Gale on Sheena Metal Show - Transcript Part 2
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GALE HAROLD ON SHEENA METAL EXPERIENCE JULY 22, 2014
PART TWO
Gale’s words are in blue
Awesome. Let’s do it. This is beautiful. And once again, set up the artist and the title.
The band is Hurray for the Riff Raff and the song is Smalltown Heroes which is also the name of the record.
Let’s do it. This is the Sheena Metal Experience on LA Talk Radio and I’m here with Gale Harold for the whole show. Here we go.
The Sheena Metal Experience, LA Talk Radio. I’m here with my wonderful friend and fantastic guest, Gale Harold. We’re spinning music for the entire show. It’s so great to have you back, Gale. And you always bring me music. And you know what the cool thing is? You hardly bring anything I have. So it’s all new for me, too, which is nice.
Good, good.
That’s great. So back to those last three so we know what we had.
I think we started with Smalltown heroes by Hurray for the Riff Raff.
Gorgeous. I’m buying that tonight.
You better. And then we went to Mojo Hand by Lightning Hopkins.
Beautiful.
And then the last thing was Sniper at the Gates of Heaven by the Black Angels.
Okay, so let’s talk about that one first because that was actually a vinyl track that you turned into an mp3.
Uh, yeah, I recorded the song off of my turntable into a pre-amp that went into a digital file on my laptop so I could listen to the song mobile-ly and feel like I’m sitting in my rocking chair listening to my turntable.
Awesome. We were talking during the break about the difference between vinyl and digital and how that song kind of falls in the middle because it sounds like analog but it doesn’t have the same energy as something that you’re listening to on the turntable. And I think that’s really interesting. Analog is something you feel more than hear.
Yeah, or you feel it.... You certainly can’t feel the rumbling of your laptop. I mean if you have a good stero system or good speakers, output speakers on your laptop, but I can feel the wheel of my turntop.... Turntop. I can just make words up, too. I can feel the wheel of my turntable. I could feel it on the countertop that it’s sitting on, put my hand on it. I listen to that song sometimes. I listen to the digital file and then I’ll listen to it on the album. Different sounds, different audio levels, different angles. You can waste your entire life doing stuff like that. It’s not really wasting, but it is wasting “time.” I can’t think of a better way to do it, though.
Yeah. But there’s an energy to what a needle does to an album. And I think that you can hear it certainly in that track, but I think when you’re actually in the room where it’s happening, you’re feeling a different energy from that analog.
Well, there’s gotta be some molecular, vibrational energy that’s being transmitted from the metal of the needle off of the vinyl, so you’ve got these two fields that are interfacing with each other.
Yeah, and it’s sort of like, there’s a different energy to having actual wood furniture in your home and faux wood furniture.
Well, I think faux wood is the most beautiful thing that’s ever been made, and I would recommend everyone get naugahyde and pleather. Faux leather and faux wood, just love it. Make sure you don’t get any oil on it cause...never mind.
Sheena laughs. But do you know what I mean? It’s like the difference between an electric guitar that’s made of metal and an electric guitar that’s made of wood or an acoustic instrument. You can feel the difference.
Absolutely.
There’s an energy that comes out of that wood, and it makes an instrument sound different and it makes an instrument feel different.
That hollow ring.
Yeah. Beautiful. So what are we doing now?
What are we doing now? Why don’t we listen to something from back down South?
Nice.
You guys are cool with that. Going down.
The Sheena Metal Experience on LA Talk Radio. We’re spinning some music, having fun with my friend, Gale Harold, chitchatting, and it’s nice because we get to talk on the air and then we play music and we get to kind of catch up during the music breaks. So it’s sort of like having you on the show and hanging out at the same time.
It’s like old home day.
It’s like hanging out and getting to see you twice in one show. So, back up some songs and talk about why they’re here and why we did them.
The last one was a band called Little Barrie. which I discovered on the radio maybe a week and a half ago, and that song was called, It Don’t Count. And that followed Chuck Berry with a song called Oh, Louisiana.
Is it important to you to-people like, assume, I think, that because I do talk radio, that I listen to talk radio in my car and the truth is I don’t. I listen to music radio because I think that it’s important to sort of have your pulse a little bit on what’s going on. So I keep a lot of local stations in my car, and I kind of flip around, and I listen to what’s happening to try and discover new bands. Do you do that? Are you interested in what’s happening, and how do you find music? With so many choices now to listen, Sirius XM and there’s pandora. I mean, there’s so much music, how do you know what to look for?
