinctual and authentic or whatever, all those stupid words. Have you ever had a conversation with Reeves and Mortimer or anybody about this stuff? No, because I don't think they would ever talk about it in those terms. I might be wrong. I've never talked to Jim Moyer, Vic Reeves. He's pretty hardcore, man. He was influenced by...

I know he was influenced by Hugo Ball and the Dadaists. Yeah, and also a fella called Joseph Boyes oh yeah Joseph Boyes was a really really absurd performance artist the felt man yeah

and he spent what did Joseph Boyes do like he used to do crazy performance art Vic Reeves had this as an example of something that influenced him he just covered himself

in gold paint and honey and spent a week in a gallery whispering things into the ear of a dead hair is this vick reeves or joseph boys joseph boys yeah but when i saw vick reeves talking about that it changed everything i thought about like i love reeves and martimer but when i was looking at it

going oh wow this fella's a fan of some pretty serious uh performance art it then caused me to go back to everything vick Reeves and Mortimer had done and now recontextualize it through an art point of view. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really fascinating that, isn't it? Because I think, I might be wrong,

but I think that Vic is very much all about that. You know, he's a brilliant painter as well. Yeah, he's an excellent painter. He loves art and everything. I don't think bob mortimer ever had that kind of background or really those kinds of interests i think when you hear him on athletico mints yeah talking about football and talking about the tv that he's into he's not fussed about any of that and i think he'd probably glaze over if you started talking about art like that's not

to say that he's not interested and respectful of what Vic is into and what he does but he's coming from a different place he's much more just stupid voices and genuinely daft behavior you know and it begs the question then like like what we were speaking about at the start like I have brain worms I have academic brain worms so I can't not look at something and pick it apart and I try and make sure that when I'm doing it, I'm not removing the fun. But the other thing too is like, one of the critiques I have of academic stuff is, academia will look at what Reeves and Mortimer are doing

and start referencing Joseph Beuys and doing all these things to somehow give it more intellectual value. And it's like, why does that mean it has intellectual value? Why isn't bob martimer's approach where he's simply going on feeling and creating stuff that's silly and funny for the sake of it why does that not have value but when you start talking about joseph boys and references and shit like that why does that have value yeah because it's sort of rooted in some intellectual construct that people can get behind and pontificate about. But, you know, the I mean, not that you would want to deconstruct a lot of the best comedy. Sometimes, you know, it's it's fun to do. But sometimes you just sort of think, there's no need yeah and i'm not laughing anymore that's right but you know some of bob mortimer's riffs on athletico mints just the names and the weird things that

happen and the words he uses every now and again i mean that is very top quality stuff yeah you know yeah and that that's kind of world-class writing and art in my mind. But I wouldn't talk about it like that normally because I'd but i remember going to see austin powers in 1997 and i was struck by the fact that they had a scene in there and so this was a couple of years after we'd started doing the star wars toy movies and we had abandoned that idea of doing little domestic dramas with the toys but i remember one of the ideas i had was like you know you do a drama with the stormtrooper family and what their home life would have been like and you know you you make one of these faceless drone characters from the movie you show what their real life is like and they have a wife and they have children and they care about things and all that sort of

try to make them three-dimensional and i thought that was a funny idea even though we never did it but then they did exactly that on austin powers they had one of the henchmen from dr evil goes home and he's with his family and then i think he gets killed yes he gets killed and all of a sudden you have to care about this this storm trooper that was just a prop previously exactly so basically So basically what I'm saying is, I think I'm saying Mike Myers ripped me off and I'm a genius. I think that's what I'm saying. Yes. Yes, please.

