Episode 150: Late One Night
the memory palace
Nate DiMeo
4.8 • 7.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2019
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia, a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts.
A note on shownotes. In a perfect world, you go into each episode of the Memory Palace knowing nothing about what's coming. It's pretentious, sure, but that's the intention. So, if you don't want any spoilers or anything, you can click play without reading ahead.
Anyway...
Music
We start with 666 from the score to The Omen.
Transition to Fremd by Lambert.
Go to Monster Mash by Bobby "Boris" Pickett.
Hear some of Leonard Berstein's score to Rebel Without a Cause.
Hit Denmark by the Portland Cello Project
And hear some of Musette's On the Green Tape.
Notes
- Bobby's story is covered in a lot of histories of one hit wonders and novelty tunes. But, if you want to really dig in, you should read, Monster Mash: Half Dead in Hollywood, his autobiography.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the memory palace. I'm Nate D'Ameyau. |
| 0:04.3 | The sound of the chains, the creaking door, the lumbering footsteps. |
| 0:11.3 | They'd recorded all that before Bobby had shown up in the studio, right on Sunset Boulevard. |
| 0:16.0 | A stone's throw from Hollywood High. That location alone still had some magic in it for Bobby Picked. |
| 0:22.1 | Only six years since he graduated high school himself. On the wrong side of the tracks in Boston. |
| 0:27.9 | Not long after his ill-fated stint in post-war career, all kitchen-duty and boardelos and |
| 0:33.8 | blown curfews and court marshals. And just months since he'd come out to California to make it. |
| 0:39.2 | To take a chance on his henchmen to the team bully and a beach party movie good looks, |
| 0:43.8 | and his fourth best singer in a five-man boy band voice. But he was starting to find his footing. |
| 0:50.0 | Make friends, make connections. Meet that guy the bar who knows the girl who works on the desk of |
| 0:55.4 | some agent who knows this producer who knows this woman who's one of the mistresses to the aging |
| 1:00.0 | actor. He used to play the buttoned up dad on that sitcom and is trying to pull together his next |
| 1:04.5 | project. That whole hopscotch of happenstance in hustle that can look in the right light, the right |
| 1:11.1 | number of drinks into the right night. Like a straight line to start him. He'd been having a blast. |
| 1:18.5 | But didn't really have that much to show for it beyond story so far. But there he was. |
| 1:24.0 | In an honest to goodness recording studio in Hollywood. He even wore a pork pie hat for the occasion. |
| 1:30.9 | Just like the one Sinatra wore in the photo in the back cover of In the Wii Small Hours of the Morning. |
| 1:36.4 | Now make them a steak. He knew he was no Sinatra. But he knew he didn't need to be. Not for this. |
| 1:43.9 | In a way he'd been preparing to sing this song for years. Since he was a kid walking home with his |
| 1:48.9 | buddies after some creature double feature, some Saturday afternoon. We're cracking them up with |
| 1:54.0 | his impressions at Rivea Beach. This wasn't the dream. According to a song, it was a lark, |
| 2:00.4 | it was a stepping stone. Something he did before he landed that pilot that seen stealing walk on, |
... |
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