THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.176 - PHIL WANG & MUSIC FROM SPOON

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

Adam talks with British-Malaysian stand up comedian Phil Wang and there's two specially recorded tracks (Wild and Satellite) from Texan band Spoon.Phil conversation recorded in London on March 17th, 2022Spoon recorded at Third Man records, London on March 23rd, 2021Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for his work on this episode.Thanks to Ben Tulloh for editing on the Phil Wang conversation.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenNEW SIGNED RAMBLE BOOK POSTERS! - 2022 (AT BSI MERCH)WANGLINKSPHIL WANG - SIDESPLITTER (AUDIOBOOK) - 2021 (AUDIBLE)PHIL WANG - LIVE AT THE APOLLO - 2016 (YOUTUBE)PHIL WANG - WANGSPLAINING - 2019 (BBC RADIO 4)PHIL WANG TALKS ABOUT TOM HIDDLESTON ON ROOM 101 - 2018 (YOUTUBE)PHIL WANG ON INSTAGRAMKEZIA DAUM PROM DRESS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION STORY - 2018 (BBC NEWS)DUNBAR'S NUMBER DECONSTRUCTED - 2021 (ROYAL SOCIETY WEBSITE)RECYCLING OLD TECH AT APPLE STORESSPOONLINKSDR BUCKLES' SPOON SELECTION (SPOTIFY PLAYLIST)BRITT AND ALEX - SATELLITE (FILMED BY ADAM AT THIRD MAN RECORDS) - 2022 (YOUTUBE)BRITT AND ALEX - WILD (FILMED BY ADAM AT THIRD MAN RECORDS) - 2022 (YOUTUBE)BRITT DANIEL (SPOON) - ADVANCE CASSETTE (FILMED BY ADAM BACKSTAGE AT BORDERLINE) - 2007 (YOUTUBE)BRITT DANIEL (SPOON) - BLACK LIKE ME (FILMED BY ADAM BACKSTAGE AT BORDERLINE) - 2007 (YOUTUBE)REVIEW OF LUCIFER ON THE SOFA by Michael Hann - 2022 (GUARDIAN)ARE SPOON THE BEST BAND OF THE PAST 10 YEARS? By Dave Simpson - 2010 (GUARDIAN) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast contains we spoke. My name is Adam Buxton. I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this. That's the plan. Rosie, come say hello to the podcast. Dog, come here. Now, folks, I'm just going to stand in the middle of the track I'm going to sniff some of the pebbles And I think I might do a wee on the pebbles here

Okay Now I'm going to trot away Bye Okay, see you later A little bit warm now the thing about the weather we've been having recently is that it's very difficult to know how to dress when you're going out sometimes see the sun shining go out in my shorts and it's really very cold and I regret not wrapping up better today. I've come out in a fleece and puffer jacket and cycle trousers and I'm too hot.

Way too hot. That's a good story though, isn't it? That's what I's i thought yep keep that one for the top of the podcast hey how you doing podcats good to be with you again hope things are okay out where you are i am as ever reporting to you from a farm track in Norfolk, UK. And I'm passing some trees here. And though I can't see them, I can hear that they are chock-full-o skylarks. Absolutely going for it. Full techno. It's like Josh Wink and Skrillex going head to head. So listen, I'm going to tell you a bit about podcast number 176 which not only contains a rambling conversation with British Malaysian stand-up comedian Phil Wang but also features two specially

recorded musical performances from returning guests and a band that continue to be one of my all-time favorites Spoon from Texas America but they're from the sensitive part of Texas anyway that's coming up later on I met up with band members Brit and Alex when they were in London promoting their new album Lucifer on the Sofa back in March of this year, 2022. We had a short chat and they did a couple of great versions of songs from the new record, especially for the podcast. But before that, it's Phil Wang time. Wang facts. Philip Nathaniel Singoy Wang, currently aged 32, was born in Stoke-on-Trent, but grew up in Malaysian Borneo before moving back to the UK with his family when he was 16. He studied engineering at Cambridge University, where he also started performing live comedy at the beginning of the 2010s.

As well as being a solo stand-up, he is one-third of the sketch group Daphne, along with comedians Jason Forbes and George Fouracres. Phil also does a podcast with comedian and all-round good guy, I'm adding that because I know him a little bit, Pierre Novelli. Hello, Pierre, if you're listening. That podcast is called Bud Pod. Phil's 2019 stand-up show, Philly Philly Wang Wang, broke records for ticket sales at the Edinburgh Festival that year, and it included material on feeling caught between two cultures and the challenges of becoming a mature man now that he is in his 30s. The plan was to film it for Netflix in the

spring of 2020, but it wasn't until 2021 that that was eventually possible, by which time a year of COVID-19 had added another dimension to the show, especially when it came to the way Chinese people were routinely demonised in certain quarters post-COVID. Phil explored some of these themes further in his book of essays and childhood recollections, Sidesplitter, published in late 2021. My conversation with Phil was recorded face-to-face at Philly's Place in lively New Cross, south-east London, back in March of this year. As well as talking about Phil's book and many of the themes in it food, race, cultural appropriation, social media, pylons, etc. we also chatted about Phil's fairly recent appearance on Celebrity Mastermind, and there was a recurring motif about forming attachments to inanimate

objects and robots. Incidentally, since my conversation with Phil was recorded, I have discovered that Apple stores have recycling schemes for old computers. So I plan to take a few of those in this week. As you will hear, I'm complaining in the conversation about how difficult it is to recycle old tech. Anyway, look, let's get on. It's a busy podcast. I am packing it in. I could have split this into two episodes. Of course I could. A Phil Wang episode and a Spoon episode. No, I'm packing it all in like a variety show. That's okay. You're welcome.

I'll be back after Wang Chat to give you a short Spoon introduction. But right now with Phil Wang. Here we go. Are you here on your own in this house now? I live here with Ian Smith. Oh. Ian Smith, yeah. A little comedian's pad. Yeah, it's very tidy for a comedian's pad.

Oh, what do you think? I think you've confused a lack of possessions for tidiness. I've just not really got furniture yet. I've only been here a couple of months. Yeah. I'm really bad at shopping. I really find it hard to choose anything i find it hard to commit to stuff yeah especially something long-term like furniture

just takes me ages i can't i give myself more reasons not to buy something and to buy it and i just won't have it i know what you mean and there's always the worry that you're choosing badly i've still got a sofa bed that was my first major furniture purchase when I moved out. I still have it. I can't get rid of it because it was such a big investment emotionally and financially. It was very emotional. Yeah, yeah. You know, really imbue possessions with feelings. When I moved into this house, I was quite sad. And I just felt so alone until I unpacked. This is going to sound so silly.

I unpacked the toaster and the kettle and a couple of the chopping boards and the coffee maker. And I put them on the counter in the kitchen. And I felt like my friends were here. It's that sad. That does sound sad. But it's honestly like, I felt less, I felt, oh yeah, the guys are back. Had you drawn smiley faces on them,

that would have made it more friendly as well. I have little googly eyes. Little eyes. No, I know what you mean. In Japan, they take it to logical extreme. They have funerals for electronics and stuff. Really? Yeah, I don't think it's a mass practice, but like...

What is crazy Japanese? I think they're like robot funerals. So, you know, if you have like a toy robot dog, there are places that were... Oh, okay. Not for the toaster. I guess if it's a very fancy toaster with a voice, they might. But there's definitely a sense there more that the machines can have souls and i i kind of felt that with my my appliances i just felt so much better when they were around yeah i keep buying um so at this point

i'm now in my 50s i've always been kind of techie. And I've never got rid of a computer. So I have every computer I ever bought. And at this point, there's quite a few. I have a similar problem with those. And I don't know what to do. I don't like the idea of putting them in a dump. You know, every few years, I'll have this crisis. And I'll always Google, where can I recycle secondhand computer stuff?