Yep. Yes. I think I heard about you guys from... Maybe Aisling B told us about the rubber bandits back in the day. I can't remember. Yeah, we used to hang about with Aisling back in the day. She's cool. Yeah. One of the first things I saw was Spastic Hawk. And that is really great. And I was playing that to my son this morning. I was saying I was going to talk to you and he hadn't heard of you. And I was like, oh, yeah, they do sort of funny music, but it's actually good music as well. It's interesting music. And I played him Spastic Hawk and he was like, oh, yeah, that's great. And is that you singing? Yeah, yeah. I was trying to sound like, because I'm a fucking music nerd as well,

so Spastic Hawk was, lyrically I was looking at a guy called Bill Callaghan, Smog. Oh, I was listening to him the other night. He's so great, isn't he? He's incredible. He's fucking incredible. So Spastic Hawk was, I'll tell you what it was.

We'd just done Horse Outside, and that was a song that I began hating, and what I didn't like about it is that it had given me this new audience and I'm like I don't know how to write for you people and it was kind of hurting me creatively because I'm like I how do I write for you I don't I can't relate to your world or what you do so what I did to get out of the pain of that was I went back to what I love and what i loved was like bill callahan and smog and his band smog and i'm like this is the art that makes me want to create

and spastic hawk came from that in specific a song of his called teenage spaceship and then musically what i was trying to do was uh a fantastic band called my bloody valentine and how they layer their guitars and shit like that. So just doing that and going back to saying to myself I don't care if I'm making something that these people like. All I can do as an artist is make something

that I would like if I wasn't me. And when I do that I tend to have I tend to end up with something where I'm like this is good. I like this. And I do really like Spastic Hawk. It's one of my favorite songs that i've done i think and the video is great too but that is so funny that you mentioned those influences because i would never have guessed and and that is not to put it down yeah but it is to highlight something which is so important i think when you're talking creativity, which is that often the process is shooting for something and failing and in the process creating something unique.

Yes. I'm going to play a clip of Bill Callahan so people understand the vocal mannerisms that you're going for. Play a teenage spaceship. Okay. Smog teenage spaceship. That's the one where i specifically was influenced by flying around the houses at night there you go bill callahan and then this is you doing Bill Callaghan on Spastic Hawk. And in my hawkery, I have a special hawk. He's a spastic hawk.

Spastic hawk. Spastic hawk. Spastic hawk. But it's the spastic hawk, hawk, because he has that lovely way of pronouncing words. And Bill Callaghan too is an excellent example of, like we were speaking earlier about Randy Newman and how Randy Newman incorporated comedy.

Bill Callaghan is someone who incorporates a huge amount of comedy into his very, very serious music. And he does it so expertly and dark that some people don't even know if he's been funny or not but he really is you know the way he pronounces words his imagery's fantastic artist yeah he's great that is very enjoyable give us a few of your favorite albums then um blood in the tracks by bob dylan just because of the sheer honesty of the lyrics. Yeah. I love Blood on the Tracks. I love all of Dylan.

I hate saying what's my favorite, like Ziggy Stardust. You can't go wrong with fucking Ziggy Stardust, can you? It's pretty solid. Like, as a start to finish

perfect album, then I love Discovery by Daft Punk, which I think is the last great start to finish album before albums stop becoming a thing.

Mm-hmm. I mean, I kind of, I kind of just like, because I'm a producer which I think is the last great start to finish album before albums stop becoming a thing. I mean, I kind of just like, because I'm a producer of music as well, what happens is when you start to understand how music is made and you can take it apart into its constituent bits, I don't hear genre anymore. So I just like, I like everything that's good. I love music so fucking much.

I listen to music all day long. I disco fucking rave music, the prodigy, whatever's coming out in the charts. Now, one thing I make a promise to myself that I'm never going to allow myself to hear something that comes out like this month and then say to myself, that shit. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, I know what you mean. out like this month and then say to myself that shit do you get what i'm saying yeah i know you know i i want and surely now like with your kids age are they playing your shit now when you're finding yourself challenging yourself going i can't be a dad i can't be a dad here i have to listen to what they're liking and believe that they like it and search for what's good about it no i'm being very careful because my dad was so withering about the music I liked.

