The 500 is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. New Artist/Song influenced by Prince: "Purple Rain" Join us as we remember the life and career of Prince and the music he created in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. This episode is dedicated to the late singer-songwriter Prince, who passed away at the age of 57, and to the people who made him who he was. We love you, Prince! Thank you so much to everyone who helped make this podcast possible, and thank you for being a part of this journey with us. We can't wait to do it again, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it. We'll see you next year, baby! Peace, Love, Blessings, Cheers, and Cheers! -The 500 -Your Hosts: & Featuring: , , and . This episode was produced by Jeff Perla, and produced by with additional engineering by . Music by , Music by: . Artwork by ) and is produced by David Fincher and , with additional mixing and mastering by ). Special thanks to . . is a tribute to Prince. - The 500 is an independent record label based in Minneapolis, MN. and based in St. Louis, MN, MN and is a record label that specializes in producing music and providing soundtracks for local radio and TV and radio stations across the country, radio, and the world. Music is produced in Minneapolis and radio in the Midwest, and also in Los Angeles, Canada, Canada and New York City, New York, NY, NY and Los Angeles. , New York and Boston, NY. is one of the most beautiful cities in the country. -- Thank you for listening to Prince's music and we are so grateful to have him on this podcast. Thank you Prince for all your support and we appreciate you for all the love and support. Thanks for being here, Prince's legacy, Prince, we really appreciate you, you are so much more than you know what you mean so much of you're amazing, you're beautiful, we're so much, you mean it means so much so much. . Thank you, I'm so much , we really mean it, I love you. Thank You, Prince x
00:00:10.000We had all heard about this when we were kids.
00:00:12.000Dude, they're going to sell weed like cigarettes in a carton, and they're going to be pre-rolled, and you're going to be buying it just like you buy a Marlboro.
00:01:22.000Willie's got to be close to 80. I mean, he's got to be in the top 10 of, like, people who have done more for the state of Texas than anyone, right?
00:01:56.000It's very strange when a guy that's that powerful, especially when I was a kid, during my teen years, I mean, that was when He was, you know, really emerging.
00:02:07.000And that's when people were really finding out about him.
00:02:09.000I remember thinking, like, wow, this guy is so interesting.
00:02:12.000He's such a combination of different things.
00:02:14.000Like, there was no one that was like him before.
00:02:17.000I mean, David Bowie was sort of androgynous before, but he took it into a different, new place, and it was mysterious, and he had some great...
00:02:25.000With David Bowie, for me, it always felt more like theater.
00:02:27.000With Prince, it felt more like, that's Prince.
00:05:07.000You know what really kills me though is when you get an artist who people just weren't ready for and they're only shown love after they die.
00:06:34.000He had a consciousness to his comedy or an elevation sort of thing to his comedy where he was trying to change your thought process along with make you laugh.
00:07:42.000Because the bits, if you hear them, and then you hear the finished product, if you hear the starting, you should ideally hear it for the first time.
00:07:57.000Well, people enjoy that process, though, like coming to the Comedy Store and watching people stumble through an idea that they're not exactly sure.
00:08:03.000And then they'll see that bit maybe six months later on a television special or something.
00:08:32.000Well, have you seen some of those things?
00:08:33.000I think it's really stifled some modern performing.
00:08:36.000Have you seen some of the things that Chappelle has done and Hannibal Buress has done?
00:08:41.000They take these bags and you put your cell phone in it when you go in and it's sealed and when you're in the room you literally can't open the bag and then if you leave the room somehow there's some sensor and it allows you to open the bag.
00:08:52.000It seems like a ridiculous idea, but the more I think about it, it seems like it's the kind of thing that people may fight, but then thank you for afterwards.
00:10:09.000But people aren't experiencing it in a pure way.
00:10:12.000You know, you're not going to it and just sitting there and taking in the show.
00:10:16.000Instead, you're going into it and you're aware that you're recording it and you want to make sure you get it in frame and you make sure you've got a good part that's going to look good on your Facebook or wherever the fuck you're going to put it.
00:13:57.000There was a murder that was there just a year ago.
00:13:59.000Somebody got murdered on the front patio at the Comedy Store.
00:14:01.000Where, like, the rich history of weirdness and of comedy, it seems to be in the walls.
00:14:06.000Do you feel like that about the Chateau Marmont?