And it's very hard to do because it becomes obsolete so quickly. So you can't just pass it on to a school because they want the latest gear. I sort of have this fantasy where I can give them to a sort of workshop like in a town in Star Wars. Like a flying sort of bug mechanic will take it break it apart and use it to make a spaceship. For parts, yeah. For parts, that's what I want to do, but it doesn't seem to be as easy. Oh, look, I bought

you a gift from a store outside King's Cross station. Oh yeah, they have like a little market thing. Yeah, yeah, with lots of tasty treats. Okay. And it's quite big. Okay, it looks okay, so it's got like a digestive base, and it's chocolate, fudgy,

and so it looks like a dried crumble on the top. Yeah, oat caramel. I'm assuming you don't have any intolerances, because that is going to challenge all of them. Mainly sugar and cereals. Yeah. How is it? It's really nice.

Yeah, good. That's really nice. It's incredibly dense. It's like a dying caramel star. That's imploded. It struck me as the kind of thing that you could probably make last for a week or two. Oh, yeah. This kind of thing, like the hobbits would take,

wrapped up in an elvish leaf on their journey to Mount Doom, because it just would last them the whole trip. But for me, it's the kind of thing that I would buy and then eat on my own in a hotel after doing a show. I'm particularly transitioning hard into your book. Oh. It was so good, man. I really loved it. Did you book oh it was so good man I really loved it did you really like it?

yeah I really did and I'm being genuine and I'm looking you in the eye and I'm not even blinking while I'm paying you this compliment maybe you're doing that trick where you're looking at my nose no

I'm looking you right in the iris telling you how much I liked it I really loved it I got the audio book you're not looking at my eyes too much. You're really looking at my eyes. I'll look at your chin for a while. I enjoyed it so much. It was like a companion and I was sad when it finished and I thought, oh wow, a few more chapters would have been fine. Oh really? Yeah. The audio book came in at a lean seven and a half

hours or something like that. Yeah. I could have handled twice that. Oh, really? Yeah. Really good essays. You're good at the essay writing. Oh, thanks, man. But keeping them funny as well, that's something that is a real skill. And you wrote brilliantly about race and the term people of color versus your preferred non-white

to describe groups of people. And that is, I mean, I would suggest that people just bought the book and read what you had to say about that, but I thought it was really well articulated. Oh, good. Thanks, man. Yeah. I think it's better to just give someone as neutral and accurate a term as possible.

So if you're white just say non-white well you started that chapter by talking about diane abbott oh yeah yeah diane abbott being described by amber amber rod amber rod and she slipped up and didn't use the correct terminology i think she said uh colored person instead of person of color yeah but you correctly point out that they're so sort of semantically similar i mean they're literally identical yeah you just swastika them around and so i just say that we've got to a point now with language where these sort of basically kind of meaningless alterations can make the difference between a bigot and a righteous person and i think it goes to show how

especially a lot of people on the progressive left have just become a bit too obsessed with the language of things and so i make a case more for uh non-white of a person of color because it's also vague person of color what actually like how much color do you need before you count so i just make a case for non-white but i I think I'm probably more articulate about it on the page. Similarly, you articulated what I've always felt about cultural appropriation. Oh, yeah. And the slight cul-de-sac that there is inherent in that. Well, it's not a slight.

I think it's a massive cul-de-sac in so many areas. For me, particularly music. Of course. I think it's a massive cul-de-sac in so many areas, for me particularly music, where the mixing of cultures is just fundamental to music. Yeah, well, in culture, I say, you know, culture is appropriation. It's how we've got to this place now.

And I use the example of a gal in America, a white teenage gal called Keziah Daum in America, and for her prom she wore this cheongsam, which is a traditional Chinese dress. And it was lovely. But then she posted these pictures on Twitter and suddenly it just went viral. It was like a Chinese-American guy tweeting, my culture is not your prom dress.

That was a famous thing. Interestingly then, people started looking at his tweets. A couple of years ago, he was tweeting really racist stuff. And then he had to delete his account. Anyway, so he got, she got in quote unquote trouble for this thing, but she didn't back off. She said, no, I'm not apologizing.

She was like 18. She said, no, I'm not apologizing. I like the stress. Miss you being ridiculous. But she, was she, did it turn out that she was coming from a very conservative place? Oh, I don't know about that.

I don't think it did. I don't think so. She just liked the strong sound. But then a lot of Chinese people came to her defense saying, yeah, it's lovely. Why aren't you wearing it? And then some people pointed out that even within China, it's originally from, I think, the Manchu minority in northern China.

And then it came down into China and became a Chinese dress. So even within China, it's appropriation, technically. And so, yeah, I use this as a sort of jumping off point. I talk about Jamie Oliver and his sort of perennial battles with cultural appropriation and I try and draw a line, just try and come up

with a simple rule of thinking. Is what I'm about to do with this piece of culture rude or not? Yeah. And just don't be rude. If it's rude, don't do it. If you're doing it well, go for it. There's literally no reason not to. But yeah, it's quite difficult, it turns out, writing a centrist funny book.

Because centrism isn't very funny. It's trying to be like, trying to have everyone be sensible. Be reasonable. Be reasonable is not funny. Guys, can we just... I disagree. I think you crack that nut but the book is

divided into nine chapters where you deal with family words or language ten chapters yeah maybe that's why

you thought I was too short maybe you missed the other chapter I missed the whole chapter family words food race comedy

love history assimilation home what have I missed nature nature yeah okay you've got a good food

chapter in there oh yeah it really made me want to have malaysian food have you had it before no i don't think i have what's your classic malaysian dish the one that's sort of making headway now in sort of the uk is uh laks, which is like a spicy noodle soup. It's like noodles in a sort of curry-ish kind of broth. Uh-huh. And with bits of seafood usually in it. That is a classic one. It also sort of encapsulates a Malaysian food

because it's like a combination of Chinese noodles and then Indians of curries and some Malay sort of pungent sambal, which is fermented shrimp and chili. None of which sounds nice, can I say. Not on its own. Especially the fermented shrimp. Well, this is it.

Yeah, there's a problem with East Asian food in that it's really hard to translate in an appetizing fashion. Well, you do make the point that the British palate tends toward the bland. And I would say that is certainly true of me. But then there's things like black pudding and jelly deal. Well, sure, you can see that slightly strange sounding foods aren't completely alien.

But one of my favourite Chinese dishes is called Watan Ho, which is ho fun noodles, flat rice noodles fried and then poured over with a gloopy sauce that only translates into english as egg gravy oh now you're talking you said fried and uh gloopy sauce and then i'm in the egg gravy doesn't sound nice but it's absolutely delicious i like anything egg with an egg in. Eggs are amazing. Yeah.

They're like a miracle. That's one of the big problems about veganism for me is no eggs. Yeah, it kind of feels like you're wasting a real opportunity. I don't feel like God could have made it any more clear that he wants you to eat this thing. I mean, what else can be fried for breakfast and put in a cake? You know, there's hardly anything it can't do. But then the chickens wouldn't agree, so we're told. You must have had those conversations with vegans.

Oh, with chickens. And chickens. Yeah, I understand, I understand. But you put in a cake and you've got to fry it. I think you're being unreasonable about this. Or it would be, if it was on Twitter, it would be... Yeah, they wouldn't be able to get such a good sound out of their feathers, though. That's the problem with chicken Twitter, is that the clapbacks are a lot quieter.