I tell a story in my book about him in the car and we were listening to the Top 40 and New Life by Depeche Mode came on their debut single, I think. And I just thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard. I couldn't believe how good it was. And then my dad suddenly starts, he was driving and he starts shaking his head and going, I'll pay the attention of 18, no life, no life. He just couldn't stop himself. He was like, this is fucking shit. And I'm going to take the piss out of it like I'm a six year old in a playground. playground and i but it was useful for me because seeing him be so childish about it gave me an insight to where it was threatening him it was threatening something very fundamental and

childish in him he was just like no no no no this is no this is not what i like this is different to the things i grew up with i don't like change change. I don't like getting older. And I know. Because it is when you get that reaction, when you hear something new and it does spark an anger. The anger is the loss of youth. That is the feeling. That's right. And I'm not I'm not claiming that I've never had that feeling. I have certainly felt threatened by things at various points.

Well, some stuff is shit. You know, you got to remember that, too. I mean, it's easy for us to say, oh in the 80s was great music in the 90s was great that's because the cream rises to the top yeah like one thing that i do for fun i'll go on to like uh pitchfork or or any music site and i'll see what were their top 10 albums in 2004 and then you go holy shit only two of these have survived and the other six are actually not good but it got five stars what the fuck is that you know and that really it causes me to reappraise what aesthetics are you know it's another thing i do too with um you know when

you're making if you're making your own work and if you get a negative review about your own piece of work and you have to be so careful that you don't allow

that negative review to come in because it can be toxic to your own process so what I do and I find it really effective I find an album

that I fucking love or a film or a book that I adore and then I read bad reviews of it and when when you can do that yeah do you know what I mean or a film or a book that I adore and then I read bad reviews of it. And when you can do that.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Reading someone talking shit about Bowie and I'm able to go, you're a fucking idiot and you don't understand this. Yeah. You know, and wouldn't it be lovely to be able to do that with my own work

as opposed to reading a critique of my own work where they're calling it shit and taking it personally. That's right. You's it's it's a good little exercise i find to to ground myself in in what critique and opinions are and why it doesn't really matter absolutely that is very good advice i have an admission though which shows me in a far worse light and that is that sometimes if everyone is telling me how amazing something is i'm just not having it oh yeah and so sometimes like a film that is sort of 10 stars across the board and everyone's like oh my god it's incredible and it's winning all the awards and you've got to see

it and i'm like i'm sorry i don't get it and so i've in the past i've googled bad reviews for x film because i just want to connect with someone that agrees with me and why is that is that just kind of i just want to find out if i'm like am i thick you know am i just not getting this because i'm not sufficiently sensitive or intelligent or am i right that actually everyone's just going along with this and saying how amazing it is because it's this unstoppable force of momentum that has accumulated? You're speaking about Game of Thrones. Am I right? If I'm going out, then I wear a mask. With my friends and family, I wear a mask.

Having sexual intercourse, I wear a mask. And when I'm on my own, I also wear a mask. Having sexual intercourse I wear a mask. And when I'm on my own I also wear a mask. I have to wear a mask because I am toxic. Terrible things are spilling out of me. I also wear a mask because you are toxic. A tiny bit of you could be deadly. Mask, mask, put on your mask. If you care about the human race.

Mask, mask, always wear a mask. Cover up your frightening deadly face. The thing with my mask is I love being an artist. I love writing books. I love putting music out there. But my personality doesn't suit being recognized and being noticed. I don't want fame as such. You know what I mean? So what I like is like I've got a lot of podcast listeners and

followers online and shit and people who listen to me all the time i i don't want to go to like b&q or aldi and then have someone looking for a selfie it's just i don't understand why celebrity has to be a thing that's attached with also being an artist you know what i mean so it's just a way for me to have a lovely quiet life and again people can argue but you can if you search you could find your real name online because i pay taxes and shit so i'm not actually anonymous but the thing is and again to over intellectualize it to take it to a situation that's called guide the board there's a thing called the spectacle right and when it comes to

fame the spectacle so the spectacle of blind boy which is me with my mask on that's all the people give a shit about it's like when you see I love the Simpsons but if you see a panel discussion where it's all the Simpsons actors and they're speak in like Lisa Simpson or Dumo's accent, you get this weird feeling.

