Hello.

Hi, John. How are you?

Hi, Merlin.

Merlin, man.

John.

You need a better song for me.

I have a song for you.

Darling, darling, darling, darling, John.

Yeah, all right. That's a... That works for me. Doesn't that kind of... It's got a... What's that... What's that ping pong when you play the black keys only? That's not Phrygian. What do you call that? When you do that... You know the song I mean, that John Lennon song. yeah there's a radio head song too that's all on the black keys that's really good it's the um it's that one that's impossible to learn because

it's it's uh because it was written by geniuses oh god another one i'm talking about yeah i'll bet it's

no surprises now.

No, no, it's the piano one from one of those later records that were... Oh, one of the weird...

Yeah, it lost me a little on those.

It's like... They kept putting out those records that were bleeps and bloops and I...

And I was supposed to not like them, and then every one of them had some great song on it that couldn't have been composed by mere mortals. Really? Just like, oh, you assholes. I'm, hmm, I'm going to write that down. I'm super intrigued by that. Because it took me a really long time. I sound like John Roderick. It took me a long time to warm up to Radiohead. And can you guess... Not a fan. Not a huge... Well, can you guess the reason why? I was way over Radiohead, and I was fucking tired of hearing about how great radiohead was, but more importantly, how I had to... We have to listen to the radio head. Right, right. I was so... I liked the creep song, you know. But you objected to being told that if, that if you didn't like them, you weren't smart. Yes. And that I wasn't, you know, it's weird. It's like, I don't know. It's like admitting you don't read books or something. Yeah. Well, you know, I had a, my radio head, uh, um, like moment. I was, I was working in a magazine store and I was reading the English pop magazine. Was this in the late, the magazine store? I was, I was working in a magazine store back in the, yeah, back in the 60s. Me and me and, me and Lester Bangs and Tom Wolfe.

And I spent, it was the best job in the world.

I had it for, it's basically the longest job I ever kept.

Because I would sit behind this counter in this like newsstand.

And people would come in and say, do you have the local newspaper?

And I would say, what kind of newspaper stand would this be if we didn't have the local newspaper? And then they would like throw their quarter down on the

counter and storm out. And I would, I felt I get to feel superior all day. And I would read the

English pop magazines, you know, like before Mojo and Q became just about repackaging the Beatles every issue.

...