Chicken Twitter is that the clapbacks are a lot quieter. But anyway, you know, it's like, it's the sort of suffering index. If a chicken is doing an egg that may well yield a chicken child, then it probably doesn't want you to nick it. But from my perspective, there isn't something that I push out of my body every day that I'm that attached to you know i mean i mean like i speak for yourself isn't the whole thing that they're not fertilized anyway so like it's not like they're letting go of a kid is it i don't know talking to the wrong guy yeah okay all i know is they're delicious delicious and they're so full of i think we're on the part of the cycle where eggs are good for you.

Yeah, when I was growing up in the 80s, eggs were absolutely not okay. Mm-hmm. It was like, these are loaded with cholesterol. You are going to die so quickly if you have eggs. They're going to clog your arteries. One egg, one egg a month as a special treat, maybe. I mean, it was more than than that but it was definitely not the whole go to work on an egg thing like riding one there was a campaign from the egg marketing

board for which the tagline was go to work on an egg right i have an egg then go to work or get out a spoon and start working on that yummy boiled egg well like on the bus eating an egg, then go to work, or get out a spoon and start working on that yummy boiled egg. Well, like on the bus, eating an egg. You could, I suppose. You could interpret it whichever way. And famously, it was a writer who coined it, and every time I mention this boring story, I can never remember which writer it was.

I want to say Salman Rushdie, but it was someone similarly lofty in the literary world. I've got to Google it now. Hang on. Who wrote the ad phrase go to work on an egg? Don Draper. Faye Weldon. Faye Weldon.

Is that an author? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She wrote Life's and Loves of a She-Devil. And Go to Work on an Egg. And Go to Work on an Egg. One of several famous novelists who started out in the field of advertising. Oh yeah, there you go. You've done an advert, right?

Yes. Yeah, I feel like I've done one or two little bits. But you haven't been like the face of? No, no I haven't. I did an ad for Twitter on Valentineine's day once which is really fun last year sort of in one of the quasi lockdowns i got asked to do this sort of promotion travel blog youtube show for rome total war and i got this and i was asked to go on a trip of rome and britain and do a sort of documentary talking about the game, but also just exploring

Roman Britain. And it's so great. It's really good. Have you done something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me and Joe back in the day, Joe Cornish this is, did a few. We did, I mean, we did one for Virgin Mobile. Oh, yeah. And which was quite a good payday. Of course. I would expect so. And we got a box of mobiles. Was that your payment?

Yeah. Well, no, in addition to... Great. So in addition to the cash, you had enough phones to start a sort of The Wire style... Yeah. I was just handing out burners to all my family. It was cool, though, because this was pre-smartphones and it was those

little flip phones and it was when the prestige of a phone was measured by its smallness yeah it's not funny i really felt like look at me i'm i'm the king all that shit you used to go on about when i was watching tv and not doing my work about how I'd never amount to anything, turns out you were wrong because now I've got a box of phones. So fuck you. And then we did an advert for surf washing powder. And they flew us out to New Zealand. I know from your mastermind appearance that you're fond of New Zealand as well. When did you go out there first?

I think it was 2018 for the New Zealand Comedy Festival. Right. Yeah, it was really cool. We got to perform in Auckland and Wellington. And I told this, and then so I did Celebrity Mastermind, and my subject was the wines of New Zealand. Because I kind of got into wine a couple of years ago,

and New Zealand was like, oh yeah, it's quite contained, some wine region. I reckon I could sort of bone up on that. And I told the story to Clive Myrie, who was the new host. And I told the story of when I went to Auckland the first time, and I was really struck by how old the buildings were. They all looked like they were from the 60s,

hand-trained at all. And expecting New Zealanders to have the same sort of national self-deprecation as the British do. I said, well, this place looks like it was built in the 50s. What is this? Old Zealand? And it just got

just like pinned on silence and then just a single boo. You actually got a boo. I got a boo from the famously nice new zealand first gig do you think that they were offended by the quality of the joke or by what you were implying i mean what would you be implying just that some of their buildings are a little tatty yeah it's just a bit run down okay right it can't Boo. Yeah, it kind of in the quality of the joke. I think the quality of the joke speaks for itself.

Clive Myrie looked a bit dismissive. And that was, although that was after Clive Myrie had done a very lengthy horse racing

analogy based intro. Yeah, and I think you can see me sort of laughing because we had to record, he couldn't get through it. So we had to record that like five times yeah so i think the camera cuts i mean i'm just laughing that he's still going i wrote it down because it was making me laugh so much

our four celebrities tonight are i can't do the intonation his special surprise intonation our four celebrities tonight are are all thoroughbreds champing at the bit on the starting line. That's his weird intonation. Yeah, that's right. Yes. But the mastermind course is full of peril and danger. Yes, they've galloped to superstardom in their own fields. But the fences here are just a little bit higher and wider.

When you're not on home turf and you're sort of thinking wow you've packed a lot in there already you could probably stop now but then it goes on the spotlight will be in your eyes the clock will tick down with the pressure of sitting in the black chair the biggest hurdle under the starters orders can i please ask the first celebrity contender to make their way to the black chair it's it's one of those analogies that goes on so long. By the end of it, you've forgotten what the analogy is. You're like, wait, are we still talking about horses? It was good.

You smashed it. Oh, yeah, thanks, man. I really prepared. I was the only one who turned up in the morning pre-show meeting in the hotel lobby with a set of handwritten notes like a book of notes and i'm still studying everyone else had just turned up you know having a cup of tea and i was in the sat down reading through my notes going over things again and one of the contestants on the next episode went up james acaster who's in the next episode, she went up to him and she pointed at me angrily

and said to James, do you know that guy? He just said it's exam day. So maybe I took it a bit too seriously, but I just really wanted to do well. Yeah. Did you do Celebrity Most Minds? I did, yes. And Bowie in the 70s was my special subject and i did study for that and i started but only at the very last minute

because i thought oh i know quite a lot about him i think but then as soon as i started reading i realized oh no i don't know all the dates and the names i think picking a person is really hard because you have to remember lots of dates. And I've never been good at dates. I did okay on Bowie, but there was a couple of things that I got wrong that were very obvious for any, you know, entry-level Bowie stuff, really.

First single to be released from Ziggy Stardust, I said, hang on to yourself. It was Starman. That's pretty basic stuff. And then in the general knowledge round they gave me a sport question i was like damn it i'm out i don't know anything about sport and it was where is henman's mound it was like mate think about it for two seconds and work it out henman how many henmans do you know it's probably tim hen work it out. Henman.

How many Henmans do you know? It's probably Tim Henman. What does Tim Henman do? He plays tennis. I know that much. I could have figured out that Henman's mound was at Wimbledon, but I didn't. And I said, the sport palace? I didn't even do a good joke.

I could have said, where is Henman's mound? I don't know. In his pants? I think the sport palace is funny in very much the same vein that old zealand is funny yeah to me well i i was lucky not to get a boo for sport palace i felt because that was back when who's the other guy um john humphries humphries yeah and he was a more austere presence than uh clive myery who's who seems friendly and nice right he is friendly nice but you also are very much aware that you're in the presence of gravitas you know i mean yeah because he he's like a proper news

and reporter and journalist and then he was strange experience, me sitting in the chair in front of him and him going, Philly, Philly, wang, wang. Yeah. So, wang, wang. So I watched that. And then, like, the day after, on the news, I was watching him reporting live from Ukraine, from a war zone.

I thought, this guy's life is varied. You know what I mean? This guy has range. Well, some people complained about him reporting from Ukraine because they said, this is the guy from Mastermind. What's he doing in Ukraine? I mean, you know, if that is your only experience with Clive Murray, I can understand it seems inappropriate.