It's like, I know this voice and this voice makes me smile, but who is that person? Their face is not part of the spectacle. The spectacle is merely their voices. So for me, what I do i i control the spectacle of blind by as a way to handle my anonymity so i make the spectacle i've got a fucking plastic bag on my head but i've met people without the plastic bag my same fucking accent and people don't people don't react as if you're blind by because they're not familiar with the spectacle in my face do you get me so it's just a way for me to have privacy i mean people can google you

if they if they aren't familiar with how you look but it looks as if you're wearing a wrestling mask so the bag the plastic shopping bag fits quite snugly around your head and also you tend to choose white bags with some kind of red motif and i've seen some videos like the spastic hawk video for example you're wearing a bag that almost looks as if your face has been flayed yeah because it's like raw skin the red design on the white plastic looks like flayed skin it's quite unsettling how do you actually create and how do you choose the bags how i created is i have a plaster cast of my head and i get a regular fucking single-use plastic bag and i put this on the plaster cast and then i get a heat gun

and i shrink it exactly to my head so then it becomes a mask it stops being a bag and it becomes a mask and as well too sometimes i get a little bit of critique because it's not environmentally friendly to use single-use plastic but what i remind people is is that i'm actually single-use plastic it never decomposes so the the only ethical thing you can do is to repurpose it so i take single-use plastic and i repurpose it into a mask so it is actually environmentally friendly but i used to wear like tesco bags and larger brands because it was familiar i wanted people to see that like i'm wearing refuse but as we got bigger then like tesco and shit was getting free advertising off us being on TV.

And I was like, fuck that. So I started wearing small local businesses. So currently what I wear is just a small shop called JC's in Dublin in a place called Swords. They're now closed down. But I took, they had 10,000 plastic bags and I took those out of circulation and now they're in my attic. And that's how long my career is. It 10 000 of those bags you know and what i think when i get to the end of my career i want to like build a giant like as an art piece like a giant kitchen sink and then put all of the bags i've ever used in a giant plastic bag underneath that giant kitchen sink as like this kind of data piece you

know what i mean it's great it's so interesting because as you say you know not only does it serve a practical purpose it provides you with some level of anonymity and a barrier between you and the madness of what it is to be famous yeah but also how do you find that shit how do you find that getting recognized when you're in b and q or people coming up to you i mean is is it respectful or especially back in the day when you were on fucking tv all the time like and people were really recognizing you i don't think i was ever on tv all the time no um it doesn't happen very often i'm glad to say i mean the thing is that i'm i'm i'm in the sweet spot i'm sort of

piddling along in the margins enjoying myself i've got no real interest in going to some other level because um there's you know i can do everything i want to do right now so um why would i want to get bigger for no real reason you You know, I'm financially secure. There's no, it doesn't mean anything to me. So I don't get bothered. And the only people that come and say hello to me know what I do and they like me. So it's great. Okay, so there's respect.

Yeah, and I don't have people shouting across the road at me or anything like that. I think that would be a nightmare. Like, because around 2010, when we had that song Horse Outside that got quite big, we had that horrible level of fame, just for a short amount of time, for like six months. But we had that front page of every newspaper in Ireland level. And I'm just so fucking glad that I had the ability to take it on and take it off do you know what I mean because I think my life would have been really really unpleasant we'd gotten to the point we were doing gigs and when people try and touch you so they lose sense

of rationality and now they're just grabbing you and trying to grab bits of your clothes and that was always it only lasted for a short while but i remember thinking this is manic this isn't normal and thank fuck this bag comes off and i get to go outside and no one knows who i am because that would be deeply unpleasant if that was my because i had a history of agoraphobia and social anxiety so i don't want humans i don't know trying to grab my hair you know what i mean Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah I was listening to the Rubber Bandits album Serious About Men from 2011. Yeah. Is that your only album?