Um, I guess I don’t have a method or a definite show that I’m always listening to. I have stations that I bounce back around to at random times. I still listen to WRAK which is an Atlanta station that I grew up listening to that really opened up my mind; KPFK, KXRU and anything that you can find and you can get on your...and you can stream. I listen to a lot of Football Weekly, which is a podcast about European football. There’s some very, very intelligent and hilarious commentators, and they actually get into music a lot-a lot of hidden references to songs and musicians on the backs of players and the way they play and their demeanors and their personalities. That’s one of the ones I listen to a lot, actually.
That’s awesome. I think it’s important cause when I first got my new car, it came with Sirius, and I never had it before. And it was, you know, free for six months, whatever. And I thought, okay, I’ll keep this. This’ll be fun. And the problem was, I think I told you when you were here last time, that I’m kind of obsessed with the seventies. So I just kept it on the seventies channels, and I never turned it off the seventies channels. And I thought okay, I’m becoming like that weird, old lady who only listens to music that I liked when I was nine. And I’m not discovering anything new because I’d listen to a station for five minutes and then go back to the seventies station like it was crack. So I realized that I’m not the kind of person who should sit in my car all the time and just play songs that I like. You need to find new stuff, otherwise your musical muscle is not growing.
True. Your musical listening muscle. I’m just still completely hypnotized by the idea of walking down the street and hearing something coming out of a moving car, coming out of someone’s window in a house, and it’s you know, not gonna be every time you hear something that you’re gonna love it, but those times that you do, you know when you get that whip crack of almost the broken neck when you spin around around and you look over your shoulder and you try looking up in the air to see where’s that speaker, where’s that song coming from.
Yeah.
It’s just to me one of the greatest things that can happen, and hopefully it happens many more times before we’re all gone.
Yeah, I agree. I love it and I know there’s a lot of noise pollution and talk right now. I know a lot of places I lived.... I have a town home and where I live there’s no more music at the pool. I live right on the pool and I loved music at the pool. Because I would hear music all the time. To me, that’s how you know you’re alive and you’re connected to everything. When somebody’s in the pool, and the pool smells like Ban du Soleil, and it sounds like music and you can hear the water splashing, to me that’s knowing that you’re home. And I love that. So, whoever made that rule, I realize they were probably in their eighties. But still, you’re never too old for music and I love that.
When I first started working on the Howard Stern station, I worked overnights and I slept during the day, and I would hear people playing music at the pool. And the guy who lived across from me at the time was scoring the show JAG and he would be working on his scores. And his dining room, which was where his grand piano was, was right across from my bedroom and it was the best sleep ever to have somebody playing the piano. I loved it. So to me, I find music to be very soothing. I’ve always lived in cities or around a lot of people, and so to me, music is a sound of life.
Yeah.
Whenever a bunch of people get together, somebody starts playing music.
True.
And I love that sound. I agree with you. It’s the most, it’s the best way to discover a song and fall in love with a song. It’s great. Okay, what are we doing?
Um, well....
I see the record spinning and the needle hovering.
I’m gonna drop it. Gonna drop it.
Here it goes. That means-
That means I hope I hit the groove. Come on everybody. Hold your breath.
Here it comes.
(Music starts playing) Oh look what I did. I kind of goofed it.
That’s okay.
It’s all right. We’ll work it out. Now, here you go.
You did really great with that. Here we go. New music for ya!
The sheena Metal experience, right here on LA Talk Radio. Two more great songs from my friend Gale Harold, who’s here this whole show. Gale, why don’t you back announce the last couple of songs?
Are your ears burning?
No, I liked it, but I do feel a little bit like I somehow took the brown acid and don’t know.
But are their ears burning, too? That was Tav Falco and Panther Burns Red Headed Woman if you didn’t figure that one out.
Beautiful.
We did that just because we like you. And before that, the one and only Jeffrey Lee Pierce, The Gun Club and For the Love of Ivy.
Love it.
And you guys can put together The Red Headed Woman inference if you like and try and figure it out. And we can’t forget Funky Woman because that was Parliament and that was before For the Love of Ivy.
Amazing. Gun Club is going on my ‘must get’ list. I love that track.That’s a fantastic track. Does it make you a Los Angelino listening to that song?
It makes me feel sad, sad, all alone. No, that was an Oracle, par excellence.
Now, when you listen to music, is a lot of it what you hear or is a lot of it what you feel? Does music hit you in the soul first or does it hit you in the ear first?