00:14:08.000Because if you go to that place, I mean, is there one place more synonymous with Hollywood debauchery than that place?
00:14:15.000I mean, that might be the hotel in Hollywood where you think of, like, Johnny Depp's doing blow and Jack Nicholson is banging these hookers and...
00:15:48.000I took seven years off that place, and I went back about a year and a half ago, and to this day, I remember going back again and going, oh, there's that feeling again.
00:17:00.000It's not close to any major metropolis.
00:17:03.000It's like, uh, How else do you explain that?
00:17:09.000There's this guy named Rupert Sheldrake.
00:17:11.000I think his official title, he's an evolutionary biologist, and he thinks that there's memory in everything.
00:17:16.000He thinks you can't extract it, but he thinks that there's memory in wood, there's memory in stone, there's memory in trees.
00:17:23.000That's why people don't like the idea of a haunted house.
00:17:27.000We kind of inherently know that if someone died in a house, some horrific tragedy took place in a house, that house actually has that sadness and that Feeling in it.
00:18:51.000But, like, if somebody gave me, like, if Richard Pryor had a laptop, and he wrote some great shit on his laptop, and then someone sold it, and I had that laptop, I'd be like, holy shit.
00:20:54.000You guys are so interesting because the music is so hard to define.
00:21:00.000There's different styles in different albums, and it seems like you guys go off in these really eclectic ways and paths, and there's so much content.
00:22:16.000Well any form of criticism where people didn't like a performance, even if it's correct, still is...
00:22:21.000Painful for people to hear and if you're hearing if you like put together something and then it gets reviewed by a magazine or something it gets poorly reviewed Yeah, but not being able to take criticism is a sign of weakness You know you have to know that you have to grow into that and And also,
00:23:19.000But that's also what's beautiful about music and art is that it grows with you.
00:23:24.000The best of it can really grow with you.
00:23:29.000Yeah, hearing the right song at the right time can leave like a psychic imprint on you of that song, and you always will associate that song with that moment.
00:23:52.000So that's what made me want to play Music was I wanted to play music with my uncles.
00:23:57.000They sat around in circles and my aunt and they would play Stanley Brothers songs and You know my grandma died.
00:24:05.000We all sang around her her Grave, you know, I mean, it's just like music is a real part of my my family Wow, so it's just always been there That must have been crazy you all sat around her grave and sang.
00:26:52.000I mean, I don't know, like, I couldn't tell you numbers, but, you know, I mean, just like YouTube, you know, they just paid artists fractions of what they should be paying, and It's just it's not treated like a real Valued thing anymore.
00:27:11.000Well, we were discussing this the other day about streaming services that one of the weirdest things about it is all they're selling is Artists work right and that's all you have you can't stream anything unless someone creates it.
00:27:23.000That's all you have so that is what you're selling so Who's making all the money and why?
00:27:34.000And right now, there's a lot of opportunism going on and a lot of people are jockeying for a better slice of the pie and a better position.
00:27:40.000But we were talking about Spotify and all those different things and how little money the artists actually get out of it.
00:27:51.000I mean, can you imagine like going playing gigs at the Moore Theater and then saying, oh, we're just going to pay you streaming money, not the real gig money.
00:30:18.000I mean, it's just intertwined nastiness, and the artist pretty much falls at the bottom of the barrel.
00:30:26.000So the record labels have done the same thing that they used to do with physical records, and now they've done it with the streaming thing.
00:32:01.000It's really unfair, and when you sign a kid to a record deal, it's like...
00:32:06.000They pretty much are signing their life on the line, you know?
00:32:09.000I'm sure you've read that piece that Courtney Love wrote years back.
00:32:13.000I don't think I've ever read anything Courtney Love has written.
00:32:16.000It was pretty famous because a lot of people accused her of using a ghostwriter because it was so well done.
00:32:20.000But it was a piece breaking down, like if you didn't know that she was the one who wrote it, you would go, whoa, this is a scathing review of how the money is distributed in the record business.
00:32:30.000And it was pretty shocking when you look at it from terms of actual revenue to what actually trickles down to the artist.
00:32:37.000The only thing that they're selling, the artist's work, and how these contracts are set up to fuck people over.
00:32:46.000But they've been around forever and there's these giant machines, right?
00:35:33.000For a lot of your songs, you would hear it, and even though it was interesting and unique and different from the previous song, you could tell it was a Black Keys song.