Yeah, we just did one album. I mean, why did we only do one album it's just kind of the nature of content changed and we just we did one album and then started releasing just videos and songs as one unit like dad's best friend and stuff like that and then i'm in my 30s now so i don't really i just started wanting to write books started wanting to write books and get into more things like that so i'm writing a book at the moment and i'm also writing a play but the thing that i do three nights a week which i really really enjoy so i go on twitch and i play video games right but i write a live musical in the moment, live to the events of the video game.

I saw you singing about the moon making you want to shit your pants. Yeah. So what I love about that is it's like hyper real songwriting. It's something that was born out of quarantine. It's like in real life, you go out into the world

to be inspired by the images of the world to write. But during quarantine, I couldn't. So now I'm walking around the digital world of Red Dead Redemption 2 and writing songs using my equipment in the moment and I fucking love it because you have to fail it's like I'm searching for failure there's like a thousand people watching me do it live and the pressure of it you know what I mean so I do that three nights a week and i absolutely love it and that's more enjoyable to me now than writing a song putting a lot of effort into it and releasing it i'm now doing live songs and songwriting in the moment and as well collectivistically using suggestions from the comments to incorporate that into the songwriting process.

It's just, it's really exciting. It just gives me a mad buzz. So that's what I'm doing at the moment. Choppy Nagel, talk to me about that. That's a sort of, it's a prank phone call on the Serious About Men album. That could be like 15 years old. Did you guys start out doing prank phone calls,

you and Mr. Chrome? Yeah, we literally, like the first thing i ever did i'm talking like fucking 15 16 in school was prank phone calls and the thing was i didn't know that that was creativity i thought that it was just being really mischievous and getting in trouble i now realize that it was like it was comedy writing but i didn't know what that was it's like the basics of comedy is you but I didn't know what that was. It's like the basics of comedy is you have a ridiculous character and you have a straight character, but playing the straight character is quite difficult. So without knowing it, it was like writing these comedy sketches, having these characters made up, knowing what they were

going to say, but then present them to the public. So the public becomes the straight character. And I didn't know I was doing it. It it was instinctive so that's what the prank phone calls were and it was before the internet really had you heard the jerky boys at that stage no no i hadn't heard anything i hadn't even heard prank phone calls because there was no there was no fucking internet uh-huh so we did them and we made a CD for like two people in our class in school. And then that went viral before the internet. CD burners became a thing

and drug dealers actually in Limerick where I'm from, they used to burn the CDs and give them out with hash. And all of a sudden it became viral but before the internet was a thing.

And that was the, that's what started the rubber bandits. It was prank phone calls. And that choppy, Mr. Chrome does that one. Yeah, there's a guy who has placed an ad saying he wants a ride on lawnmower. So you call him up saying that you can provide him with a ride on a lawnmower. Yeah. And it's just, it's very simple, ridiculous sketch comedy. But I don't think we knew.

Like, that's like a Monty Python sketch. You know, a really simple, basic misunderstanding. But the member of the public is now the unwitting. Wait a minute. Did you guys do prank phone calls at the end of your show? No. I mean, we did one or two. At the time when I would have been recording those first ever prank calls, I would have been very deeply watching your show on TV.

That would have been one of the few little releases where I had like, this is some weird shit. Like Adam and Joe were a huge influence on us the reason why was because what you were doing was so homemade looking because it was so homemade looking and you didn't look like stars you just looked like two lads who were friends in their bedroom it when we watched it it made things seem possible do you know like i loved reeves andimer, but they had a studio and it was too big and there was money there. But with you lads, it literally looked like, how the fuck did these cunts get on TV? They just made it themselves and now it's on TV. And that opened up a door of possibility for us to go, it doesn't look that difficult. I don't mean that in a disparaging way yeah man yeah it was like we can they're just two friends and so are us and the stuff that they're laughing at is the stuff that they probably laugh at themselves when there's no cameras around we can do this so that would have been a huge inspiration for us to the diy element you know yeah it was a really big influence back in the day oh wow that's great that's so nice to hear I mean, that's what it was all about for us. For exactly those reasons, really.

