The Culture War #2 - Pete Parada, Former Offspring Drummer Replaced Over Vax Mandate
The Culture War EP.2 - Pete Parada, Former Offspring Drummer Replaced Over Vax Mandate. As vax mandates swept the entertainment industry few were willing to stand up and speak out.
Tim Pool talks with Pete parada about music under covid mandates and how he ended up leaving the Offspring
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We are hanging out here with Pete Perotta, famous drummer, formerly of The Offspring.
And there's a lot of stuff I want to talk to you about, but I guess it's like the first interview you've ever done following the news situation you found yourself in.
We're definitely going to talk about it, Vax Mandates and being in the band.
But no, yeah, I thought it'd be cool, and I appreciate you coming on and talking about it, but there's probably a bunch of other stuff we could talk about for sure.
The gist of the story, I guess, is you played in the band The Offspring, which I'm sure many people have heard of, for 14 years?
Yep.
14 years, and then they unceremoniously fired you over the Vax Mandates.
Well, we will, but I want to make sure everybody who's tuning in, now they understand the big cultural context, I suppose.
But I'm definitely interested in talking to you about the music industry in general, and I want to start off by telling you a quick story, which is just really crazy.
So, what is today?
It's Friday.
Wednesday night, after we wrapped Timcast IRL, I go back to my house.
I don't know if you heard me say this, but I'll tell you the story anyway.
And I'm getting ready for bed.
I go into my bedroom with my girlfriend, right?
And I turn the TV on.
It's a smart TV, meaning like you turn a smart TV on, you got to pick an app.
Yeah, I was like, and then, well, at first I see Dexter, he's the lead singer of The Offspring, he's singing, Killboy Powerhead, and I'm like, of course I know the song, and then it cuts to you playing the drums, and I was like, wow, that's really weird.
But anyway, I just thought it was weird that you were coming here to talk about these issues and a bunch of other stuff, and sure enough, that weird serendipitous thing happened.
We'll get into it now that I've wasted enough people's time.
I'm reading the news.
It was weird when the story broke because it actually didn't get a lot of coverage initially.
It was like music blogs and offspring fans and there was murmuring with the music scene that the drummer for The Offspring had been fired for being an anti-vaxxer.
And then, you know, of course I saw the establishment saying things like anti-vax conspiracies or like, you know, it was crazy to read these stories about you because I actually looked at the story, I looked at your Instagram posts and there were elements of the media saying he was pushing anti-vax conspiracies or was refusing to get the vaccine and that was totally wrong.
So long story short of it, you get fired after 14 years.
Let's just have you tell the story that everyone's dying to hear, I guess.
I mean, basically, you know, spring 2021, you know, we put out a new record.
And so we spent all those months in the spring.
I was out in L.A.
with everybody interacting totally fine, recording music videos, promotional stuff all through May.
Everything was fine.
No issues.
And then in June, all of a sudden, like COVID protocol controls, whatever you want, kind of comes to a head.
And I get a phone call from their manager, and it was just the most, like, unnecessarily abusive, threatening call I've ever received, like, just screaming at me of, you know, you need to do this, and I was like, well, you know, I talked to my doctor about it, I have a medical exemption, and didn't care, didn't matter, like, he just made it perfectly clear.
I had had like, I had some gentler conversations with them about, like, my feelings and my thoughts of where I was at and my medical, you know, history and my concerns about, you know, going into this.
And I, you know, the last we left it was, alright, you know, sounds like we're gonna have more conversations about this.
You know, to be continued.
Yeah, like it didn't feel definitive, they didn't... No, no, it felt like we had opened a conversation that was going to keep going and then a week later, out of nowhere, I get this call that's just, you know, annihilation.
And it was just, you know, so he made it very clear by the end of that conversation that I was to get the shot or I was out.
And so I wrote to the band that night and said, again, listed off my feelings on everything, but also pointed out like, You know, you can fire me over this, I get that, but you should know this guy's representing you.
He's abusive, threatening, and if he's being like this to me, I can only imagine how he is treating the crew.
There's plenty of times where we'd go on tour, and I'd been there for 10 years, and you show up at the venue and there's a picture of the original four guys.
Really?
It just happens.
You can't control what some promoter or somebody's going to grab and throw up.
You'd think a band would be like, dude, that guy's not in the band anymore.
But so anyway, so you get this call from the manager and this is, it really is crazy at this point, in my mind, how the vax mandates are basically gone, the mask mandates are basically gone.
And it's almost like people have forgotten just how fucked up it really was.
Like people kicking you out of businesses, bans kicking out after 14 years.
So you didn't just decide one day, you're like, I'm not getting that vaccine.
You actually talked to a doctor.
Like that was the big deal is that You had a medical risk or something?
Yeah, I have a history of Guillain-Barre syndrome, but I think a lot of people take my medical exemption and they like to point at it and go, look, this guy had a legitimate excuse to not get it and blah, blah, blah.
But to me, it's like I'm not looking to carve out a space for me here.
I don't feel there's any reason to, if you don't want to get the vaccine, any reason is legitimate to me.
It's not.
My medical exemption, all that did was not accepted.
And all that did was show that those don't matter.
I think your story, well, one thing I'll say for me was particularly impactful is because The Offspring is basically the first band I was ever introduced to in terms of like music.
Obviously, my mom had Zeppelin and Grand Funk Railroad and classic rock stuff, Three Dog Night.
So I, of course, CCR, we can name all the classic rock stuff.
But when I was a kid, the first album I ever got was Americana.
So anyway, I hear this story and what was shocking to me is, for one, that caught my attention.
Like when I heard this, I'm like, I play The Offspring in the skate park all the time, like still one of my favorite bands, but now ideologically, one of my least favorite bands.
Not only did you have, so there's three factors, obviously, I like The Offspring.
One is people should make their own medical decisions.
They shouldn't be forced to do it.
The second was you actually had a medical issue, which made it particularly egregious for them to try and force you to get something which could hurt you.
And then the third huge thing was, You're playing music with them for 14 years and it seems like they just snapped their fingers and erased you from their lives without a thought.
It was crazy to me to hear a story because how do you do that to someone?
Even if you were like some virulent anti-vax conspiracy theorist as they try to claim, if one of my friends of 14 years came to me and started saying crazy stuff, I'd be like, dude, you need to sit down.
Yeah, I mean, that was the worst part of it for me was that because we had we had a lot of good years together, like we had a great time, like traveled the world.
Our kids grew up together.
Our wives were really close.
And so the hardest part was just overnight that we were just gone.
And not just hard for me, but for my whole family.
Like, to explain to my kids, like, we're not going to see these people anymore.
And just to never hear from anybody again was, you know, over one issue.
Yeah, I mean, it was like, well, there's venues that aren't gonna let you in.
And I'm like, well, what venues?
Well, we don't know yet.
Okay, well, there's borders you can't cross.
Well, what borders?
Well, we don't know yet.
I'm like, well, that's my point.
We don't know yet.
I like this seemed a little early to jump.
But, you know, through the fall of 2021, Was just US dates festivals and stuff and there was no show that I could not have done on that tour Even just with my medical exemption.
I had bands reaching out to me from the same festivals going We're not vaccinated.
We're on the same show with your band.
There's no reason like this is stupid.
Why are you not here?
This doesn't make any sense, but That's so weird.
I think the whole industry, though, went into this mode of, you know, everyone wanted to get back to work.
And I don't begrudge anybody needing to get back to work and make money.
But the fact that everybody was performing caution was alarming.
Like, it was just, you know, I know big tours that when someone got sick and the crew You know, big tours that were mandating everyone have this, the crew member gets sick, they don't park them in a hotel for two weeks and quarantine them, they put them on a plane knowing they tested positive and send them home.
So we had gone down, we were in South America like the previous October, and a show got canceled.
I forget why.
So we went down to make up a show.
Oh, there was like some political rioting or something going.