00:35:48.000I think as soon as you add a lot of theory and overproduction and different people overseeing things and looking for the right amount of beats per minute and all that jazz...
00:37:23.000Was it because everything they were doing was completely analog?
00:37:27.000No, because it was a performance and you had to like, not only did you have to come up with the part on the spot, you had to kind of improvise.
00:37:35.000You had to play perfectly behind the beat.
00:37:37.000You had to like, you had to just like, I don't, it's just hard to explain.
00:37:44.000You had to just kind of be able to understand the nuance of everything going on around you.
00:37:59.000Because you don't really make money playing music unless you reach a certain level, and it's so much harder to now than it ever was before.
00:38:08.000But doesn't YouTube and things along those lines, doesn't it help some people reach a higher level quicker without the need for mainstream media?
00:38:47.000Well, the ARCs is just a group of friends of mine who I've made records with for years, guys who make some of my favorite records, Leon Michaels, Richard Swift, Homer Steinweiss, and Nick Moveshahn.
00:39:00.000They're just great musicians, you know?
00:39:03.000And we've made different records together in various forms for different people.
00:39:09.000And then when we had free time, we would record for ourselves, just for fun, just making stuff up.
00:39:17.000Leon and I about a year and a half ago got together just to categorize them, put them in a folder to see what we had.
00:39:23.000And we had like 70 songs that were just sitting there.
00:39:50.000When you go into the studio, do you have any idea, if you're in a session where you might improvise and come up with new stuff, do you have any idea...
00:39:59.000What direction you're gonna go in or do you have a concept or do you just go freeball?
00:40:05.000You kind of I just always Freeball, I guess.
00:40:45.000I mean, that's why it was such a, you know, there's...
00:40:48.000I'll do big sessions now, and there'll be, like, an assistant running around, like, taking notes, like, what guitar I'm using and shit, and I'm like, what is this guy doing?
00:42:21.000And living in Nashville, too, which is a place that is Music City, USA. I mean, you could argue that rock and roll started there with Pretty Woman.
00:42:48.000You know, I had Wheeler Walker Jr. in here the other day, and we were talking about Nashville, and he was talking about the money machine being behind Nashville now and how strange it is that you have some real music in that town, but then you also have this stuff that is just concocted because it looks like it would do numbers in Walmart.
00:43:35.000And I've been in Nashville six years, seven years, something like that.
00:43:38.000But the thing that's so cool about that is they really do...
00:43:43.000Hold up that infrastructure and like if I run out of tape, I make a phone call and somebody delivers me reel-to-reel tape in like 10 minutes.
00:46:19.000Well, I remember when they figured out a way to have some sort of buffering so that when you were playing the CD, you could actually jump around a little bit and move and it wouldn't skip.
00:52:37.000And he has some crazy sound system set up on his lake where he can get in a boat, allegedly.
00:52:42.000Someone told us this, I believe, on the podcast.
00:52:45.000And he gets out on this boat and he has the sound system set up where the acoustics are perfect when he's in the middle of this pond that he has.
00:52:54.000And so he has these speakers set up on the side and around the pond, and it just blasts the perfect sound that echoes off the water.
00:53:03.000He's the reason why I had to quit working security at Great Woods in Mansfield, Massachusetts, when I was 19, because a riot broke out during a Neil Young concert, because people were lighting fires.
00:53:45.000I walked out of there like fuck this place and I'll never forget the last time I worked was during a Neil Young concert and as I was leaving people were punching people and there was fire and I was like I gotta get the fuck out of here yeah I've worked at one of those amphitheaters Blossom Music Center oh yeah where's that outside of Cleveland Richfield another Ohio boy right there you know Blossom Music Center yeah Columbus I used to me and my buddies used to be the guys in the parking lot with the flags Why are so many bad motherfuckers from Ohio?
00:55:43.000A rival for another astronaut's affection.
00:55:45.000Yeah, she attacked a rival for another astronaut's affection at the Orlando International Airport on Monday after driving more than 900 miles from Houston to meet her flight.
00:59:50.000Well, I just always hope that when people talk about stuff like this and all these videos that are getting out and people, the awareness of it, that it'll bounce back the other way.
01:01:27.000But it's essentially, I didn't know that, but it seems like kind of the same thing where you take out people in power and then it's just chaos.