But I guess from their perspective, it would be sort of like watching the guy who who was the chase you know suddenly in syria that would be different i mean if bradley walsh was presenting ukraine coverage that would be harder to deal with yeah i guess although he probably make it work he's very good yeah does bradley walsh sing i bet he's like an old school yeah entertainer he can do it all song and dance yeah triple threat but you you you uh you you you like to croon i do like to croon and you croon one line of real britannia or something in in your audio book it's just the one line is like oh he has got a nice voice oh thanks and yeah i i wanted to be a singer before I became a comedian.

Right. In my teens, I became obsessed with specifically the crooners and jazz standards and swing. Is that through your parents then? No, well... How did you get onto that? I think my intro to music was my father who was obsessed with the Beatles. Literally all he listened to was the Beatles, all the Beatles as well, like all those first few albums.

And so that was my intro to music. And because of that, I think I was just programmed to value old music over new music. I'm not that way anymore, but for a long time into my teens, I was like, if they weren't dead, I wasn't listening to them. What's your go-to then when you're doing a bit of crooning? I love this song called, it's actually a Bobby Darin song. I sang it at my 30th birthday.

Me and a couple of comedian friends, we put on a big joint party for our birthday and I got up unannounced and sang. I had a jazz band there and I sang That's All. Which goes, I can only give you love that lasts forever and a hand to hold when leaves begin to fall. It's a really beautiful song.

So that's the one I go to usually. You tossed away your performance there a little bit. I find it embarrassing. Of course it's embarrassing. We're alone in a room together. Well, not only that, but I don't know if you found this, comedy makes it really hard for you

to do anything earnestly ever again. Yes, yes, exactly. exactly it's hard isn't it because yes for a lot of people i suppose part of comedy is a kind of uh ironic protective shell yeah exactly and and then to suddenly cast that off and expect to be taken seriously is a bit much. Who was the impressionist? Mike Yarwood, popular British impressionist in the 70s and early 80s, used to finish his sets by doing a sincere song. Yeah.

And it was nauseating. Like then? People found it? No, no, no, I did. I just thought, what the hell are you doing? Just do funny voices. He was a good impressionist. Yeah.

And then to be expected as an audience to change gear and watch and enjoy him doing a sincere, sentimental song, I just thought, I don't get how you're supposed to do that. I can't do it. People definitely seem to be more comfortable with doing that. Entertainment was just entertainment. The two Ronnies and stuff would come on, and they always...

I mean, Mock and Wise, I'm thinking of, would come on, and they'd be really funny. But then that song, Bring Me Sunshine... Right, right. It's not especially funny. It's a really nice song, right it's it's not especially funny it's really a nice song and they perform it earnestly and it's very sweet but someone will do it that'll come back around though what do you think like there'll be there'll be a new wave of sincerity and comedy or something yeah and um i mean i guess there already is there's a lot more serious

moments in a stand-up special now than there would have been 20 years ago or whatever. I mean, you might have had someone like Lenny Bruce would have probably gone on rants that lasted a few minutes that weren't funny. Yeah. But he was criticised for that at the time, and it certainly wasn't the norm.

Yeah, yeah. And now I guess the equivalent of that is to share something personal and traumatic. Exactly, right. I think the world is getting very earnest. Yeah. I think social media has made us all very earnest now, and it's given a real currency to earnestness. Well, it feels as if you're literally not taking something seriously if you don't, if you're being silly. And obviously this is where you get into the weeds with certain people who, because the stakes are high when you're dealing with serious subjects, then people get all literal and then you get these endless cycles of comedians jokes being taken out of context. Yeah, people seem to have forgotten that we actually laugh for very different reasons.

To laugh at something is not always to diminish it. To laugh at something is often, you know, it can be a way of processing it or dealing with it. And often people in the worst situations possible are the ones making the jokes about it, the gallows humour and all this sort of thing, right? Yeah, I think a lot of it is to do with people just having an unsophisticated relationship

with comedy and with humour and not allowing themselves to process more of life through humour. It's true. The reason I came off Twitter was because I was so conflicted about all of this stuff. After I made some stupid jokes about football during a World Cup,

I got a tsunami of furious football fans who just hated it and it's funny when you just saw you you incite the fury of like a world yeah a little world on twitter that you weren't aware of and suddenly that whole world comes tumbling down on you yeah it's very strange and i think part of the problem was that it had and what usually happens is that the original comment had left the little garden of people that knew who i am and how i would say something like that yeah and then it goes out into the wider world where people have no clue who i am yeah and where i'm coming from and all they see is these words and then they construct their own reality for it and their own context for it and they

they just imagine this little smug hairy prick who doesn't know anything about football being condescending about their beloved beautiful game and it's like no he will not get away with this i must defend football yeah i will not survive unless i exactly take this guy he's like, no, he will not get away with this. I must defend football. Football will not survive unless I take this guy down. He's attacking football. Football could crumble because of this little hairy hobbit man. So there was a load of very angry comments. You should die.

This is literally the worst thing I've ever read on Twitter. I'm sorry about this. I was in a bad mood that day. And it went on for a few days as well. And then just when I thought it was drying up, then there was one more. And I could see that it was, you know, you can see where it's come from. It's on the thread. And it just said, at Adam Buxton, cunt.

Yeah, eventually they run out of ideas. And it caught me at the wrong moment. Normally, I love being called a man by a stranger but this time i was a little sensitive about it and so i went back and i just said you know the guy was calling michael 2015 and i said hey michael 2015 how so question mark i.e what why why am i a cunt i just want to know why you think i'm a cunt and um he came back fairly quickly and said um sorry that was a bit much yeah it's fine yeah yeah people a lot of time you you push back just a little bit and people go yeah i'm sorry i don't happen to be there but I don't even do that anymore. I don't touch

it now. If I do anything that starts to get a kind of unpleasant traction, I don't take it down, I just mute all notifications from it. So I don't see anyone that replies to it. I leave it up, I let it burn out, I let them get upset, it's over in two

days. One of the worst parlance and most similar parlance to that that I've experienced on Twitter was, it wasn't the world of football, but the world of dog owners. Oh. Who are equally vicious. Right. Well, equally protective, at least.

Yeah. And I made this joke about, it was when Chernobyl had come out on that TV show. I read a review of the show that said, so in one episode, these Soviet soldiers have to go around killing the locals of stray dogs because they've been irradiated, so they have to put them down. That was a horrible episode. I mean, they were all pretty grim.

Yeah, well, this is it. And so in this review, the review described those scenes as the most difficult to watch in the whole series. Okay, yeah. And I thought, they were sad, but you also had to watch a young engineer melt into a sort of pink jelly in front of his wife. And so I thought, they were sad, but you also had to watch a young engineer melt into a sort of pink jelly in front of his wife. And so I just made a tweet saying, whew, white people.

Just like that. Just a little sort of. Oh, mate. And the, wow, the fury that descended. And again, it was because a very famous, a much more famous comedian just like replied to it. Didn't even retweet it, just replied to it. And because of the algorithm,

that just lifts the tweet up to the feeds of people who follow them right and so suddenly I was getting all this attention from these people

who were just furious that I was saying this wasn't as sad as an engineer melting yeah but anyway fundamentally it was just a silly joke

and I didn't really it was just that was it there's a lot of and I didn't really mean it. There's a lot of intersectional stuff to get upset about on my movie. But that intersection sort of proved itself

because it was the most racist abuse I've ever gotten to. Oh, really? Because of the dog-Chinese connection. Oh. Yeah, so there's

lots of like, well, you're just annoyed you didn't get to eat them first. Come on, guys. With my comedian hat on, I was like, yeah, that's pretty funny, actually.