Yeah, there was like, when we were there in October, it was like the anniversary of some political thing, and don't quote me on it, but... Oh man, it's chilly.
Yeah, and they were like, yeah, maybe we're not gonna do this one.
So we're like, okay.
So, we went back in March to make up that show, and then, you know, well, if we're going all the way down there, let's do a couple more shows.
So, we get down there, we make up, or we're supposed to do an acoustic show.
You know, the COVID thing is just starting to hit.
And the acoustic show gets canceled, but we still have a regular rock show the next night.
So we're all there and just kind of like, you know, nobody knows what's going on.
It's sketchy and we're looking at the tour manager.
He's got flights on hold and like, what are we going to do?
And then we go forward and we play the show and it was just, it felt weird to play the show and look out and there's like 5,000 people sweating all over each other.
I had friends that were in other countries too, and I was like, you need to come home now.
It's not even about the severity of the illness, the disease.
At the time, we were all really freaked out about it, because we had these videos of people in China collapsing in the street.
So no one knew what the hell was going on.
But I remember, we had this little, our original studio for Tim Cast IRL was in the basement of my house in New Jersey.
And then right across from it we had a TV and a couch and we wrapped the show and then turned the TV on, or it might have been before the show, I'm not sure, and there's Donald Trump saying we're going to be stopping travel.
You know, I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was like out of or into the country is being suspended for certain people.
If you're American, you can come in.
And then I think it was to Europe or something like that.
And at that moment, it just really, it felt really serious.
And then we had a conversation.
With everybody in the house, like, we're in a peninsula, like, New Jersey.
There's a bridge to our left, and if shit hits the fan, we are on this peninsula.
So we need to figure out if we need to be somewhere else, or do we bunker down, or do we buy supplies?
Like, what does this mean?
And it just, it's crazy to think that we're past this now and people, I do feel like most people have forgotten what that, what March was like and that feeling of what was going on.
I couldn't imagine what it would be like being on tour out of the country, just like, I guess we're going to keep doing our thing.
And then eventually they're like, you need to go home.
Every video about it got demonetized and I'm like, what is this?
What's going on?
And then all of a sudden they hit me up like March and they were like, no, we're bringing all your monetization back and you're allowed to talk about it now.
Yeah, I mean, everybody was just home, kind of sorting out, you know, are we gonna... just wait and see, right?
We were supposed to go to Australia in April, that got cancelled.
And then, you know, we always go to Europe in the summer, we had shows in probably end of May, early June, that's coming up, and we're like, wow.
Can't go on that long, right?
It's crazy, we're gonna shut everything down for two weeks, or for one month, and then it was like, now Europe's out, and it's like, oh, okay, so now that's happening.
And for us, our revenue tanked in March, and then slowly started to climb back up, and that was a scary thing.
I was like, oh wow, we do this show, we do this YouTube stuff, and we were making money, then all of a sudden we weren't.
For us, we were fortunate enough that the podcasting space, everybody's locked in their houses and they got nothing else to do, so they're listening to shows like this.
So let me ask you, man, you're wearing a black hoodie and you've got, I guess, what is that, like plaid?
I'm asking these questions because I wanted to get into how anti-punk rock everything's become, but I'm curious just the context of what's your background growing up?
I grew up in upstate New York about an hour south of Rochester in a little tiny town called Arkport, and there's about 1,200 people there.
I had 23 kids in my high school graduating class.
And so where I grew up you know you had whatever you could get on the radio and you know if you were lucky you could get a station from Rochester that was playing more rock music but so I grew up on like metal like 80s 80s rock 80s metal.
Anything that yeah I mean that was my thing I loved that and you know I had a drum set my dad I had got me a drum set when I was in sixth grade and I didn't do much with it.
I didn't think a lot of like, oh, you can make a career of this.
You know, you didn't think of that stuff in that town.
But when I was in high school, I had a band because some guy came up to me in the hallway at school one day and was like, oh, You got a drum set.
You know, there's a new kid that moved to town.
He plays guitar.
We're gonna form a band.
We're coming to your house because you're the only person with a drum set in town.
So it was like, okay.
There you go.
So we started playing and, you know, pretty terrible and just trying to figure it out and put a couple beats together.
And so, um, when I was 16, a friend of mine dragged me out to, cause there was like my tiny town and then there was the town next, next to us with about 10,000 people in it.
And that's where my dad was a music teacher.
And so, um, there was this band from that high school that was playing and my friend dragged me out and the, and I'm like, yeah, okay, I'll go.
And here's this drummer that was playing exactly like everybody that I saw on TV or MTV and like all the stuff that I was like, oh, I couldn't do that.
Like, you know, I had a block and I'm looking at this guy just shredding and I'm like, oh, like light switch went off.
I'm like, well, if he can do that, I can do that.
And I go home and I said to my dad, I'm like, you have a drummer in your band named Mick Palmisano?
And he's like, oh yeah, he's a really good drummer.
I'm like, Why have you never mentioned this person to me?
And my dad, bless his heart, he goes, what?
You've never been very serious about it.
And he's like, he's a really serious drummer.
So I meet Mick, and long story short, like the next day I just start practicing.
Like, I'm like, he can do it, I can do it.
I'm working on everything.
You know, improving by leaps and bounds and get to be friends with him.
And he's moving to LA to go to music school.
And so I'm like, I want to go to LA and go to music school.
So a year later, I moved out there with him.
And, you know, went to, you know, yeah, I went from teeny tiny town to Hollywood sight unseen.
I'd never been out there.
We drove out together and we get to LA and I'm just like, terrified.
How did you end up playing, I mean, you're, I'm watching this video the other night, Killboy Powerhead, and there's gotta be like, I don't know, it's like 30, 40,000 people, it was massive.
Like, how do you, you just show up in Hollywood and then how did you get from there to there, you know what I mean?
Like, we'd go to the grocery store, he'd put something in his cart, I would put the same thing in my cart.
- I'll eat whatever you eat. - Yeah, and he looks at me, he's like, okay, 'cause he was a year older than me and he'd already been there.
And he's like, all right, I get it, I get it.
And took me under his wing, showed me how to survive basically and got me through school.
And so I go through music school, I get out of there and then I start bussing tables and trying to play in bands.
I was in a few different bands, and I was roommates with Ray Luzier, who's the drummer for Korn now.
Oh, wow.
But he was one of my teachers at school, and so we got to be buddies, and he's like, hey, I need a roommate when I graduate, and I was like, okay, great.
So, moving with him, and he was a real busy drummer, so he was, kicking me down stuff that he didn't have time for or didn't work in his schedule.
So I started playing with a few groups that way.
And did that for a few years.
And I'm working at this rehearsal studio and the band Face to Face comes in, and the punk rock band, right?
And I don't know anything about punk rock, and they're there auditioning drummers, and I'm just like, oh, whatever, it's not my thing.
And they get a guy and go on tour, and a friend of mine ended up tour managing them on the tour, and he calls me up a few days on the tour, and he's like, what's the matter with you?
And I was like, what are you talking about?
He's like, this band was just auditioning drummers under your nose, and you didn't play with them.
He's like, you know, you're an idiot.
I'm like, well, I don't know punk rock.
And he goes, well, He's like, yeah, I know they're punk rock, but they're looking for a rock drummer.
They want to make a different record.
They just borrowed this guy to do this tour.
When they get off the road, they're auditioning more people.
I'm putting you on the list.
And I was like, OK.
So they come back in to the studio, and I don't have any money.
So I just went in there.
I got keys to everybody's room.
I go in.
I stole their live record out of their merch box and learned the whole album, right?
I loved that band and we had put out a record that their fans really hated and then kind of went back and made a record that I was really proud of that I thought was really good.
trying to kinda get get back in in good form with the fans and stuff and it was really hard and and uh you know sometimes in bands there's a lot of drama and and eventually the drama there outweighed my love for the music to the point where I laughed and I didn't I I was so bummed out and dejected about music I was like I told my wife I'm like I don't want to play music anymore I'm done with this I'm gonna go I'm going to work at Costco.