01:01:35.000Well, we were there about a year and a half ago and there was a guy who I was talking with down there that used to be a cop and now he was a limo driver.
01:01:44.000And he was telling me what it was like.
01:02:46.000And then when that judge got caught in Pennsylvania for taking young kids and locking them up in jail for money, and that he was getting some sort of a kickback from these detention institutes where they would send young juvenile detention.
01:03:00.000Man, just to know that there's people out there that are working in justice that would be willing to take money and sacrifice some young kid's future.
01:03:07.000I mean, that's really, really scary that these are the people that we've led justice to.
01:05:36.000I mean, I'm a boxing fan, and when somebody walks into the ring and they've got a lot of muscles, I pretty much automatically know they're going to lose.
01:06:25.000Charlie Murphy had one of the funniest stories ever told on this podcast.
01:06:28.000We told about how he pulled up to Mike Tyson's house with a bunch of his friends and they were all limos and nobody wanted to get out of the car because Mike Tyson was on the front lawn with a fucking lion.
01:06:39.000He's got like a lion and he's got an actual real lion and nobody wanted to get it out of the cars.
01:08:48.000He is the sweetest dog I have ever had in my life.
01:08:51.000And the reason why is because the guy who raised him, when he described it to me, he's like, it's all about the parents.
01:08:58.000And it's all about not letting parents that exhibit any weird behavior breed.
01:09:03.000He's like, if you're going to breed like a really nice dog, you just make sure that the dogs are always friendly and only friendly dogs breed.
01:09:09.000And if they're not friendly, don't allow them to breed.
01:12:45.000We had this one case where, I mean, it's happened multiple times to us, but we had this one case where some casino did an advertisement, and the owner of the casino posted something on Twitter or something like that,
01:14:23.000Well, it seems like it's got to be good for the young up-and-coming guys and gals to be included in these lineups and people to be able to experience maybe some bands.
01:14:34.000I know for Honey Honey it was a big deal to be able to experience some bands that maybe you weren't aware of before and say, oh, let me follow them now.
01:17:26.000Do you find that in the age of the internet that you are getting better crowds in different places?
01:17:32.000That you're getting people that understand what you're doing and are big fans and they're all over the place now instead of like in urban pockets?
01:17:54.000Because we can hit major markets in Australia, Western Europe, North America, we can do it in South America, and then, like, by the time we finish that, You can kind of do those again.
01:18:18.000Well, I would just think that maybe that would, especially for fucking around and creating new stuff, sometimes getting a new look, you know, and being in a new place and performing for a new kind of, it gives you a new feel for what you're doing.
01:19:43.000But it's like when a person hears someone like you that is just in love with what they do and produces amazing stuff and just has a passion about it.
01:20:28.000The three first minutes of a movie never hit you like some songs do.
01:20:32.000They just tell a story in this intense, moving way with music and sound and the soul behind the way a person sings the words.
01:20:43.000And to hear from a guy like you that that process is so intoxicating and that you love it so much and that you still, after all these years, do it and love it and can't wait to get back in there and you want to be productive and that you work all the time and that you work at it and you don't even consider it, that's like it.
01:20:59.000That's what everybody wants to hear, man.
01:21:00.000Because when you hear a guy like you talk about that, I guarantee you, this podcast will be heard by over a million people.
01:21:07.000And out of those million people, thousands of them are going to start new projects and get inspired to do things just by hearing you do this.
01:22:26.000But I definitely have that and it's like, it's really controlled the way that I've made all the decisions in my life.
01:22:31.000Well, I've got to think as a young man in such a music-rich environment that you describe your childhood and growing up like that, I mean, that had to have sparked and fueled some areas of your creativity that just led you to embrace it the way you have.
01:22:49.000I mean, it seems like a really fortunate situation that you grew up in.
01:26:59.000Yeah, because what a concussion is, is you're concussed, like the impact.
01:27:04.000It doesn't have to hit you in the head.
01:27:05.000A lot of concussions happen when people get hit in the chest, and then all of a sudden they'll be depressed, and their mood swings, their cortisol levels are all fucked up, and they'll find out that they're concussed.
01:27:15.000Sort of like whiplash from the movement of the brain.
01:29:55.000I think Terrence is going to win it, but that's a really good fight, and I'd love to see that Terrence Crawford isn't scared to fight anybody, even the best.