Um, one or the other. I think sometimes it’s like a punch to the stomach, like an instinctual thing. I experienced something kind of like that by having a conversation with this kid. Nick Cave and the Bad seeds played the Shriner’s Auditorium last week and there was a kid standing along the wall wearing this t-shirt, and I couldn’t figure out or I couldn’t see from across the room what it was. He looked like maybe twelve, thirteen years old. He’s wearing a really very graphic t-shirt. I wanted to see what it was, and it was a Breakfast Club t-shirt and I’m looking at him in this beautiful room and I had to walk up to him: ‘So, you’re like the boldest person here. There’s a lot of rockabillies, there’s a lot of tatoos, there’s a lot of aging punk rockers, there’s a lot of country and blues people here, and there’s a lot of very, very, forward thinking young people. Just a great crowd of people, but you have got to be the most majestic, fearless person in the world that’s standing here right now wearing a Breakfast Club t-shirt. What’s your name?’ ‘My name is Ashton.’ ‘Okay, cool man. What’s your favorite-’ And that’s as much as I got out of my mouth and his answer was Thriller. And then my mind just started to spin. I’m thinking to myself that this kid is just fearlessly wearing a Breakfast Club t-shirt at a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show, and I can’t even ask him what his favorite Nick Cave song is cause his favorite song is Thriller and he didn’t even let me finish the question.
And then I hear his mother say (or the woman who was with him. I’m not sure if it was his mother or not) that this was his first concert, and you wrap those three things together and I walked away from there like I had just seen the man in the mountain. This young kid, totally fearless, Breakfast Club t-shirt at a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show, favorite song is Thriller-no question, don’t ask me again because it’s still gonna be Thriller-and I’ve never been to a concert before. You’re on the magic carpet. You are on the magic carpet. And I would love to know what that kid’s gut said to him when the Bad Seeds walked out, hit the stage, and the light hit Nick Cave when he started to sing because that must have been a very transcendental and euphoric moment for him.
And isn’t it interesting-not to get into an ‘oh, I’m old kind of thing’ but I’m about to go there a bit, Gale-when I was a kid....
Go there.
When I was a kid, there were people wearing Zeppelin t-shirts and talking about the Beatles, which was music from the generation before us. Now The Breakfast Club and Thriller, to me that means my junior year of high school, sophomore year of high school. And Thriller was sophomore year and The Breakfast Club was junior year. And it’s like, the things that kids are now getting into was our coming of age stuff.
I was kind of jacked into Thriller, but I was so removed from certain parts of culture and society and what was happening, I didn’t see The Breakfast Club until years after it came out, you know? I’m sad that I missed it when it was happening. But this kid was, it was almost like he was flying the flag, you know? He knew. He had that look in his eye, that glint. He was a really sharp kid, kind of like he knew the statement he was making by being there, you know?
Yeah. Well, who knew that was gonna be a movie that was speaking to people this many years later? You know maybe, uh eight years ago, I was in New York and I did the Vagina Monologues for the first time and Aly Sheedy was in the cast. And one night Andrew McCarthy Shue showed up and was in the audience and you would have thought every forty year old in that audience turned into thirteen year olds. You would have thought that Elvis and Jesus were together, taking pictures with people. I mean there’s something about that film, right?
Yeah.
And Thriller? I mean Thriller is just genius. You go back and you listen to Thriller and every track on Thriller is brilliant and people, I think sadly, like Michael Jackson and Elvis, pop culturally, we get stuck in their idiosyncracies as humans. But musically Michael Jackson was off the charts the way that he put things together.
Well, a thousand years, a hundred years from now, it’s gonna be the music. It’s just gonna be the music. That’s the thing that’s gonna be him and all the other heroes. That will outlast everything. That will outlast everything.
Yeah, it’s true. That’s a great story, though. That’s fantastic. I wonder if he liked it. Did you see him afterwards?
I wish I could have seen him. I kinda was keeping my eyes peeled. I wonder if he stayed for the whole show.
Do you think it was his mom’s pick to go there?
I vaguely overheard her say something about John Cale and I wasn’t...it was too complicated. It was so brilliant. It was so complicated, I really don’t know. Either they were the smartest, hippest, coolest family that ever walked the earth or they were just screwing with people. Who knows?
That happened to me once. I was at the Blank, one of the fundraisers for the Blank Theater. And I know you’ve done the Young Playwright’s for them a bunch of times and um, it was the night that Noah got Graham Nash and David Crosby out to perform. Talk about the energy of seeing something live, to see those two guys play together and see all that bond, the musical bond, the friendship, and hear them talk about, ‘Hey we recorded down the street fifty years ago, man, but it used to be this.’ Um, amazing, right? And there was somebody sitting with me. It was a mom and she had her son with her, and it was his first concert. And I’ll never forget that.
What a gift!
It was magic to watch something like that with someone who’s never seen something like that before. And certainly, I had never seen them live because they’re from when I was very, very young and even before I was born so I’d never seen them live before and it was such an experience for me, I can’t imagine if that was the first thing you ever saw.
Yeah.
I saw the Beach Boys first. That was my first concert.
That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good. Speaking of harmonies, that’s pretty good.