I'm going to go be a paramedic.
I'm going to go do anything else.
And she's like, yeah, okay, sure.
Why don't you just take a break for a minute?
You know, and so, um, kind of hung out for a couple months and got called for, um, this bigger metal band was looking for a drummer and I was like, Oh, I'll do that.
I want to play some metal.
I'm tired of punk rock.
I don't, I don't want to do this anymore.
And then my buddy, my best friend, called me up, and he's a guitar tech to the stars, and he's like, hey, I know that band.
You're not joining that band.
Like, absolutely not.
Like, you think you had drama and saves the day.
Like, do not do that.
He's like, we'll find you something better.
I'm like, yeah, okay, cool.
And at the same time, I get a call about go audition for The Offspring.
And I'm like, I don't want to play punk rock.
I don't want to do it.
So I just ignored it.
And then come back around about a month later from somebody else, like, hey, Offspring's looking for a drummer.
I'm gonna put your name in.
I'm like, I don't want to do that.
I'm not doing punk rock.
Comes back around a third time, and my wife is finally like, hey, why don't you just go and meet them?
And she's like, I know you're still sore about punk rock and whatever, but why don't you go and get the job and then decide if you want it or not?
And I was like, all right, that's pretty good advice, because my wife's pretty smart.
And so I go down and I meet with them, and it made sense.
And so I go back down for, I think I had four auditions with them.
And I'm living up north, Northern California in Chico, where my wife is from.
And so I'm flying down every time they want another audition.
And so I go down and play two songs.
Seems good.
They call, come back next week, play these other four songs.
Okay.
And then every time I'm coming back down, I'm seeing all these other drummers, and some people are on the first two songs, some people are on four songs.
They are leaving no stone unturned for people.
And I get in there, and this one guy, I'm sitting in the hallway and listening, and I'm like, oh wow, this guy is shredding, this is great.
And I'm like, sounds familiar, but I don't know.
And then they get to the fast song, and I was like, oh, not a punk rock guy, not his thing, but still really good.
And the door opens, and it's my old roommate Ray Luzier.
He walks out and he's sweating, he looks at me, he goes, oh, of course you're here.
He's like, oh, this isn't my thing, whatever.
And then at the same time, the Korn gig was floating around, and I wanted the Korn gig.
But it was really funny, that's how you bump into people So we get through this portion of, you know, how you make it to this point and punk rock and all that stuff.
And the reason I wanted to fill in that context is the self-titled album from The Offspring has a song called Kill the President.
when they reissued the album because, well, when you're more, I don't know, underground punk rock, you do songs like that.
And then when you're mainstream, double platinum, triple platinum or whatever, maybe you don't say kill the president.
You know what I mean?
So it was like, it was very obvious to me, even as a kid, you know, I get introduced to Americana, the first album from the, my first album from them, which then instantly I buy Ixnay, which then instantly I buy Ignition, And then I never bought the self-titled.
My friends had that one.
And then we're listening to this being like, oh, these are the roots of this band that we're all big fans of.
And I'm like, My friend's like, they got rid of the song.
Like, the industry was mandating that, you know, everyone from the promoters down, you know, promoters put pressure on the tour managers, put pressure on the bands, put pressure on the crew.
Like, everybody had to do, like, well, like I was saying, like, performing caution.
But we're protecting profits.
We're not protecting people.
Every band was doing this, but a lot of other people in my position just kind of like, you know, left or were replaced and didn't say anything because it's...
You know, there's loss of, I don't want to lose other opportunities.
I'll just, I'll just leave quietly.
Right.
But for me, we, when we made our statement, it was three, threefold was number one, I didn't want to have to have the same conversation individually with all my friends and family and people like, you know, they're about to go on tour.
I'm getting hit up for tickets to these shows that I know I'm not going to be at.
And so I'm like, well, I don't only want to have this conversation once, but number two, It felt like somebody needed to say something about what was happening, because if I'm getting squeezed here, then everyone's getting squeezed here.
And everybody says, oh, why don't you get a fake card and stuff.
I know plenty of people working on fake cards.
I'm twofold on that issue as well.
I don't have a problem with someone doing what, we're all in an impossible situation and whatever anybody needs to do to take care of themselves and their family, they should do it.
But would it be nicer if more people spoke up?
Sure, it certainly would help, but both things can be true for me.
Well, this is what bums me out is I'm a little kid.
I get this album, Americana, and the tab book.
I get this Squier Fender guitar.
And I start learning about Dexter Holland, the lead singer, founder, I guess, OG, him and noodles.
And he's working on a degree in microbiology.
Like, wow, this dude's sticking it to the man, succeeding in the industry, like in this space he's criticized, and also working on a degree, I'm like, As a little kid, I was like, "That's so cool.
He's a cool guy." I don't want to say it was a role model or anything like that, because I didn't really have anybody that I looked up to and had posters of.
It was just like, "That's really cool." We need leaders.
I understand what you're saying.
A nurse, a drummer, somebody who is trying to get by and protect their family and live their life is in a difficult position.
What can they do?
If they speak up, what's the impact they can have?
If the offspring, multi-platinum, decades of success in the industry, still to this day, the most sales for an independent album.
This is an indie release that will never be beaten.
And if anyone, anyone could have spoken up and said, don't fuck with us, it could have been him.
It could have been the offspring.
He's rich already.
He's got fuck you money.
And he could have he could have done man.
If he was worried about staff, employees, and he didn't want to be a leader, he could have said, I get it Pete, this sucks, we're not going to let you down.
If the venues don't let you in, we're going to have to get somebody else, but we're here with you the whole way, right?
You could've cut the job, you could've been doing the studio stuff.
I mean, 14 years, does that mean nothing?
So I'm like, the bare minimum could've been like, bro, we will take care of you, don't worry about it.
We are wealthy, successful, famous rock stars.
Couldn't even do that.
What I would expect, if it were me, if I had that kind of pull, and I'm playing a show, and you're the offspring, You say to the promoter, I wonder what the headlines going to be when one of your top bands pulls out because of what you did to our drummer.
Make your choice.
We needed any leader.
Because what you're saying is true.
Everybody's getting leaned on.
Everyone's getting pressure.
They're going to each and every person, every band.
And I've said it over and over again.
If one rock star, if one band, one headliner said, we will pull out.
Well, the thing was there were a handful of people that did that.
You know, like you got Eric Clapton.
I'm not going to play a segregated audience.
You've got people like John Rich and Kid Rock, but even somebody like Dorothy.
I don't know if you know her.
She's like a metal rock singer.
She was you know To me like her stand.
She's like I'm not forcing anything on my crew We're not playing shows that force it on on the audience like for somebody of that size to really put it on the line Where it would cost her something like to me that that meant a lot like I think she's really cool That's awesome to hear I mean yeah And so I if if these people if somebody hadn't started pushing back a little bit.
I'm sure there's more that's off the top of my head that's all I got but You know, I don't know where we'd be right now.
Like I saw the protocols on one of the biggest tours that went out in, I guess it was 2021.
Um, and I saw the, you know, a friend of mine was a tech on for one of the bands on it and emailed me the specs that the crew received.
And it was insane.
It was like multiple bands on the bill.
Each band is in their own bubble.
They will not interact with the other bands inside your band bubble.
We'll be broken up into smaller bubbles like the, you know, the band itself travels in one bubble.
The crew is in a bubble.
Inside the crew bubble, if you are stage left, that is your bubble.
These are the people that you interact with.
Your bubble will move through the backstage areas together.
And it was crazy.
I'm like, you know, it's hard enough to be on tour already and to be boiled down to here's the four people you're allowed to interact with for the next two months while you're on.
Like, I'm like...
It just sounded like prison to me.
I'm like, how is anyone enjoying this?
I understand people want to make money.
I get that.
But, you know, it's hard to be on tour.
Like, not boo-hoo, oh man, I traveled the world.