Hello? Hello. It says here in the buy and the sell you're looking for a ride on a lawnmower. Yeah. Yeah, do you want a ride on a lawnmower? Oh, free? No, I'll have to charge you. Two pound a yard. Huh?

Two pound a yard. What do you mean a yard What? 2 pound a yard What do you mean a yard? Well if we go for a ride on Larmor For every yard we go You give me 2 pound I'll have a little tin sellotape to the front of Larmor You can drop in the 2 pounds I'll count yard

You drop it in yard You drop it in yard You drop it in yard You drop it in yard You drop it in yard You drop it in. Yad, you drop it in. Yad, you drop it in. Yad, you drop it in. Yad, you drop it in. Do you understand? Right.

So are you interested? No, not really. Because we can do it in my house or your house. Have you a length of garden that we could do it on? Why? Because I actually cut the grass at the same time. It's a bit of a bonus. I throw it in for nothing. And I'll tell you what, to keep you happy, I'll throw in a few gap rocks on tape.

What do you think of that? I'm looking for a tractor on my lawn, f**k it. It's like... I'm looking for the lawn. What? I'm looking for the tractor itself, not someone to cut the lawn. No, you said you wanted a ride on a lawnmower. Right.

No, I meant a ride on a lawnmower. Yeah, a ride on a lawnmower. I'll give you a ride on a lawnmower. You can go up on my back. And I'll give you a straw hat. Keep the sun off your nose. you do a podcast the blind boy podcast describe it for people who've never heard it it's kind of an ambient thing because you're generally monologuing most of the time aren't you and you have a bit of groovy music on behind you so it's really a mood and you have a very nice relaxing voice so it's a

monologue it started as i didn't intend it to be long-running i'm like i'm nearly almost three years at it now i released a book of short stories. And when I released this, I had kind of a branding issue where it was like, people were like, but this is the guy who does songs with a plastic bag in his head. How can I read his book? What is his book? So I started the podcast as a way for me to read my short stories to people so that they would buy my book.

But then people were like, I really like this. And I like the bit where you talk outside of the short stories to people so that they would buy my book but then people were like I really like this and I like the bit where you talk outside of the short story so I kept going so what I do really is the ambient thing I think it goes back to jam by Chris Morris so Chris Morris's jam where he used to do these lovely relaxing monologues that are absurd and surreal so what i do is i speak about art quite a lot i speak about psychology i speak about mental health i speak about cultural theory like i can't describe my podcast you know even when people recommend my podcast they usually say i can't describe it to you just need to listen to it it's like being in your mind yeah uh and sometimes as you said you do talk about what goes on in your mind for better or worse you talk about your mental health you referred to the fact that you suffered from anxiety and depression and panic

attacks when you were in your late teens but thanks to a cbt regimen you managed to keep those things under control cbt keeps popping up when i talk to people about therapy on this podcast yeah and explain it quickly and and also and i know you've done this before on other podcasts but i'm fascinated by it and i hope you don't mind sort of explaining how you apply cbt to your everyday routine in order to keep you on track as it were so cbt is it's cognitive behavioral therapy so the way i speak about mental health in my podcast yes i did train i trained to be a psychotherapist but i never finished that qualification so i'm i'm ethical in that i say to people i do have an academic grounding in this but i'm not qualified so what i do is i speak about

my own experiences only therefore i'm not giving unsolicited advice i speak about me how i use psychology and self-talk to help me and if that benefits other people then then great cbt cognitive behavior therapy it's a school of psychology that it posits that discomfort that we feel whether it be anxiety or depression ways that we feel are actually caused by how we think so your thoughts influence your emotions which then influence your behaviors so if for depression for instance they say that people with depression tend to have a negative view of themselves a negative view of themselves, a negative view of other people, and a negative view of the future. That's the cognitive triad of depression. So CBT would help to treat depression by what you do is you start to view your thoughts as if you're a scientist.