But also, some were just flat-out racist, and it's the only time I've reported accounts onto Twitter. Yeah. But then they would say, well, you started it. You pushed the white people button. Yes, but I think there's a difference between saying white people really love their dogs and chinese people eat dogs i think one is definitely more unpleasant than the other wouldn't you yeah i guess i do quite like dogs now though i have had a journey with dogs i think you have as well yeah definitely yeah no we were we were

no dogs um my dad was anti-dog he would would have been chowing down on them with relish. Man, that's a long hat. But that's not just dog owners who are upset with that. It was a real then diagram. You pushed a load of buttons with that one. I would say I pushed two buttons. I pushed two clear buttons. But I have to say the demographic that responded with theory

only went to prove my point. Yeah, yeah. I'm definitely with the people who say that 20 years' time we'll look back and go, what the hell were we thinking? That was mad. That was absolutely crazy to put people in close contact with each other in that way in an unregulated space more or less you know the number no and so um it's a he's a a uh an anthropologist and he came up with a number

number which is the number of relationships essentially that were designed were built to have and the number of people were actually meant to know. Oh, yes. And it's about 150. That's right. So beyond 150, we can't really handle that network, that size. And so Twitter completely explodes that instinct. And it completely rides roughshod over our natural programming. And we really can't compute.

We don't know how to handle it. And we break down. We say things we would never say in person. We attack people in a way we'd never do in person. I don't know about you, but from time to time I meet someone who is really outspoken, really aggressive on Twitter, and in person they're really sort of shy. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's always been my experience. It's a weird one. That's what I'm going with for my statement encapsulating social media. It's a weird one. It's a weird one. It's interesting. I wonder if it'll come to a place where it's more sustainable. It's got to, hasn't it?

I mean, when the car was first invented, we were just driving into ditches and stuff, right? Yeah, that's a good analogy, it seems. We speed limits and oh yeah we need more i'm so pro regulation i'm just like yeah more more regulation just need more rules and laws yes and what about ai in general how sanguine are you about that oh i don't know anything about uh there's a show i watch called raised by wolves uh oh kind of maran's show no oh there's another also called raised that was a I don't really know anything about. There's a show I watch called Raised by Wolves. Oh, Catlin Moran's show. No.

Oh, there's another show. Which was also called Raised by Wolves. That was a comedy about Catlin Moran growing up in Wolverhampton. But there's a show that is produced by Ridley Scott, and it's a science fiction thing. Dystopian future they've gone with. No one's ever done that before. Oh, interesting. So future, but it's bad.

Yeah. Oh. You know, like, future, you would think, would be shiny and fun and exciting, right? Yeah, because there's more robots and computers. More robots and spaceships and everything's right. But anyway, this guy's gone with, what if the future wasn't that great? Wow. And there's been a war, and the big war, I think, is between atheists and believers.

And they've ruined Earth, so they've gone off to try and populate another planet and the job of doing that has been left up to a couple of ais a couple of robots to repopulate the planet yeah but they they're in no they're in charge of some human children so they are mother and father to these human children but it does it has quite a lot of stuff about robot rights and the ethics of how you would treat a robot that was very sophisticated and very human-like. Mm-hmm. I always wonder about the sort of, like, AI rights thing,

and I just think, no, because they're robots. Is that too simplistic? I just go, well, no. You've got to watch raised by wolves but they're just but they're circuits and robots yeah but if you're getting sentimental about your toaster and your kettle yeah but if but if but if you started going that toast is stupid i would be like think about it's right i won't say that you know if you if you kick my toaster, I wouldn't go, it has rights! I wouldn't say that. I'd be like, hey, that's my toaster, you know.

Yeah, yeah. I think you would change your tune, though, if a robot was so sophisticated, if it looked, maybe if it looked like someone you loved or something. Well, that's your mistake, making it look like someone you love. You're only setting yourself up for a fall. But if it was, you know, all those associations you have with your favorite bit of hardware, plus very human characteristics and almost like a pet, you know, in the same way that a pet feels very human. But we know it's not reasoning in necessarily the same sort of way as us.

But for some people, they define it as, can it suffer? And if it can suffer, then it should have rights. Yeah, I don't see a future in which robots can suffer unless we design them to suffer. I don't see why you would design them can suffer unless we design them to suffer. Right, right. I don't see why you would design them to suffer. Well, just to make them... And isn't pain fundamentally a chemical reaction? So if, you know, you know what I mean? Yeah.

So if without the chemical element, how would... Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here, but how would a robot... Sounds to me as if you haven't dug very deep into this, Phil. I need you to look up robot ethics and get back to me i'm sorry not that i have i read my asimov recently yeah but i do find that fascinating and i definitely feel as if i think that's because of your techie you're very techie they find it fascinating maybe but i can totally believe i can i can really easily see myself becoming emotionally invested and protective of a realistic ai a humanoid robot and feeling bad about it being mistreated yeah i love robot

stuff really i wanted to be a robot when i was little interesting i loved all robot people and Gary Newman I thought was a robot and his robot music. I love synth pop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything robotic and synthesized, I love that. Oh, wow. I mean, you know, there's probably a fairly straightforward psychological explanation for that, isn't there?

I don't know what that would be. You want to, maybe you want to order in your life. Order, want things to make sense, don't want to be hurt, don't want to have to deal with human feelings. I want to forget love. Yeah. And don't, you know, frightened of physical decay. Oh, wow, yeah. Wow, a young kid already frightened of physical decay. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Wow. A young kid already frightened of physical deterioration. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I was a little worrier. Yeah, fair enough. Were you a worrier? Yes.

Yeah. Big worrier. What would you worry about? All sorts. I became quite fearful of travel. I think a lot of it was I went to Chinese school in Malaysia. And Chinese school became quite brutal. So, you know, you got caned quite a lot.

Oh, really? Yeah. Blimey, that wasn't that long ago. No, this is 90s. 90s? Yeah, so early 2000s. So this is Borneo. Borneo.

Right. Malaysian Borneo. Sabah. North Borneo. What was British North Borneo. Okay. And went to Chinese school there. And, yeah, if you got something wrong, you know, you got caned.

Some teachers were like, for every mark you got off, say, 90%, you got a strike. Whoa. So if you got 85%, you get five. Buckles is getting caned a lot on that metric. And so from there, I think I've, you know, I'm giving myself a little Freud here, but that must have been part of me just being really worried about things going wrong and that things you know that everything has a terrible cop price to pay if you get something wrong there's pain waiting for you wow and so since then although served you well for mastermind

that's right so i should thank those teachers for caning me all those years ago but at the same time you know i i've done i've done all right in life you know i'm um i've not done anything all that silly i've not you know lost off the rails off the rails yeah i lost my life to anything like lost you know years of my life to anything like that or you know and i think maybe a lot of that is down to me just being really risk averse uh-huh and so i feel like maybe i've to an extent i have a lot to thank it for but also yeah where i am a bit of a warrior much less so than it used to be i'm coming i'm getting better getting better are you getting better are you calming down yes and no i go through phases you know i think these things never really go away do they like anxiety or depression or various kind of mental health challenges

it's a question of managing them isn't it yeah i'm being aware of them and and you go through periods where you're on top of them more or less and then sometimes in moments of stress or whatever, they get you. And I had a tough lockdown, I think, like a lot of people. And there were certainly moments there where I was really worried. I mean, right now we're in, you know, we're always living in a worrying time one way or another. Yeah, but I mean, it seems to be particularly bad. It does seem to be particularly bad the last few years especially when you just think i thought we'd sorted a lot of these problems you know you just anyway and they come back and yeah and um but i am not for example

i've got friends who are um really freaking out at the moment uh so we're speaking in mid-March 2022. Russia is invading Ukraine as we speak. And, you know, there's other stuff going on in the world, which is anxious making. But I'm not totally, I won't go so far as to just completely lose my mind. You know what I mean? I don't get totally immobilized by fear in that way. I've sort of got better at just, it sounds of like irresponsible, burying your head in the sand, but just for a time, I'm just not watching the news for a bit.