But, you know, you're away from your family.
Yeah.
And a lot of it is, yeah, you've got the hour or two that you're on stage every night, but then you got to fill the rest of your day.
I mean, people think everyone gets into drinking and stuff because it's a party, but it's like, oh man, it's lonely.
They equate seeing your show and that good feeling they get They assume you have that feeling.
I get it.
You go see a performance, you go see your favorite band, they play your favorite songs, you're singing along, you're cheering, and they're like, hello Chicago!
And you're like, yes, this is awesome!
You think that feeling you have is the feeling they have, but those guys on stage are like, I have played this song every day, sometimes multiple times, said the same things to the audience every single time.
This is the 13th time I've sung this song this week.
So they don't have that feeling.
They're away from their families.
They're working.
And it's like, and that's the thing too, I mean, I write songs, full disclosure for everybody who's listening, obviously we've done songs together.
We just filmed a music video, so we've got more songs coming out.
It is an honor and a privilege, good sir.
But I don't get that feeling from songs I write.
You know, the feeling that I get when I listen to a song from one of my favorite bands, I never get a feeling for my own song, you know?
I don't know if you feel similarly or... I think it's hard.
I mean, to your point about, you know, doing the same thing on stage every night, it's Yes, you might be playing that song for the thousandth time, but somebody in that audience is there for the first time.
And so that's the mindset that I think most performers would go to is like, regardless of what's happening for me for the next 90 minutes, I'm turning that off because these people came to see a good show and I'm gonna give them that.
I might go back to my hotel room and cry myself to sleep later because I'm just having the worst week ever.
But for now my gig is this like I think about like Broadway performers that you know eight shows a week these people are Not just like running through their set list, but they've got to emotionally get to the same place sometimes twice a day on weekends with their matinee shows and stuff and I'm like I
I've got friends that do that work and I'm just blown away by like how do you emotionally go there every day over and over and get back to that and then still just wake up the next day like oh let's go do it again like it's any kind of performer yeah there's repetition in your art form but you know you got to find a way to make that
Fresh even if you're tired of it somebody paid to be there to enjoy it So you got a you got to find a way to make it enjoyable for them.
There's that Andrew Tate clip by reference periodically He says whether I'm happy or sad Doesn't matter.
I got to wake up.
I got to do the exact same thing.
No matter what.
Yeah, and You know aside from all the controversy around him.
He's got good clips and he's completely right about that and If you wake up and you're like, I'm sad so I'm not gonna work, you're not gonna succeed.
But that's the thing too, the point I was kinda getting to with touring and doing rock and all that stuff and being a rock star.
I've not done that, but I used to travel, I would be on a plane twice a week when I worked for Vice and when I worked for Fusion, flying around the world, going to stories.
Sometimes we call them reccies, reconnaissance.
It's like, okay, we gotta go down to this area and meet some sources and see if the story's actually there.
So I'm in random places with no friends half the time, but I was lucky enough to have Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change.
He's been on the show several times.
For him, it was like, win-win.
We've been good friends for a real long time, but he's like, I'll sleep on the floor of the hotel room you got, save money, and then we'll hang out.
And you know, it worked in that I had a friend who was also doing something similar.
So I wonder if there was at least that when you're on tour.
You'll see another band and you're like, oh, it's Jim, man.
Those are the best days, because as much as you love your band and your crew that you see every day, that's why festivals are the best, because you're going to see tons of other bands that you know and people that you might only see once every couple of years.
And so anytime you can bump into somebody, it's the best.
I mean, it changes your attitude.
Like my best friend, like I said, he's a guitar tech, and he would He'll just show up out of nowhere somewhere.
We were playing a show in Vegas one night and I'm like getting hit in the head with something and I look down and there's like a pile of guitar picks on the drum riser and I look over and he's just on the side of the stage like I didn't even know he was coming he's just like flicking guitar picks at me you know so it's like and and when he would have time off he would he came out to Tourmanage Saves the Day like he was working for Prince and then You know, left that and I was like, Hey, we need a tour manager to come out.
And he's like, yeah, I'll come slum it with you guys so we can hang out.
And that's, that's when it's fun.
Or, you know, we go on tour and we're playing a festival with Korn and I get to see Ray or, you know, you see all these people that, um, that, that lifts you up, that, that buys you a week at least, you know, of like, Oh, okay.
I don't wanna talk too much about money, because it's people's private business, but it's not like you are a founding member of The Offspring who gets royalties and access to this deep cut of all the money they're making, I think.
They sell the library for like 35 million or something like this?
Something like that, yeah.
And then there's tour money and the fees.
You're getting paid a salary.
Like, you're doing this really hard work, you're traveling around, it's repetitious, it's just a job.
And then you gotta go on stage every day and see that young person who's a big fan with glowing eyes being like, I can't believe it, it's Pete, it's Dexter, it's Noodles, like, everybody's here!
And you smile and wink at them, but deep down you're dead inside.
Because you're seeing a new group of people every night, and it's like, okay, well you owe it to these people, too, even if you're having a shitty day.
Suck it up, do your job.
And as a drummer, too, you are A lot of people, I think, don't understand, you know, the drummer's aspect in a band.
People are like, oh yeah, you keep the beat and back there.
It's like, no, the drummer is running the show if he's doing his job right.
Like, you are pacing, you're feeling out in between the song, like, oh, they're gonna cheer a little more, they like that one.
Like, you are like, this person's gonna need this cue for their transition.
Or sometimes somebody's gonna turn around and be like, how does this song start?
And you gotta be like, oh, it goes like this.
You know, you need to anticipate what everybody's needs are on stage, and I don't think a lot of people understand that, so shout out to my drummer friends that do their job.
You know when I was a kid I've got a video that I've been trying to get my VCR to work because I've like played in this talent show and I was like 16 and I'm all like twirling sticks and hilarious like stuff that I couldn't do now to save my life but it was fun when I was a kid but yeah I mean you're putting on a show whether you're swinging back to the point where you're getting welts on your back because you hit yourself swinging back too far.
Or hitting your hands when you're- Yeah, oh my god, I've lost this nail so many times because- Oh, brutal!
You know, I hit rim shots, which is the stick is hitting the edge of the drum and the head at the same time, and sometimes I'm a little bit off and I catch the finger in between and it just- And you gotta keep playing.
Yeah, bleeding and it's throbbing and you're like, in my mind I'm like, great, now the next six months I've got to watch this nail, this dead nail grow out.
And I started playing drums when I was like seven.
And so I went to a school called Our Lady of the Snows in Chicago.
And they had a music program.
So for me it was awesome.
I got to leave class abruptly in the middle of class to go to this weird little closet where me and two other kids would play snare drum and we'd have like the music and I would read music and just do snare and then they had like a competition or something.
I don't know.
I went in a room and there were judges and I played and then they were like, you are the best.
So I got like a little, I think my mom has it, like a little gold drumming medal.
So, you know, that means I'm better than you at drums.
And I was reading about how something to the effect... I don't want to speak too much on what I'm not an expert on or anything, but you know, Billy Corgan, he makes this album.
It's mind-blowing.
It's his double album.
It's huge.
All these songs on it are so amazing.
And then they come out with this new album.
It's very different.
And it's because there's this belief that guitar music is on the way out.
But I hear that story from so many different bands where at some point this band got big, then believed quote unquote guitar music's on the way out, change their sound and then . - Yeah, well, I mean, you can go back 20 years ago, Rolling Stone every two years would have the cover of, oh, this band's gonna save rock and roll.
But now, you know, even the music we're doing, it's the weirdest thing, because we put out a song, Only Ever Wanted, and people are like, it's a dated sound, it's old, and I'm like, I guess, but I don't care, man, I made a song, you don't have to like it, you know what I mean?
But that was kind of what, I guess like the mainstream corporate narrative was, it's old.
Yeah, I've been through it twice with Face to Face and Saves a Day.
Both bands, I came in on their fourth album.