When I had low self-esteem, when I had anxiety, I would have felt I have no worth, I'm a piece of shit, people don't like me. And CBT would have said, let's take those sentences, the voice in your head that you use all day to speak negatively about yourself, or the voice in your head that says, I won't go to this party because when I go to this party, people won't like me, people will reject me, people will think I'm a fool. To take these thoughts that are in our head that we accept as truth, to kind of just write them on a page and then beside it you go, where is the evidence for this?

Where is the evidence that I'm a bad person? That's the most basic description, but it's about treating your life and your thoughts as a scientist and understanding that human discomfort isn't necessarily caused by what happens to you. It's caused by your attitude by what happens to you it's caused by your attitude towards what happens to you and if you can address your attitude towards what's happening you can avoid a lot of discomfort it's pretty simple stuff but i have three podcasts about cbt and the reason i do it really is that the mental health system in Ireland is pretty bad where I

live in Limerick has got the highest suicide rates in the country and I just kind of felt a sense of duty really to go if I have these wonderful jewels of psychology that I've used to help me in my life and that have caused personal transformation why can't I then use these for free and put them out there for people? And if that helps them in any way, then fantastic. And it turned out that it actually has helped quite a lot of people. Yeah. One of your recent podcasts,

you were talking about the feeling of waking up with a kind of sense of dread or yeah worry i call it the not yeah and i only became aware of it a few years ago and i just thought oh i get this every morning now how do you characterize it and what do you do about it what is it it can be any number of things i mean for a lot of people they wake up with this and it can have objective reasons it can be worrying about finances worrying about your fucking rent worrying about relationships some people it can just be simple existential anxiety it can be straight up existential anxiety regret it could be anything the fear of death i mean i'm not asking you like to diagnose the mental knot in my stomach

so so a big thing i do as part of my mental health regime is yeah i try and create as much meaning as possible in my day as i can. And I try and create meaning through narrative. Right. Things like cooking. Preparing a meal. There's a journey and a narrative in that. Like overnight oats for me. The reason that helps me with the morning dread.

Because I sometimes do experience morning dread. I think it's normal. I think it's just. Yeah. Part of being alive. Sometimes we wake up. Well there's a fucking pandemic as well. Yeah there's that

there's a big giant global pandemic and brexit and fucking trump so it's okay to wake up and go oh my god the world is scary we've been fucking climate change so it's okay to feel that way but i don't want to feel unnecessary suffering there's suffering suffering is an inevitable part of being alive like grief is the price that you pay for love you have to have suffering but there's a lot of suffering you can avoid so i'll make overnight oats the night before i go to bed i will prepare oats coconut milk berries all these things i'm starting a narrative i'm setting up a story and then when I wake up in the morning I'm really excited because I know that the oats have been stewing overnight in coconut milk and they're delicious and then I complete the narrative by eating them I mean having kids kids and pets

are a great one for it I get a lot of I've got two I don't have any kids but I've got two fucking stray cats and just knowing that like if they don't get fed they're in distress that introduces a lovely narrative to my day a narrative and a journey and a purpose and i get to worry about them i get to prepare their food i get to watch them being satiated i get to watch them happy afterwards and then i now have a sense of meaning and purpose even if it's something small so i try and do that and i try and avoid behaviors then that are meaningless that have no meaning in them you know and that's just mindfulness that's all it is yeah avoiding behavior that has no meaning that is going to severely limit my daily routine.

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So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue. Yeah, you drop it in. Yeah, you drop it in. Yeah, you drop it in. Continue. Yard! You're dropping in! Yard! You're dropping in! Yard! You're dropping in! Yard! Rosie! Come on, let's head back. Come on, Rose. Oh, she's galloping. She is galloping.