Well, that's another thing, isn't it? And it's so hard to kind of put that point of view or put that across without sounding like you are burying your head in the sand and without sort of sounding as if you're recommending to people to just oh just ignore it'll go away kind of thing which is not what you're doing at all but it is it is absolutely necessary to regulate that shit and not just be watching it 24 7 yeah for sure for sure we're not designed to know this much about the world at all times that's right never before have we all been so instantly aware the second something terrible happens in the world it doesn't matter how far it

is away from us yeah yeah something will tell us it's happened and we just we're not here we're not built for it we're not built for this world that we've built. In a way, we've built a world that we're not built for. Yeah. Here's a philosophical poser for you. If you were on your deathbed, would you rather have lived a horrible,

painful life? The other one. Only to find out. I'm going to say the other one. I don't need to hear the other one, I feel like. Only to find out. I'm going to say the other one. I don't need to hear the other one, I feel like. Only to find out on your deathbed that, you know, something wonderful, some wonderful kindness is shown to you or whatever.

Or have lived a long and happy life only to find out that, you know, your partner was cheating on you and your life has been a lie. Right. I think the second one. I think the second one is the correct choice because I read that this actually touches on thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman. Yeah, well, exactly. So he's talking about the peak end rule. Yes, that's right yeah which is always like most people calculate whether they like something according to the end of the experience right

yes that's right yeah and and um and that also that people value the memory of an experience more than the experience of the moment. So if you ask people, you can go on an amazing holiday, but you won't remember it when you get back and you're not allowed to take photos. A lot of people say, I won't bother. Because it's the memory of the experience that counts. Yeah, you're investing in the memory archive. Yeah, we invest in memories more than we invest in the present.

And so I guess that's what that question touches on. But I guess maybe if you're aware on your deathbed of this fallacy, and you're aware that the experience in the moment counted, and the pleasure in the moment was valuable, then I think you will be able to withstand this shock revelation that you say. And you will be able to say, ah, this moment feels bad. You're trying to get me with the pecan rule, aren't you?

Well, fuck you. I had a great time and I don't care if it was a lie. Especially because it's the end of your life, so you're not going to have to remember this unpleasant experience for very long. It's a minority of experience will be the bad one. And when you're dead, you won't remember anything anyway, so it won't matter. Right.

Yeah, so I would go for the second. Okay, cool. Is that what you'd go for? I don't think so. Wow. I thought I made a pretty good case for it. You did, but it was a very sort of rationalist case, and I'm not a very rational person.

I'm consumed by irrationality. So you'd rather live a horrible, horrible life, and then at the end go, if someone says, thank you, Adam. You're shown kindness at the end, and your faith in human beings is restored. I think so. I mean, not really. So you want to live like Scrooge. You want a Scrooge you want

a scrooge story basically and what story am i getting matrix i guess yes yeah even though he wasn't really having a brilliant time in the fake world wasn't true it's because we're comfortable wasn't it right right you get to eat in the matrix and you are staying in the matrix i'm happy to live in the matrix and then at the end find out it was all a lie and go oh yeah the matrix is fine and then i die right right but you're saying you want to live like scrooge and we really well if we go with the matrix then I have to be going around in the Nebuchadnezzar and increasingly bad sequels for ages only to find out at the end that, ah, it was actually, it's nice. Oh, actually. Fake world.

Yeah, yeah. The newest Matrix movie is actually not bad. Have you watched the new one? No, but it's supposed to be okay. No, it isn't. Oh, really? Okay. It's supposed to be okay no it isn't oh really okay it's supposed to be totally unwatchable oh right

I thought it was right I heard it was alright I think it got some generous reviews okay I think there's so much goodwill and affection for Keanu Reeves

at this point yeah maybe that people have given it a pass yeah alright man we should wrap up you know I

I wrote a lot of important things down I'm sorry if I took things on no not at all it's me i'm just skidding around all over the shop thank you for indulging my tangents but that's something you hear a lot not since geometry hey welcome back podcats that was phil wang there very grateful indeed to phil for giving up his time and if you look in the description of the podcast you will find various links uh his special philly philly wang wang comedy special is on netflix and the book side splitter

is available yeah i recommend the audio, as I said to Phil. I mean, I'm sure it's great for the eyes, too, and print form, but Phil does a good job reading it. You get to hear his crooning. And, as I said, it's very funny and likeable stuff. Check it out. OK, music time now. Music with a little bit of chat as well

with Britt Daniel and Alex Fischel of Spoon, who long-time listeners will know are one of my favourite bands. Boy, I got into them a long, a long time ago, at the beginning of the 2000s, even though they were already going by then. I mean, they have been around for ages. Their new album, Lucifer on the Sofa, was released earlier this year, 2022, and it's another peach. But let's get to the conversation, which was recorded

about a week, actually, after I saw Phil in March 2022. And it was in London. Alex and Britt were in town doing some press. And I met up with them at Third Man Records near Carnaby Street, set up by Jack White. And it's a very cool, kind of quirky, I'm using all the words, cool and quirky environment for super music Oh, well, excuse me. It's the Egyptian geese. Yeah, yeah, I'm just doing my podcast intro. See ya. God. They don't really like me, I don't think, the Egyptian geese.

Oh, and there's a pheasant as well blimey they're all hanging out boy we interrupted a big bird gathering rosie anyway what was i saying uh third man records yes fun place and alex and brit were there to do uh i think in the music industry they call it a showcase, i.e. just a short performance for assorted journalists and media people, I think, of which I was one. But I got there a bit early and chatted to Alex and Britt and recorded them playing a couple of songs, very kindly recorded by the in-house engineer whose name I didn't get. I apologize if you happen to be listening. Thank you so much. You did a great job. But right now with Britt Daniel and Alex Fischel of Spoon. Here we go. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to go with, this is mic number one, this is mic number one. Isn't this a lot of fun? That's good.

There was a bass player in this band once at one point who would go, Two, two, two. And then I got in the habit of saying, cool sound check. Come on, cool sound check. Just to kind of like make him on a little bit. Two. Two. So you've just been over at Soho Radio. Right.

So this is, say your names on the mic. I'm Britt. I'm Alex. And you're running around doing bits and pieces of promo, not playing any big shows in the UK at the moment, right? Right. Yeah, just some acoustic things, just me and Alex. And as part of that, you were just over at Soho Radio doing Dennis Bovell's radio show, the legendary Dennis Bovell. That's right. He did some mixes for us, and the first one came out

today. Well, it's come out on a 7-inch before, but now the first time it's out in the world, in the digital world. He's done a kind of bucolic dub, I would call it, for Wild. There's cow sounds on there. Humans making cow sounds. Oh, is it humans doing cow sounds? I think that's what it is. Oh, I just assumed he'd been out in the countryside with his recorder. Yeah, that's my favorite part of it.

He'd been out in the countryside with his recorder. Yeah, that's my favorite part of it. I mean, the guy, when people toss around the word legend, often it's not exactly, oh, hang on, this is my son calling. Frank. Hey. How are you doing? I'm here.