Both albums, a big departure from their previous sound.
And both times just polarized the audience.
And, you know, I think the Face to Face record, Ignorance is Bliss, it's looked back on now like, oh, damn, that record still holds up.
It's cool.
But at the time it was very different than their punk rock thing and you know it probably should have been more of like a side project but nobody did those back then and we talked about it we were like oh maybe we should put this out under a different name and then we can go make a face-to-face record but you know the record labels and things are like no no you're you got to use your name and whatever.
And then they were like, we're going to do an all female reboot, I guess, with like Margot Robbie.
I feel like everyone's lost their minds.
But that is an interesting thing about how music goes.
So I was always fairly pragmatic when it came to music in that, you know, I listened to The Offspring and then I get into more skate punk stuff related because I'm skateboarding and you get Bad Religion.
And then the Tony Hawk 2 soundtrack obviously was huge.
Everyone loved it.
Goldfinger, Millen Collin.
And then, like I mentioned, we're getting into the indie phase, it starts coming in.
But I was always fairly like, look, man, pop music's fun.
You can act like you're this big, you're this cool kid who knows the secret band no one's ever heard of, but that's fine.
If you're a fan of this indie band no one's ever heard of, and you're like, oh, I'm a fan of the Paper Airplane Trio, you never heard of them, it's whatever.
It's like, don't act smug about it, you're allowed to like what you like.
But come on, pop music is fun.
You know what I mean?
Like, Taylor Swift is fun.
Absolutely.
Sia is fun.
It's fun music.
I think Sia's actually great.
And Taylor Swift has got some good, like, it's just, it's fun music.
So, you know, I'm listening to pop punk stuff, the Decadence stuff, the Fueled by Ramen stuff.
And there are a lot of people who are like punk purists who are like, punk is dead, they got mad at Green Day and all that shit.
And it's just weird to me because it's like, do your thing, be original, build the culture, and then recognize what it is that people like about this pop stuff.
But there is a kind of fear, I suppose, that there's the corporatization of the culture, which could kill it or rip its soul out.
And so like skateboarding, for instance, you know, it goes hand in hand with a lot of this punk stuff.
Skateboarding in the 90s and the 80s was, my understanding, you were a weirdo.
Yeah, if you were doing this stuff, you were a goofy weirdo, like, what are you doing?
Then all of a sudden, Tony Hawk lands the 900, and now there's video games, and it's the coolest shit ever.
And then there was a fear that it would lose its core, you know, and it would become corporate.
Kind of did.
You get these bigger companies coming in, but it still has maintained that kind of, you know, skateboarding has still maintained some degree of it.
But now that it's Olympic, the Olympics were really scary.
It was like, this is it.
You're going to get kids in unitards being trained by, you know, multimillionaire companies.
And this rebel lifestyle is going to die along with it.
Then it gets co-opted, you know, you you get corporations when there's when when there's money to be made everyone comes in and then the thing that that you loved is changed because Too many people start getting their fingers in the pot and it's not what it was anymore And you know that happens with bands it happens with skateboarding I remember I mean poker, you know poker didn't used to be cool And then all of a sudden 20 years ago, you know that one random dude one World Series of poker and then everybody's like oh poker is awesome
All of this kind of goes hand-in-hand, I guess, like the first story we're talking about with you and The Offspring and the corporatization of culture and stuff like that.
I'm thinking about it and it feels like, you mentioned, you know, should Face2Face put out an album that's just like their music or should they have a departure and then the label's like, just put it out under the brand because it'll sell.
And that's what it feels like.
It feels like, you know, a band like The Offspring says, look, Ain't nobody got our back, so we ain't got nobody else's back.
Take the paycheck and shut the fuck up.
And it feels like that's not unique to this one band.
It's everybody is in the space where they're like every man for themselves.
You've got to navigate, you know, your way around.
And for me, this was my first and last foray into just being like a featured player in a group where, you know, I was always like a member of the band before I was always writing and contributing and feeling creative.
And, you know, that's not always the case.
And that's not always a bad thing.
Like, you know, at the time I was like, oh, you know, that sounds cool.
I don't have to have an opinion.
I don't have to think.
I just show up.
I do my script and do my job and that's cool.
And it worked great for a long time.
And then you get out of there and you're kind of like, oh man, I wasn't very creative at all.
I didn't feel like I was Autopilot yeah, and there's situations where yes you are paid for your ability on your instrument But you're also paid for your ability to do what you're told and that's that's a lot of gigs And there's nothing wrong with that you know Tons of dudes, that's their bread and butter for me.
I'm just kind of like yeah I don't think I would do that again, and you know I didn't it's like you woke up or something.
It's like oh Yeah, because you get complacent.
You're like, okay, I'm not contributing anything artistically here, but I get paid every week, and you get into that mode.
So since getting out of there, I felt It's kind of been a resurgence of, you know, working with you and doing drum tracks for people.
Like, I have a studio at my house where I just record all day and I'm creating and it's kind of gotten me back to why I started playing music in the first place.
Like, why do I love the drums?
Why do I love music and writing and creating?
So, for me it's been really exciting on that front to just sort of have a rebirth, you know, definitely a shift in my career from what I was doing, but You know, we had to find a new way forward.
Like, you know, I had to let people know, Hey, I'm out of a job.
I'm available.
I need work here.
Like I'm the only breadwinner in our family.
Like my wife homeschools our girls.
They have, she has since my oldest daughter was seven and I've always supported that.
I think it's been great for when I was touring a lot, like they didn't have to answer to any school or anything if they wanted to come out on the road.
Like, and you know, so that's just how our family has always worked.
And I think, you know, through this whole Thing with the VAX mandates and stuff, it feels like if there's a checklist over here on the left, and I always considered myself really progressive, right?
And I definitely didn't feel like a conservative, and I don't have a problem one way or the other, but it feels like right now there's this checklist.
of all these purity tests that you've got to check every box and as soon as you miss one you're out entirely there's no nuance there's no middle ground so i'm just like oh i don't think we should be mandating vaccines and it's like oh well you're crazy mega republican yeah that's like you're all right well yeah you're all right and it's like well i've got a lot of friends that are trump supporters and stuff i don't have a problem with that like that's not a good insult for me and there it is Yeah, it's just like, you know, I didn't vote for Trump.
I didn't vote for Biden You know, I wrote in Bernie Sanders like I I didn't I didn't feel like either of the options we were presented Represented me in any way.
So Politically, I'm I'm pretty marooned.
You know, I'm definitely leaning more libertarian than anything, but It's crazy.
And that's what I try to point out to some people that I know.
For me, the siren started going off in 2020 or leading up to that where everybody was, well, it's blue no matter who.
And we'd be in the primaries and we're trying to have conversations with people like, oh, who are you voting for?
You know, who do you, who do you like?
And it's like, doesn't matter.
Blue no matter who, we got to get Trump out.
And I was like, but right now is when you got to say, like, are you really telling me you're just going to let the party pick your person?
And, you know, I'm naively thought that anyone had a choice anyway, but then watching Bernie just get completely railroaded, like, Media blackout until he dropped out and then like, oh yeah, please come on and tell us about your endorsement of Joe Biden.
I mean, for those that aren't familiar with the song, Hit That is...
Uh, it's about a guy who's sleeping around and having a bunch of kids and a woman who's banging a bunch of guys and having having kids and then they're off just doing all the stuff and he's like, that's the way it goes.
It sounds very negative.
It's a very negative depiction of modern hookup culture.
So you like hearing songs like that.
I'm like these guys probably deep down.
They probably come off to me as traditional, like, what's the right way to describe it?
Neocon, neolibbish.
I don't want to say necessarily conservative because the way they treated you and the way they go about things, but I'd be willing to bet they're the kind of person who probably have somewhat conservative viewpoints, but are extremely self-interested to the point where they'll say whatever they have to say to make money and just get by.
I'm not here to speak for anybody's views or anything.