Okay, here we go for a fly past from the hairy bullet beautiful welcome back podcats hope you enjoyed my conversation with blind boy boat club i'm very grateful indeed to blind boy for making the time to talk to me as i said in my, there's all sorts of Blind Boy and Rubber Bandits related links in the description of this podcast, as well as a link to the World of Wonder Presents Plus streaming platform where you will be able to check out episodes of The Adam and Jo Show, every episode, I think, of all four series. Now, back in March, at the beginning of the lockdown, I said that I was going to do my best to include some playlists in the podcast description, Spotify playlists.

I've got a good one for you today. This was put together by my son, my eldest son, Frank. He's been taking a deep dive over the last few months into the world of 60s garage rock. A lot of it with a psychedelic edge to it. The kind of stuff you'd find on those Nuggets compilations that Lenny K put together back in the day. But Frank's playlist, which contains about 60 of his favourite tracks from the genre, is a really good combination of some quite well-known stuff and some really fairly obscure bits and pieces. It's a great playlist. Link in the description of the podcast. Thank you, Frank, for making it. Thanks to those of you who came along

to the live podcast last week that I did for the Unmute Festival with Susie Ruffell. It was very nice to meet Susie, albeit over the internet, and just blither on. It was, if you watched, you will know, pretty unstructured. But I had a good time. Hope you did too, if you tuned in. A reminder that this week on Tuesday, the 27th of October at 6.30pm, you will be able to watch me interviewing Joan and Jerika,

sexy and offensive agony aunts extraordinaire, as played by Julia Davis and Vicky Pepperdine. Pepperdine? Pepperdine, I'm going for. Sorry, Vicky, if I've pronounced your name wrong. And it'll be about an hour of, I would imagine, filthy and ridiculous conversation with Joan and Jerika and myself. That's video, by the way, a filmed event taking place in the London Coliseum, home of the English National Opera. Wow.

And that's Tuesday this week. Link for tickets in the description of the podcast. Right, well, that's pretty much it for this week. Thanks a lot, once again, to Blind Boy. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for production support. Thanks to Emma Corsham for additional editing. Thanks to Helen Green, who does the artwork for the podcast. Thanks to everyone at Acast for their continued hard work supporting the podcast. Oh, I was going to tell you about Biloxi Blues. Well, there's not much to tell.

In the end, I just watched it with my wife and Frank and Rosie. And the other two chickened out. Actually, it was just as well they did, because it's not entirely appropriate for all ages.

I forgot there was a scene in which Matthew Broderick's character has sexual fun for the first time with a professional sex worker, and, I mean, it's kind of a sweet scene in fact it's not too filthy but it would have been maybe inappropriate for my 12 year old daughter I really enjoyed the film seeing it again and my son did too I thought it was terrific I forgot that it was Mike Nichols who directed it you know I mean it's fairly well it's an adaptation of a play, isn't it? So it does feel like that a little bit. But it's good. And good-hearted.

And Christopher Walken's great. Matthew Broderick's great. Anyway. Loxley Blues News. Oh, man, I also saw Tenet this week. Whoa, doggie! Loxley Blues news oh man I also saw Tenet this week whoa doggy anyway I'm sure I'm going to talk to Cornballs about that when we do our Christmas podcast

although I can imagine him now sighing and rolling his eyes because I would imagine everything that I have to say about that film will have been said 10 million times by that point on social media but that's not going to stop me something to look forward to Christmas just around the corner come on podcats we can do it I'm not going to say we got this but we do don't we

I'm just feeling positive because it's a lovely day. Come on. Let's have a hug. Rosie, do you want to join in the hug? Rose, come and join in the hug. She's looking back. She's thinking about it.

And she's thinking, no thanks. And she's gone away. Let's just you and me have a hug then. Come on. Yeah, hug me, mate. And she's thinking, no thanks. And she's gone away. Let's just you and me have a hug then. Come on. Yeah, hug me, mate. Oh, you smell gorgeous. Have you started bathing again?

Good job. Till next time, you join me for another rambly conversation. Take care. Do all the stuff. And remember, I love you. Bye! Bye. ស្រូវានប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប� Thank you.