I'm at the Euclid Circus, so I can make my way over to Third Man. Okay, make your way over to Third Man. I'm actually doing the interview at the moment. Oh, I'm so sorry. That's okay. I still love you. So come over and hang around in Third Man and I'll see you in a bit. You could even come downstairs.

Say you're my son. Okay, all right. Okay, bye. Do you know who my dad is? How old is he? He's 19. Very polite. He's a very polite young man.

We've terrified him into submission. Okay, I'm bad at going off on tangents. I want to just tie up the Dennis Bovell jag. Because you must be fans of, do you like the same sort of music, Alex and Britt? Yeah, we have to check with each other. There's crossover for sure. Yeah. But I know, Brit, that you're into a lot of the same sort of things as I am, a lot of the same kinds of bands

that Dennis Bovell would have worked with. I mean, am I right about this? People like Madness and Orange Juice and some of those artists? Yeah. Yeah, I got to see Madness a few years back, kind of because we were on a festival with them,

and I was amazed at how great they were. Yeah. Yeah. They still got it. Great, yeah. And, of course, Bovell worked with the pop group, Fela Kuti, The Slits. Wow.

Famously, he did that first Slits album, I think. That is good. And he was in in as an actor he was in one of uh steve mcqueen's small axe films did you see any of those that came out in 2020 oh you should see those especially the one that dennis bovel was in which was called lovers rock and it was set in a house party in the early 80s in in sort of west london notting hill area and the whole of this well it was a film i suppose a bit longer than a yeah it was about an hour and a quarter or maybe even an hour and a half and it was a series of films about the experience of black britains they were all very good but this one was a personally i i really um was knocked out by it

and it's just a house party so you see everyone getting ready and shifting the furniture out of the living room where they're going to have the party and they're making food and then the djs are coming along and uh it's so well filmed and they just they just show you the whole thing and people just going nuts for these tracks that's cool and the you know and sweat dripping down the walls in this uh front room of the house party and um you know half smoked doobies on the side on the mantelpiece and things like that right that's very evocative. You should see it. When was the last time you were at a good house party? Good question. 30 years ago.

How about you? It's been too long. I was just thinking as you were talking about that, that my life used to revolve around house parties like, you know, in the 90s. And, you know, before you could go to bars in particular, but even a little after that, it just was, there's nothing like a house party for having a good time.

Where were you going to these house parties? In Austin. Right. Yeah. And were they musician friends you were hanging out with? Yeah, yeah. So would people play live music at the party? Yes.

Oh, okay. Yeah, and sometimes there'd just be music. I mean, like records, CDs, but the best ones had bands. Good ones. Just set up in the living room or sometimes like on the front porch, you know? Oh, man, that's idyllic. Yeah, it's the best. I don't think I've ever been to a party like that.

If there's been music involved at the parties I've been to, it's just someone getting out their guitar and no one really wants them to get out their guitar. Right, it's like, please stop. Yeah, they were often shut down. For sure. Right. But for being too rowdy. Yeah, for being too loud. If there's certain houses,

you got lucky because there were no neighbors that would mind. Yeah. So you'd keep throwing the parties there, and then you'd find out, you'd try throwing it somewhere else, and you'd quickly find out you can't do it here. This house is not going to work. Your house is one of the...

Yeah, I've been having some house parties. Yeah? I had a show there, actually. A friend played a show in the yard. Nobody cares. Where's your place, Alex? In Los Angeles. It's kind of like a noisy neighborhood,

and another neighbor throws parties all the time, too. There was one neighbor I was worried about, but her kids came to the window and were like waving and the next morning I got a text from her that was like, oh, the kids were so excited, you know,

and I was so happy they got to see the future for them of partying. I was like, okay, cool. Just let me know if there's any problems

down the road. Have either of you ever called the police on a noisy neighbor? No, I couldn't do that. No. That's just bad karma. Now, this is your 10th studio album.

Right. They say, Lucifer on the Sofa. And this, am I right in thinking that this started life pre-pandemic? Yes. And then it just got stretched out further and further. I heard you saying that some of the best stuff on the record came to you during the pandemic. Yeah. When you were writing.

I think it's just that the longer you work on a record, the richer it gets, the richer the songs get. And the more songs you have to choose from and then it just keeps going. So obviously we had a lot of downtime starting in March of 2020. it just keeps going. So obviously we had a lot of downtime starting in March of 2020. And then I ended up, the thing that made me feel better was getting lost in songwriting. So I wrote a ton of songs and then,

then we had to record them. And then the record just took longer and longer. You were in Austin. You were in Austin. You were in Los Angeles. No, I had moved to Austin because we were trying to do like a band record. Oh, and we did that for a few months. Yeah, we were at that for like four or five months, I think.

But, you know, then lockdown happens and you can't be a band anymore. Yeah. Especially because we didn't know, like, nobody knew at that time, especially how it worked. I mean, we were like wiping our groceries down with disinfectants and wearing gloves. And, you know, nobody understood how the transmission worked. We were wiping our groceries down with disinfectants and wearing gloves. Nobody understood how the transmission worked, so everybody was really off on their own. Were you doing other projects in the meantime? Did you make your ambient album that you'd always wanted to make?

No. No, I just, yeah. He was writing a ton. What were you doing? I was working on it. He was writing a ton. What were you doing? I was working on it. I get into hobbies, and I started learning about electronics,

and I had an old tape machine that I restored with a friend. A 16-track? 24-track tape machine. That works in my garage that I turned into a studio. He's good with hobbies. I am, yeah. I started taking a class as well from the community college on Zoom.

What'd you do? I did it. I'm thinking, like, what did I do? Because everyone was talking about I'm going to learn a language. You actually did a thing. I did a thing. I don't have kids, though.

I learned how to do the cup dance thing when you kind of slap the top of the cup and turn it around in rhythm to the music. Have you ever seen that? No. Do you want to show us? Well, I probably couldn't do it anymore. You're just getting a cup

and you're kind of going clap, clap, clap, turn a cup over. It's in pitch perfect. Right. Anyway, I saw it online. So that's what you learned to do. Well, we all as a family learned to do a routine to a variety of songs. The model by Kraftwerk was the easiest one because it was most robotic.

Right. We could follow. So that's what we did in lockdown one. And then, I don't know, the rest all just turns into a blur. Well, you're going to play some songs, right? So they've already played the songs. I recorded them earlier on. But we're going to introduce them.

So the first song that you're going to do for us, Alex and Britt, is from the record. And this is the single, right? This is Wild. That's right. It's the big single. The big single. And this is one of my...

Oh, this is my son. This is Frank. Hey. Frank, this is Alex. How's it going? I'm Britt. This is Britt. Nice to meet you.

What are you doing in the city? Just come to see you guys. Oh, cool. Yeah. Nice. He's on his way back to college. He's doing music production. They actually study that here.

Yeah. I mean, and I mean that, I'm telling you that they really study it and they do it in a good way here. Oh, right. I took RTF classes and that was, but it and they do it in a good way here all right i took rtf classes and that was but it was you know yeah i just feel like the engineers that come out of the uk are very educated and know really know what they're doing oh really compared to the states yeah i do think huh yeah well this is alex and brit playing wild I was reminded every measure of riding trade winds buried treasure I got on fine with modern living but must I be such a citizen And the world

still so wild cold to me I was lost I've been kept on my knees My trippers Alaskans on my knees my trippers alaskans

they surrounded me all them describing how they like me all they wanted something special bring them roses sing them blues

and the world still so well called to me I was lost, I was lost on my knees I look full over All the lies and cold to me I wish God stopped and kept on my knees And the world's still so wild Yeah Yay Thank you very much. That was great.