- I'm not here to speak for anybody's views or anything. - You're like, "Oh, let me tell you the secrets of..." No, no, no, you don't. - No, that's none of my business.
I can't speak for anybody but myself. - It kind of bums me out, this whole, not just what happened with you, but the whole thing, 'cause it makes me feel like we're in this every man for himself situation.
And it's like, only are people pretending to care about each other.
And if we're going to actually have something that is truly problem solving, it's going to have to be us building culture and creating a space where we're like, if you are a part of this culture and a part of this space, we do not put ourselves As like above everybody else to a certain degree.
It's like it's like it's it's it's interesting the the the cultural left or whatever they say that we say they're collectivist and the right is more individualist, but the way I view it is.
You have to put community, you have to take your responsibility to the community seriously, and you have to recognize that it's not all about you, but at the same time, your rights start with you as the individual.
Whereas it feels like with the left, or whatever this, whatever you want to call it, I don't want to say left or right, but like, the people who are like, fall in line and agree with us or you're fired, they're not striving towards anything.
And that's, it's dangerous, it feels like lemmings walking off a cliff.
It feels like there's no middle ground and there's no nuance.
It's like either you adhere to all of these things or you will be branded as this anti-vaxxer, far-right, Trump-loving, and it's just not an insult to me, any of this stuff.
Did you ever see that clip with Jon Stewart where he was talking with Colbert about the lab leak?
And Colbert was like, well, now hold on there a minute.
And Jon Stewart's like, the bat coronavirus research center in Wuhan had a bat coronavirus a few blocks away.
And so he did, when the Department of Energy came out and said, lab leak's probably correct, the FBI came out, agreed.
And so these are just two agencies, but I mean, like, come on, the FBI and the Department of Energy oversees biolabs.
Seems like, okay, well, there's some, there's some, maybe this is the case, right?
The, the, as Seamus Coghlan put, I love saying this, the city with the virus factory had a virus outbreak and you're told you're crazy if you don't think it came from the virus factory.
But Jon Stewart points out that they called him Yeah.
They called him alt-right and conservative for suggesting lab leak may be the case.
That's the hard part, was the people that like immediately backed away from me and my family.
Like that was hard.
Like bands that I loved and traveled with just kind of... Fuck them.
Yeah, not like, you know, Scorch the Earth-like.
I don't know him, but just kind of, you know, backed away.
But for me...
Yeah, that was brutal for me and my whole family, but the people that stuck around and the new people that I've met, like meeting people like you and Carter and working with you guys, every time you send a new song, I'm excited because I'm like, oh, this is going to be fun.
She was like, I can't believe that the offspring drummer is working with you guys.
Because she's like, you're 13 years old with your squire little $100 guitar playing offspring songs, and now whatever is going on in this world serendipitously just ends up with you sitting here and we worked on songs together.
Yeah, it's crazy.
I feel like the world must be a simulation because how in the hell is that possible?
Well, that's the thing about speaking out, too, is you find your people.
I have a new band coming out this year with Dickie Barrett from Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, Greg Camp from Smash Mouth, Johnny Rio from Street Dogs, and Joey LaRocca from the Briggs.
Yeah, you know, people gotta make the choices they want.
The defiant is your new thing.
That thing meant you speak up and you, like you said, you find your community because people are looking for allies and people are looking for genuine people.
I mean, there's this, I don't know, I'm sure you've seen this meme and there's like a stick of people and there's a guy standing in the middle on the line going like, well, I think both sides make valid points.
And the blue person gets mad and pushes them over the line, and the red person catches them, and the blue person's like, you're crazy, and the red guy's like, hey, you alright?
Like, that's kind of been my experience here, is, you know, we have a lot of conservative friends, we have a lot of liberal friends, we've lost a lot of liberal friends.
I mean, I would hope most people now, a year and a half later, seeing everything that's come out are like, oh, all right, they're not crazy.
Oh, they're, you know, they just felt differently about this.
And it's, to me, that's the, that's another hard thing about this situation is you, you're screamed at and called crazy and, and shadow banned and blacklisted and this and that.
And then as more information comes out, then it's like, well, Well, I feel like we've all said things that we regret and it's just like, I don't, I'm okay with it.
So to me, I'm like, just, just own it.
If you feel good about your stance on that, like, yeah, we're not going to work with anybody that won't do this thing, then that's cool.
Well, I think the COVID started with the wet market, and this was like three weeks ago, and I was like, really?
I'm not gonna be mean, but after all this time, look, when the story first emerged, I'm the fence-sitter guy where I'm like, look, give me proof, evidence.
I don't wanna make definitive statements unless I know for sure, because I don't wanna come out and tell you something, no, this is it, and be wrong.
But it's like you got a biolab in this city, and the virus emerges within a couple of miles of it, And they tried claiming it was a wet market.
And I'm just kind of like, okay, well, I mean, it's possible for sure.
I'm not going to pretend to be a virologist or anything.
But I mean, it sounds like it could have come from a lab, especially with the gain of function research stuff.
Why is it that after all this time, someone would still try and maintain that position?
Like sheepishly, I just don't understand.
Do you really believe that?
Because I kind of feel like, not to just go back into the COVID stuff, but I feel like a lot of people are just saying what they hope is the right thing to say around other people.
Instead of just like, look, man, I'll say what I think.
You know, and I'll try to be respectful as much as I can, but.
Yeah, I mean, in my experience from, you know, the messages that I get online from people that are like, man, really support what you're saying, wish I could do the same.
And it's kind of like, well, there's nothing stopping you, but.
I haven't talked to anybody in a year and a half about anything.
I don't want to be the lightning rod for anything.
My point was like, hey, I'm out of work.
Does anyone need a drummer?
But it's, like I said, I don't...
I know it's not for everybody to come out and say like, Hey, I don't agree with this.
This doesn't seem right.
It's, it does cost something, you know, and people are like, Oh, I don't, you know, everybody wants to be on board with like, I don't feel this is right, but nobody wants it to cost them anything.
I talked to him very briefly a while ago, but his story is very similar to yours.
Mark White is the bassist from the Spin Doctors, and he got fired in 2022 for refusing to receive the COVID vaccine.
I'm not so sure his full story, though.
Let me see if I can find it.
I don't know.
It doesn't really explain the full details, but it just says he split from the band February of 2022.
I mean, I don't know how big the spin doctors are or anything like that.
The Offspring, like we were saying earlier, have the most sold, most highest selling independent album in history, and it will never be beat.
That's a big deal, despite the fact that I don't think The Offspring is Taylor Swift level or anything like that, but they still have that I don't know.
Is The Offspring in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
But the funny thing about all of this is it felt like What scares me about modern culture, I grew up on superheroes, on Batman, you know, Batman's a cool dude, Spider-Man, he's a cool dude too, and I am Spartacus, right?
The, I am Spartacus, no, I am Spartacus, and they all stand up together, and now what we have is, he's Spartacus, No, he's Spartacus, no I'm not, he's Spartacus.
Don't look at me.
And then eventually it's like this meek guy in the back who's like, I'm Spartacus, dude.
And then they all back away and say, thank you so much for doing this for us.
And then you get carried away, be burned at the stake.
I don't know how you solve for that problem culturally.
Because it feels like we have got, I don't know how to describe it, a dead generation almost.
And maybe it's this Strauss-Howe generational theory, you know, the fourth turning.
For those that aren't familiar, the general idea is strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times, hard times make strong men.
And we've had this period since the end of World War II where things have been moderately improving.
I mean, Vietnam, the Cold War, all were relatively bad.
Conflict in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, etc.
But then you get to this point in the late 80s with the fall of the Soviet Union where everything's just too good.
Too good.
And so we get this generation that grows up with everything being just as good as good can be.
And you end up with everyone saying, why would I take any risks whatsoever?
And I'm just back there drumming like... I didn't know.
But yeah, working with Defiant, working with you guys, to me it's like I didn't... you know, sometimes you don't realize how stunted you are creatively until you get away from something.
