Hi, I'm Take a Power from Providence, Rhode Island. The Sound of Young America is an independent

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visit MaximumFund.org and click on donate. Live on tape from my house in Los Angeles,

I'm Jesse Thorn and this is the Sound of Young America from MaximumFund.org.

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This week on the Sound of Young America mark Oliver Everett of the band The Eels.

They've just released a greatest hits collection as well as a collection of V-sides.

Here's their first hit from 1996. It's called Novakaine for the Soul.

Life is hard and so am I. You better give me something so I don't die.

Life is white and I am black. Jesus and His Lord are coming back.

Each of the Sound of Young America, I'm Jesse Thorn America's radio sweetheart. My guest on the

program Mark Oliver Everett, better known as E, sometimes the man called E, various riffs on the

letter E. He's the front man and sometimes the whole band of the band called The Eels.

They've just released two career spanning retrospectives. One is called Meet the Eels. It's a sort of

greatest hits plus plus a few other interesting things and one is called useless trinkets.

It's a combination of all the various miscellany that has been recorded by Mark and the band over

the past. I guess it would be almost 15 years now. Mark, welcome to the Sound of Young America.

Thank you. Good to be young and American. Isn't it just? Yeah. It's a delight. Thank you for letting me

be part of the young set. So you have in the past year or so you've put together these

compilations. You've released an autobiography and you've just premiered a BBC documentary about

your father. That's a lot of self-reflection to do all at once. Yeah, tell me about it.

How did that come about? I'm so sick of me. I mean it really serves a purpose in that sense

...