Well, I grew up at the beach so every year the Beach Boys came. I grew up in Huntington Beach and what Brian Wilson did with music. Unbelievable. So, yeah, I think I know you can get shot for saying this, but I think that, in some respects, what he wrote rivaled what the Beatles were doing.
Uh, yeah, well, I mean, why wouldn’t it?
Well, cause you know people about their Beatles.
Well, yeah, you know, we all have our teams, we all have our football clubs.
And I love the Beatles team but there’s something about the way he mixed and what he did with phonics and you’re right, what he did with harmonies, and....
And stereophonics.
Yeah.
I almost brought a Beach Boys record but I didn’t. I should have.
Do you have Endless Summer?
Yes.
Everyone should have Endless Summer.
Well, you wanna go back to the beach right now?
Yeah.
Cause I got some beach on vinyl.
Do you?
In a way.
Good for you. I like it. Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do some more music. The Sheena Metal Experience on LA Talk Radio and we’re spinning music until it says we have to go.
Surf’s up!
Let’s do it!
Conceptually. And emotionally.
Sheena Metal Experience, LA Talk Radio. Beautiful. I’m gonna let DJ Gale Harold set those up for you and back announce them.
We just heard Mr. Van Morrison do a song called, Linden Arden Stole the Highlights, from Veedon Fleece.
So beautiful.
Before that, the Rock-A-teens, Hwy R. Before that, Patty Smith, Redondo Beach.
Beautiful. Yeah, that’s going on my buy list, too. And the Van Morrison I have. I think my equivalent of dying and going to heaven in my mind would be Van Morrison’s voice following me into the white light cause there’s just something about his voice, it’s just like sitting on a lily pad with a fairy on one side and a leprechaun on the other.
Gale laughs.
It’s Irish bliss, Gale. And I know you have enough Irish in you to understand that.
Both laugh.
Oh, my gosh.
Brilliant.
He’s like human hymn.
Right. Just brilliant. Just wonderful. This is so much fun! I love that you love to do this with me cause you’re really my only friend who wants to come here and do this with me. And this is one of my favorite things.
Well, I think a lot of people dreamed of being a radio DJ, a DJ, like that voice that comes out of the wall, that weird round thing that’s stuck to the side of the cabinet when you’re a kid. It’s like a bit of a leprechaun.
It is. It’s magic. Did you do that when you were little? Did you dream that you could be, would be the guy on the radio?
No, I didn’t. I mean....
I didn’t either. This was a total accident. (Laughs)
Yeah.
No, I didn’t either. I would love some big story where when I was two, I dreamed of this, but it was just some kind of an acting job that I took twenty years ago and kept doing. August, the first week of August is my twentieth anniversary. How about that?
Hear! Hear!
How did that happen? So I’m excited that you’re here with me beforehand to help me celebrate. This is fun. And will you come and do this again with me? I would love it.
Yeah, absolutely.
And we’ll spin some more stuff. How much did you bring that we didn’t do? Did we do about half ?
We did about half. Um, I got some, oh, um, golden discs that I can save from last time that I wanted to play this time. But it was a blast.
Yeah, let’s do it again and let’s make sure that next time we don’t let a year and a half go by. I know we get busy.
Good.
I get busy and-
I’m varied.
And uh, we’ll see ya. Where is the best place now...people can find you on twitter, right? And that’s so people can know what you’re doing.
They can. They can.
It’s exciting.
It’s the one with the big bird. He’s got yellow feathers and his best friend’s a blue little guy who lives in a trash- No, that’s not me.
Oh, that’s not you!
I keep screwing that up. Oh, anyway....
I that though. Have you taken that quiz online, ‘What Sesame Street character are you’? And I got Big Bird.
Really?
Yeah. I thought oh, I’ll never get Big Bird cause I think of Big Bird as being kind of gossipy and in everybody’s business. And apparently I’m Big Bird.
Well, you talk to everybody all the time. That’s gossipy.
That’s true, right? I do. (Sheena laughs). I’m a little gossipy on the air. Yeah, I never would have- It made me have a whole new way of looking at Big Bird. So, you know....
I always look at Big Bird from the ground up. I feel like I’m always craning my neck to see. I don’t want to look up his beak, but he’s just....
Yeah, you don’t want to look up anyone’s beak without permission.
He’s just so tall.
Sheena laughs. Fantastic! Thank you for being here today, my friend. If you missed any of the links for the music, I’m gonna be putting a playlist together and I’m gonna be posting it on LA Radio.com, Sheena Metal Experience.com. And we’re gonna do this again soon with my good friend. Gale, thank you for being here, my friend. It was so much fun. It’s the Sheena Metal Experience on LA Talk Radio.