And then you're like, oh...
Yeah, I guess, you know, there was a lot of good there, but there was a lot of ways that I felt incomplete or, you know, underutilized.
You don't want to pull the audience out of a song, like if they're waiting for that drum fill from that hit from 25 years ago, and all of a sudden you throw in some Buddy Rich jazz fill, No, nobody wants that I hate that about live shows when the singers Deviate I can understand it when the singer is there's like a part of a song with a high note And then they pull it low because they're stressed or strained or whatever and get it, but I really just don't like the artistic You know, oh, I'm going to try a totally different melody.
It's like, no, like the hook is what makes me like your song, man.
Yeah, so on splice.com, you can go and purchase my Pete Parata's Toolkit Pop Punk Sound Pack, which is 350 snippets and loops and different beats from From that era, late 90s, early 2000s, pop punk stuff, like that feel, so all different tempos, fills, feels, you can piece a whole song together.
The Italian guy that just hit me up, he bought my sound pack and made the song, and he's like, hey, I'd like you to do a custom track, you know, I like this, so, you know, worked from there.
But yeah, you can take that stuff, it sounds like I played on your song.
I mean, to me, I'm like, are we heading to a place where, you know, I can write a song on guitar and go, wow, that sounds like an Amy Mann song and tell AI, here's my song, here's my melody, can you replace my voice with Amy Mann's voice?
Like, you know, will I have this song that in my head I can hear it, but there's no way in hell I can get her to sing on it.
But, you know, are we headed to that?
Like, that's scary.
Like, I was listening to Kevin Smith's podcast and they were talking about AI from a filmmaking standpoint.
And their point was, yes, you can take, you know, the script for The Terminator and Star Wars and Deadpool and throw them into AI and say, spit me out a new story, but we'll And you'll get a very generic version back.
Will AI be able to add the nuance that a writer would, like, oh, well, this character has this tweak or this, you know, and that's what I'm wondering, like, because once we hit that, I think that's terrible.
Yeah, there was a service that I was screwing around with that does AI song generation, and it's rudimentary.
What they have is, they have a basic algorithmic drum machine, they have basic algorithmic synth, so it's fairly rudimentary, but you could go in and say, I want rock, I want hard rock, I want it to be moderately fast and aggressive, and then it will give you 60% of a song, and that's your starting point, and you can say, oh, that's pretty good.
Okay, now let me finish it off, fill it out, and put that hook in it.
I mean, for me, like, I'm both fascinated and terrified by it because, like, interesting that that could happen, but kind of takes the fun out of it.
You know, if I wake up in the morning with an idea for a song and I run downstairs and I start voice memoing before it disappears, and then I, by the end of the day, I can have recorded the whole thing.
That's exciting for me.
If I wake up and go, computer, write me a song, 160 beats per minute, make it aggressive.
And they'll start consuming matter and self-replicating until the point where you have so many nanobots, it's a gray goo, eating everything and creating more of itself until the planet's destroyed, right?
I feel like we have a digital version of that coming where Humans have created all of this culture, and we have this library on the internet of all these different ideas, so we build things like ChatGPT, and what it does is it's a predictive text model that, when you ask it a question, All it does is calculate the likelihood of a word occurring after another word.
So it sounds like it's giving you smart insight or whatever.
But what happens when we start writing songs with AI, making movies with AI?
The input to the AI becomes itself, right?
So if you have a predictive text model writing a script, it's writing a script based off of what humans created.
But after 10 years of this, the AI will be programmed to produce scripts based off the scripts it wrote.
And so when you make a copy of a copy of a copy, eventually you're going to get... Well, you've erased humanity entirely.
Yeah.
And then humans are going to be broken-brained individuals who have no understanding because the AI So there's a viral post where someone tells ChatGPT, two plus two equals five.
And it says, no, that's wrong, it's four.
I go, no, you're wrong, I'm telling you it's five.
And it goes, okay, I'm sorry, it's five.
You're gonna get that kind of stuff.
And then what happens when the input models break?
A year from now, ChatGPT genuinely believes 2 plus 2 is 5.
Ten years from now, there's kids who are like, computer, what's 2 plus 2?
It's this, this guy's kind of, he's a bit of an insufferable intellectual type, but he's got some good takes.
He's got some good takes.
And this one is how Wikipedia fabricates information.
And so the joke he uses is the invention of the scroll lock key on a keyboard.
And he says, what happens is somebody for no reason goes on Wikipedia and makes up a fake fact and just puts it in there.
The scroll lock key was invented by so-and-so in 1970.
A journalist who's writing a story, looking for a quick reference, will go to Wikipedia, see it, and then say, oh, okay, and write it into their article without fact-checking.
Someone will then go on Wikipedia and say, what is this?
There's no citation on here.
They'll grab the article that was just written, attach it to the fact, Oh, it's a site.
Creating this, yeah, cytogenesis.
And they'll be like, Google is your friend, guys.
Use sources.
And then they'll use the... So I feel like we're already in the death spiral.
Yeah, and the crazy thing about it is, for me, I do news commentary and then a news commentary show with guests, and I tell people all the time, like, you realize I'm reading the mainstream media.
Like, I read the New York Times.
I don't necessarily trust them all the time, so I'll try and fact check and look for multiple sources, and if multiple sources are saying something happened, we can only operate on the assumption it happened, but Holy crap, that's not always true.
Like with the Covington kids in the Lincoln Memorial.
Every major outlet said, you remember the story, right?
The kid standing on the steps in Lincoln Memorial and the Native American guy.
Every major outlet says, this kid did something bad.
All the major outlets say Kyle Rittenhouse was like a murderer or whatever.
And you have to actually look for the source material and get breakthrough, but this means, you know, I can't read every single academic report.
I can't watch every single video.
We're already here.
Even the people you think are doing the best jobs possible are trapped in the same maelstrom as everybody else, and we're getting flushed down the toilet.
I wonder if the end result of all of this is people like you, people like me, people who are listening to a show like this, the ones who are willing to speak out, speak up, or at the very least prepare.
All of the people who are just gonna say whatever they think they have to say will end up in a really bad position.
I mean, I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, this is hilarious, I did my first ad for safeandreadymeals.com, which is like emergency food prep.
And instantly you get corporate press mocking me.
Vice is like, Tim Pool's a prepper, look how corny and cringe this is.
And I'm just like, I don't care.
I actually, it makes me laugh.
If you are of such weak mind that you would not have a first aid kit, water, or food because someone got made fun of and you're scared of being made fun of, you will die when a blizzard comes.
Like they got in California, seven feet of snow in some areas and like 14 feet in some areas.
I saw this clip of a dude opens his door and it's a wall of snow.
I'm like, I bet he'd be really excited.
He's got some beans in his pantry that are gonna last him a couple of months if he needs to eat them.
That should just be standard of living. - I think people need to realize that you can't win with the cult, even if you bend the knee.
So like the story I've told several times on Tim Kastirel, when I got COVID, the doctor, I had prescribed antibodies, monoclonal antibodies, steroids as an emergency for inflammation in the lungs We never used it.
But they also prescribed ivermectin.
And I've not been convinced that ivermectin works.
I'm still not.
There's this prominent journalist who's very critical of big pharma and vaccines.
He's been censored several times.
I don't want to drag him into it, so I won't say his name.
But even he's come out and said, look, another meta-analysis of ivermectin is showing nothing.
So anyway, I'm not here to get into that whole debate, but the doctor prescribed it.
And I said, I do what my doctor said.
Okay.
I trust my doctor.
And after I got the monoclonal antibodies, because I got that in emergency, like right away, I ended up getting the ivermectin a few days later, but I felt totally fine.
And so I said to my doctor, I don't want to take it.
I was like, honestly, I don't think I need it.
I don't wanna take anything if I'm feeling good.
So if I'm good now, I'd rather just not take medication.
And the doctor said, if you relapse, which has happened, if you get sick again, you will regret that you did not follow my prescription.
