Hey everybody. It's Glenn Thresh from Politico's Off Message podcast. I'd like to tell you a story.

Before I was a political journalist, and some people might know this, I was a music writer for

Guitar World magazine under the nom de plume Glenn Thrash. I used to play heavy metal in high

school and college and I was big into metal bands. So I really got to interview a bunch of

good ones, Iron Maiden, my childhood hero,

this guy, Michael Shanker, who used to be in the Scorpions and UFO. But the really coolest

experience I had was I went down to Pantago, Texas, to the studio of a band called Pantera.

And those of you who know the genre genre know who Pantara was,

they were really sort of the best kind of new thrash metal band out there. And they were a

real Texas band. So they would play this kind of country tinged, highly technical, very loud,

very mean, very fast metal. And one of the coolest experience I had is I went

into the studio with these guys and we were talking about Motorhead, which was my favorite band,

and they invited me into the studio and their guitar player, the late, great Daryl Abbott,

handed me his dean, axe, picked up a bass and his brothers played the drums and we played

Asa Spades together.

And I was okay.

And at the end of it, Daryl, whose nickname, by the way, was Dimebag Daryl, said to me,

dude, you're pretty good, man, you're pretty good.

And I felt like I was an inch tall.

I thought this was going to be like one of those bucket list moments

baloney. It's humiliating because I wasn't any good. I mean, I was pretty good, but compared to

these guys, I was a total amateur. Well, I tell you this story because I had the same experience

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