01:30:03.000Terrence is something special, and also that he fights from the orthodox stance, but just as good, if not better, from the southpaw, and he'll switch up on guys.
01:30:16.000It's almost like he's feeling you out as an orthodox, and then when he knows he can fuck you up, he switches over and starts lighting you up.
01:33:40.000There's a lot of that that doesn't make any sense.
01:33:43.000Deciding what a world champion is and who owns the right to say world champion, that their guy is or this guy is, and not have them fight against each other.
01:33:51.000Rival promotions, they don't want to get together in ink deals, they don't want to lose their superstar.
01:33:56.000But what if UFC had a company that was just as big as UFC? Because that's kind of essentially what happens in boxing.
01:34:03.000You don't talk about it in UFC because there's no one else who really can compete.
01:34:06.000If you want to do MMA, you do MMA. UFC, right?
01:34:09.000You know, Bellator's just not quite as big, but like, with boxing, there are just all these promoters, Top Rank and Arum, and that, they never cross-promote, you know what I mean?
01:34:20.000It's just, it really does a disservice to the sport, I think.
01:34:23.000Well, it certainly can, because they know that they have a guy who can make a lot of money, and if that guy loses to somebody, then they're fucked, and they lose their big guy, and...
01:34:31.000That's the other thing I kind of hate about boxing, is that if you lose one fight, somehow you're tainted beyond belief.
01:36:07.000I mean that one loss to Mayweather, I think he probably learned more about what can happen to him in a fight than all those fights where he beat guys down.
01:36:16.000Yeah, I can't imagine the pressure that Canelo's under.
01:36:20.000I want to see Canelo and Gennady Golovkin.
01:36:53.000I think Canelo is, like you said, he's a little slower and he's just such a bruiser that he's got that sort of style to him that he just loads up and bangs at guys.
01:37:29.000And, you know, it kind of sucks because it's hard to get your friends into boxing when it's like, check it out, this is supposed to be the best fight of this millennium.
01:37:42.000Can we watch something else, you know?
01:37:43.000Well, he just fights so safe and so smart, and he's better.
01:37:47.000He's better at fighting that style than you are dealing with that style.
01:37:51.000And so when guys fight him, they just can't get to him, and they fall into this sort of defensive shell, like eight or nine rounds in, where they just...
01:38:34.000Maybe he was waiting for the Manny Pacquiao fight, like maybe waiting to see if it generated a lot of income and if Manny was back and people loved him.
01:38:42.000Because you've got to kind of give Manny a chance to rebound, like after the Juan Manuel Marquez fight would get knocked out.
01:38:47.000You've got to give him a chance to take some time off, fight against Chris Algieri, look good, and then you can market the fight.
01:42:09.000I'm not that familiar with his culture and exactly how, but I know for a fact, a lot of Catholics, you know, the Philippines is just overwhelmed with Christianity and Catholicism.
01:42:21.000So he probably thought he was actually trying to save people in some strange way, you know, in his brainwashed mind.
01:46:31.000I mean, John Lee Hooker was really influential in Africa.
01:46:33.000Like, his records went over there, and people like Ali Farkature, who's like one of the greatest African guitar players, heard his records and, like, inspired him, you know?
01:46:43.000I mean, yeah, it's just that there's something about it that's, like, some of those guys, it's just undeniably awesome.
01:46:49.000And you don't really know how to describe it.
01:46:51.000There's, like, the ingredients are so minimal.
01:49:28.000Whether they're from Mississippi or they're like a classical composer from Germany, there's a thing that all these guys have in common and it's like a sense of self.
01:49:39.000Anybody I've ever met has a real, just a confidence that, you know, even though they may not be the best at certain things, they can like bring out the best in themselves, you know, and that's like enough.
01:51:05.000I think that's really helpful to a record.
01:51:08.000Some of my favorite records, whether they're hip-hop or whether they're rock and roll or whatever, they're generally made pretty quickly.
01:51:16.000Big grand masterpieces that were labored over, I don't tend to listen to that much.
01:51:24.000I'll listen to it and it'll be maybe I'll hear something sonically that oh that's cool that they did that but then like at the end of the day I always go and put on that one record that that one guy did in a day you know that's the one I always want to live with that's my desert island you know My desert island shit.
01:51:42.000Well, listen, man, thank you very much for doing this.
01:51:44.000I really appreciate you coming in here, and I appreciate what you do, too.