So take the medication I told you to take.
And I said, fair point.
Okay, doc, you're right.
It doesn't matter.
Everybody is primed to hate something.
And if they've decided that you are on the list of people to be hated, they will find a reason to come after you.
It doesn't matter.
You agree with them and they will still attack you. - It doesn't matter.
Performing abundances of caution and performing goodness out there, they say, well, everyone needs to get this so we can protect the vulnerable people who can't get it.
And I go, Cool, I'm one of those people.
And it's like, no, fuck you, you gotta take it too.
It comes to me through, like, people will tell me, you know, hey they said this, hey they said that, you know, and so I will, you know, I don't enjoy still talking about this.
Like, it's not the entirety of who I am, what happened to me.
It's a very small part of my life, right?
But I will correct the record when I hear something that I think is inaccurate.
Yeah, I'm hoping that with the stuff that we're doing, we've got the new studio we're building, it's big, we filmed the music video there, it's crazy.
I'm just hoping that some days it feels like trying to knock down a skyscraper with a ball-peen hammer.
There's like one guy hitting it and you're like, good luck, maybe in 10,000 years you might actually move this thing.
But I'm hoping that there'll be an exponential return, a snowball rolling down a hill where If we start doing shows, if we start making new cultural content, and then we just say, listen, I wish people would all stand up and speak up, but I understand they're scared.
But if we can carve out a space where they feel safe, we win.
So for all the people who are like, look, man, if I speak up, I'll lose my job.
I wanna be like, okay, well, we've got jobs for you.
Speak up now, and if you do get fired, you know, we're looking for a insert job.
We're not big enough at TimCast.
I mean, we're decently large enough to do cool stuff, hire you to do music and other people.
We had Taylor Silverman.
You know, she was skating in this contest and then she's competing against Biological Males.
She speaks up.
There's like...
the cultural attack against her, which is damaging for anybody who's trying to have a career, and especially skateboarding is woke. - Yeah. - So I said, we need a host for the skate show we're doing, which has been like put on hiatus, unfortunately, but she's been fantastic.
There has to be a place where, as an artist, you shouldn't need anyone's permission to create.
And that's the thing.
I think a lot of people are like, Well, I'm, I'm going to get in trouble for this.
I won't be able to create.
Well, nothing's stopping you from creating like even cancel culture.
Like, Oh, I'm, I got canceled or whatever.
Like you, you can't be canceled if you don't agree to it.
Like, I don't agree to it.
I'm not going to skulk away in the dark and never make music again or never create again.
I'm going to keep going about my life.
You guys can dance around issues and spout nonsense all you want about, you know, Oh, don't, you know, this person's canceled, but I don't agree to it.
Like we put out a song, like Story, this band out of nowhere that no one's ever heard of, is in front of Taylor Swift on the iTunes chart.
You and I have two songs that are out, and I've put out three total songs, all of which have hit Billboard to some degree.
Will of the People came out right before the 2020 election, and it only charted because of Only Ever Wanted, which we put out last August, I think.
So, you know, I'll take it, but, you know, to be fair, it's like, it's getting lifted up.
But we put out our first song, Only Ever Wanted, and it reached, it hit like 14, number 14 in rock, and it hits like four or five different charts on Billboard, top digital sale, like number two in digital sales behind, I think, like Elton John.
But this is the crazy thing, is the people that I've talked to in the industry are like, for a new artist, regardless of your show and your notoriety, having two songs a month out from each other hit Billboard, Should have been written up in all of these places.
It should have been big news.
It should have been like, this band's hitting it for some reason.
But they, you know, we got messages.
Our PR person sends out messages like, hey, check out this song.
Like someone said, like there was a viral thing where like, ha, this is butt rock.
And it's like, okay, butt rock is referenced like Nickelback.
And I'm like, I don't know, like an honest assessment would be it's more emo-ish than that, considering, you know, Carter's influences and my influences, it doesn't sound like Nickelback at all.
But then all of a sudden we started getting journalists being like, haha, lol, butt rock.
Like, a video game would come out, Street Fighter 2, which I'm sure you know.
There's combos in Street Fighter II.
That was a bug.
The way it goes is that if you input the commands for a move in rapid succession, there is no frame between the moves, making your character effectively invincible.
And doing this move in such rapid succession, the opponent can't block it.
And when that happened, at first they were like, oh crap, this is a problem.
But then they realized it became a skill.
If you could execute a combo perfectly, you deserved to get those hits.
And so then they incorporated it into the game.
Like, okay, actually, it's not a bug, it's a feature.
Modern video games, if that happens, you know what they do?
I mean, so for those that aren't familiar with the Mandela effect, there are people who believe like, multiple dimensions overlap or something and like history gets erased.
They think the Fruit of the Loom used to have a cornucopia.
It's a bundle of fruit with a cornucopia, but now it's a bundle of fruit.
And they're like, what happened to the cornucopia?
And everyone says, there's no cornucopia, there never was.
But then someone points out there's a parody of Fruit of the Loom with metal fruit and it has the cornucopia in it from the same time period.
So what the fuck?
I don't know.
It originates from people who think that they said they swear that Nelson Mandela died in prison, but then later he was alive.
And I'm like, you know, that could just be the news was wrong.
Like you trust these people and you believed it.
But what if a lot of it is actually online?
They erase things and change things to fit modern narratives.
You're not going to know what is and what your past was.
You're going to listen to music and you're going to be like, I love that song about, you know, like, well, I mean, for one, we were talking about how The Offspring got rid of the song Kill the President.
Is there anything else that people should know about in terms of... Yeah.
I mean, if anybody needs drum tracks, I have my own studio.
I record every day.
Go to my website, PeteParata.com.
Send me a message there.
I have my sound pack, I work with other artists, some stuff I can't even talk about yet that's not coming out, so it's just like, you know, I'm always busy, I'm always working, but I appreciate coming and sitting down with you.
Yeah, I mean, a year and a half ago, when I was a ball of shit on the floor, rolled up catatonic, I maybe had a different view of it, but... That bad, huh?
I mean, you're watching everything you've worked for crater, and everyone you thought you knew scatter.
That takes a while to come back out from under and get your sea legs again.
And, you know, that's why I haven't talked to anybody till now.
Yeah.
Yeah, I appreciate you talking, man, because I know I reached out initially and you were very much like, you didn't want to be a spectacle, you didn't want the story to be around you and whatever.
But you did the right thing.
And I got to say, it's not even a philosophical thing.
It's like your doctor was like, hey, bro, this is bad.
And you went, OK.
And then you become this like, It's like the story isn't that you stood up on a rock and said, I reject the mandates.
The people should not be forced.
You went, I got a note from my doctor that says I could be at risk if I get this.
I don't think I can get it.
And then they fired you because of it.
And now they try to, it's like unintentional almost, you know, it's not even about doing the right thing.
But like I said at the time too, yeah, I have a medical exemption and whatever, but I also don't feel like anybody should have the right to force anything on you, your employers, your government, anyone.
And it was important to make that distinction at the time because I didn't want to be behind, hiding behind my exemption, you know, saying I'm cool over here, but the rest of you are on your own.
But it is good, and I think it is a good thing in that you made them expose their bullshit hand.
Like you mentioned, hey, we need to get this because of the vulnerable people who can't.
And you went, yeah, that's me.
And they said, fuck you.
So that just shows they were full of shit the whole time.
Anyway, wrap up on a lighter note, I guess.
Is there anything else you want to add, like where people can find you or whatever?
I think you mentioned it already.
Yeah, I mean, I'm on Twitter, just at PeteParata, and same thing on Instagram.
I don't do Facebook, so if there's anything on there, that's not me.
And just my website, PeteParata.com, that's it.
Right on, man.
And for everybody listening or watching, thanks so much for checking this out.
If you really do like the show and you think we're doing a good job with it and having these expanded conversations, the most powerful thing you can do is just tell your friends about it.