Now, one of the tracks on the new record, who's Lucifer, by the way? Is that a cat? Not like Lucifer Sam. That's me. Oh, is it you? Yeah, it's the other side of me. Comes out.

The sound of Lucifer on the sofa, the song, that sounds to me quite different to anything you've done. Yeah, and definitely different from everything else on the record. Yeah. It's the one that we almost left that song off the record because we knew it didn't follow the blueprint of this sort of earthy, more rock and roll. It just has a different sound. We did it with Dave Fridman, which we did the last two records with, and we didn't see him.

We did it remotely with him, but it has his flavor on it. So, yeah, we almost left it off, but I didn't want to because I love the song. And then finally somebody figured out that you could put the song last and maybe get away with it. Oh, I think it works really well. Yeah. It's a good ender, right? It's so atmospheric. And almost, I was saying to someone the other day, like it feels like it's even skirting the shores

of something hip hop-y almost. Yeah, with that drum beat. Yeah. Yeah. And that kind of sleazy late night sounds like a horn sound. Yeah, it is. It's a sax. Yeah.

I like it. I mean, I think I felt like, well, It's a sax. Yeah. I like it. I mean, I think I felt like, well, I wonder if this points the way to what you'll be doing next. I could handle a whole record of that sort of sleazy late night stuff. All right.

Indie sleaze. Indie sleaze. There you go. Yeah. But I don't know. I don't know what we're going to do next. I don't know if we're going to do next. Maybe me and Alex are going to make a mariachi record. I don't know. Maybe a straight

up country record. Yeah. I don't know. Or maybe we just open a really good liquor store. That sounds really chill. Right. So you're going to play another song for us. Yeah. And this is one of my favorite tracks from Lucifer on the Sofa, the new record. This is Satellite.

Can you tell us a little bit about this one, Brett, before we... This one is actually a song we recorded for They Want My Soul. Right. A long time ago. And when we recorded it, it wasn't really ready. We were kind of pushing it. It was written at the same time as Inside Out, so it kind of shares some of the same themes and even lyrics.

So, yeah, we recorded it with Fridman and then we recorded it again with John Congleton a couple years later it still didn't get it right and we were playing it live this whole time and so finally for this record we recorded it and we got it right it sat right down. Top tip you just keep playing it and then

eventually something will happen keep playing it live. Yeah I love it and it does what you guys do so well, which is be kind of epic and emotional without being obvious about it, without being in your face and coming on all epic and emotional. Do you know what I mean?

Does that make sense? Yeah. But it really feels like you're on top of a mountain when you hear it. It's one of my favorites, too, on the record. Yeah. But it really feels like you're on top of a mountain when you hear it. It's one of my favorites, too, on the record. Yeah. For sure. Well, it's really nice to see you guys.

So good to see you. It's been too long. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And here we go with Satellite. I'll be a satellite Out here on my own I know where you draw the line know what you draw it for We used to walk that line I know what you draw it for

You got them to love you got them that you adore You got angels above you I know I love you more I know I love you more I know I love you more I know I love you more Oh I'll be your satellite No one can come close

And I know where you draw the line I know what you draw it for Things got cruel, you know I know And we done damage all along You got angels above you, but I know I love you more I know I love you more, oh I know I love you more I know I love you more Oh, I know I love you more I know I love you more Oh Thank you. guitar solo

Oh, my heavy stuff I bear on your own When you're feeling hearted I'm your satellite When you're feeling lonely I'll come and make it right Cause nothing's gonna break you No one's gonna break you down

Nothing's gonna shake you down. Nothing's gonna shake you. I'm your satellite. I'm your satellite. Oh, oh, oh,

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm

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Continue. Two. Two. hey welcome back podcats that was brit daniel and alex fischel official official of spoon i hope you enjoyed that and liked those songs. If you're a fan, then check out the links in the description of today's podcast, as well as various Phil Wang links. There are links to a few videos that I've shot over the years. First of all, those two performances that you just heard of Satellite and Wild from the new album Lucifer on the Sofa, I filmed them just on my phone down in the basement of Third Man Records back in March.

And I've put them on my music YouTube channel. They've already got copyright strikes as soon as I uploaded them, even though Brit was fine with me filming, obviously, and happy that I put them online. I'm not sure what it means. I don't know if it means that a strike is imminent or if it just means that I can't monetize it, which I wasn't interested in doing anyway. But whatever. For the time being, you can see the videos that i shot of alex and brit performing those two tracks and there's two videos that i shot 15 years ago of brit performing backstage at the borderline club in London. He was about to go on stage with Spoon that evening and played one of the best shows I've ever seen in my life. That's like a happy, hazy memory of the perfect gig. Watching

Spoon at the borderline with my friend Dougie. But before they did that show I got to meet Brit for the first time in his dressing room and I recorded him playing a couple of spoon songs Black Like Me and The Beast and Dragon Adored oh and Advanced Cassette I think anyway I can't remember which links I've put in the description, but there's a couple of those videos there too, if you're a Spoon fan or if you'd like to explore further. Anyway, I'm very grateful to Britt and Alex and to Noam from their PR, who helped arrange the whole thing.

I'm grateful to everyone at their label as well, Matador, for helping us out with music clearances, etc. And my wife, my wife, also did quite a bit of work on that side of things in her legal capacity. So thanks to her. And very much indeed to Seamus. I'm just doing the thanks here now, although I should probably wrap up

because it's been a long episode. But yeah, thanks very much, Seamus. A lot of back and forth about publishing and things like that. Thanks to Ben Tullow as well. First time helping us out with editing on the podcast. On the Phil Wang conversation. Thanks very much indeed, Ben.

Thanks to Helen Green, who does the artwork for the podcast. And do we have anything else to report, Rosie? Rosie, come and say hello to the podcast. Oh, I'm running over to you. And I'm going to say hello. Hello, dogg doggy how are you okay thanks very much if you came along to bug last week at the BFI South Bank bug number 62 first new selection of videos that we've had since I suppose January 2020 a long time and it was nice

to be back I say nice too much I think maybe you know at school my English teacher probably like a lot of English teachers always used to be a bit of a fascist about nice oh don't use the word nice it doesn't say anything it's a non-word I slightly disagree I quite like the word nice I think it's nice and I do use it quite a bit probably too much and actually I was checking back the Tim Key episode the bit where I read out an entry from my journal about going and doing the voiceover for Sing 2. It was basically just me saying that a succession of people were nice. Saw Garth, that was nice.

Saw his producer, who's nice. Saw the guy mixing the session, he was nice. And his PA was nice. Garth hung out with Bono. Apparently Bono's nice. It's not always like that in the journal. You should see what I say about cornballs and Louis. The word nice doesn't get used too often there. Nice. Doesn't get used too often there.

Okay, until next time, we share the same out of space. Edit point there, I forgot. Addendum. We've got a new poster available for you in the merch portal. And it is a beautiful print, colour print, on nice paper by Helen Green it's the artwork that she did for the paperback edition of my book Ramble Book which so many people commented on and I always really liked and I just thought gosh I thought gosh that's what I thought I just jolly well thought gosh I thought that would be nice as a poster a nice poster and so that's what's thought. I just jolly well thought, gosh, I thought that would be nice as a poster, a nice poster. And so that's what's happened. It's turned into one.

And you can buy it now. And I'll tell you what, it's signed by Helen and myself. And that's the end of the story. There's a link in the description. Oh, hey, do you want a hug? Come on. Who doesn't like a nice hug? I love you. Bye! Bye. And subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up.

Nice like a pat with a thumbs up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat with a thumbs up. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up.

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Thank you.