Chris Robinson, musician and record collector, contrasts Columbo’s understated justice with punk’s lost rebellious edge, now repackaged as mainstream. His analog, hands-on approach to art—like the Black Crows’ collaborative songwriting—clashes with modern digital dependency, where some bands cancel shows over tech failures. Both he and Joe Rogan critique today’s manufactured rebellion, from corporate hip-hop to sanitized fame, while celebrating raw creativity like Prince or Mick Jagger’s enduring stage vitality. Robinson’s Southern roots and Sicilian retreat highlight how regional culture and adversity—from natural disasters to personal struggles—fuel authenticity, proving real-world experiences outlast algorithmic trends. [Automatically generated summary]
And the other day I'm watching this episode that Jonathan Demme directed, Steven Spielberg.
I mean, all of these famous directors start to cut their teeth in TV and on episodic things like that.
But there's a real tone to it and stuff that's cool in the way everyone looked.
But one other funny thing about it that I've noticed in Columbo is that it always starts with a murder and then usually a lot of times in the arc of the story someone shows up to the crime scene.
Usually whoever did it or whatever, right?
And so...
But they're never upset.
There's never someone that runs and says, what happened here?
Your uncle's been murdered.
Oh, I didn't do it.
It's kind of like how it starts instead of some dramatic, you know, like, oh my god, you know, how could this have happened?
No one's even, they're just like, okay, well, you're bothering me now.
In cop shows, you can always tell police, even SVU, they're always like, I've had enough.
It's weird how many of those shows there are where they catch the bad guy.
It's like something that I guess people with anxiety need to let them feel like if someone is a bad person and they do commit a murder, they're going to get caught.
And there was a thing when we were kids, and there was this song, I forget which band did it, but you were fake if you were a Quincy punk, because they took the way people looked on Quincy or whatever, and that instantly became...
My grandfather, Ike Robinson, they were in children's wear.
My dad was in women's wear and then ended later back in children's wear.
But the one thing around the house that I remember earliest memories are him pulling out his guitar and singing folk songs.
And just...
I don't know.
I'm a dyslexic person.
You know what I mean?
I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but there was something about always singing these songs.
It would open up stuff for me.
Almost like being high, not in a psychedelic way, but in a way that it changed the space.
You know what I mean?
Records started doing that to me very early.
And that kind of is where, so it's kind of, we think it's normal.
Other kids' dads aren't playing old folk songs at the house that I know, you know.
But by the time Rich and I, you know, we're kind of like angst-ridden suburban youth, you know.
For some reason my parents decided to move to the suburbs, financial reasons, general apathy, you know, ready to, you know, begin the mound of resentment and regret.
I don't know.
All the things the suburbs represent me, you know what I mean?
I would say, for me, There was a television show.
Do you remember Night Flight on USA Network back in the early days?
Yeah, it would come on at midnight and it would be concerts and films.
It was probably the first time I saw Eraserhead or Rude Boy, the movie about The Clash.
Decline in Western Civilization, punk things, and new wave things.
I always had an interest in stranger things and things that weren't normal.
You know, Mr. Roper on Three's Company or whatever.
You know what I mean?
And this show, they had a show that came on at 2 in the morning and it was from Los Angeles called New Wave Theater.
And that was like huge, huge.
Being a kid in the suburbs in Georgia where, you know, it's still pretty much like that band, all the people that's in that band, Alabama, you know, they wear like trucker hats and flannels and like want to beat you up because you have a Ramones record or something.
And that's how it was.
Wow.
So this show was like a real beacon of, you know, my mom was like, oh yeah, Peter Ivers.
A very interesting character, Peter Ivers.
unidentified
Wealth of material they've serviced in many incarnations tonight.
But they definitely made amazing, beautiful, cool outsider art.
And, you know, I think something that we have a hard time understanding in this day and age is art that's made because of the visceral interaction with you and other people that has nothing to do with, I'm going to be a big star.
I mean, the Black Crows, we have to be one of the last bands of the time where we kind of felt it was our duty to never truly give in to the other side, you know what I mean?
And kind of understand this us versus them You know what I mean?
Or vibe.
It's something that's inspiring and something that is like...
You know, I was always interested in counterculture, you know?
And anyone...
Again, that's like why the algorithm maybe isn't as perfect or it never will overtake everything because there's always going to be the one person who's like, I'm going this way.
That's not enough for me.
You know, the deep dive people.
And so we kind of found ourselves in the crosshairs of...
This kind of stuff.
The Cramps.
We were in The Cramps.
The Gun Club.
And then R.E.M. comes around, their first record, Chronic Town.
And so my mom and dad had a lot of records.
Maybe 250 records, 300 records, you know?
Which was a lot of records back then.
Bluegrass records, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs records, or Moe's Allison records, Jimmy Reed records, Johnny Guitar Watson, and then they had Buffalo Springfield records.
Bob Dylan records.
I mean, that's a big...
I mean, for millions of people, but something as a kid that...
I knew no other kids would go...
You guys want to come over and listen to records?
I'm going to put on the times they are changing.
Again, that would be a reason to get beat up.
But that kind of stuff catapults us into...
Then punk rock comes along and it's like, oh, anyone can do this.
You don't have to be...
We'll figure it out later what talent or whatever.
You know what I mean?
We just want to plug in and start going and singing horrible things and trying to be offensive.
You know what I mean?
Because think about...
Now people walk around in Dead Kennedys t-shirts and it's like, oh, cool.
But back then, Dead Kennedys made people...
The name of that band, the Circle Jerks, the names of these bands made people upset.
But, I mean, I think inevitably anything like that, I mean...
Edgar Allan Poe was that in a literary way in the, you know, the tail end of the Victorian age, but now he's just like a thing hanging in some goth kid's car, like an air freshener or something.
There's always going to be adherence to what most people are interested in and what's popular, and then people that are trying to mimic what's popular so that they can become popular.
And then there's always legitimate counterculture where people are just like, I don't vibe with any of this.
You know, a band like Alan Vega and, you know, like Suicide.
Like someone...
You know, the no-wave music in New York in the late 70s.
Someone took a chance and said, yeah, I always think about how weird was that?
You know, like bringing that into a studio where...
Who was just in here?
Fucking 38 Special or some shit.
You know what I mean?
And then there's like this or whatever.
You know what I mean?
I mean...
The cool thing about the first Sex Pistols record, the Clash record is a little different, but even the Dead Boys or bands like that, a lot of those early punk records and a lot of the post-punk records Those bands, they're not making records trying to sound...
Oh, I can make a record sound like I Don't Give a Fuck or something on my GarageBand.
You can do anything now with a button and people...
And I like lo-fi shit, too, of course.
But back then, these bands, they're not making lo-fi records.
They're in just...
That's a real band, but with great gear and people who are making records that we would think are...
And it's funny, I just saw Billy Gibbons a couple weeks ago in London, and we've been friends for many years, and a massive ZZ Top fan.
I mean, those records, especially the early records, I mean, they just sound delicious, you know what I mean?
I just...
And when...
What is it?
Which one is it?
Is it Rio Grande?
I don't know.
One of those records where you open it and there's a giant plate of Mexican food.
Growing up in Atlanta, that was...
I didn't know what that...
You know what I mean?
You could get that?
We had barbecue and we had soul food.
We have our own regional culinary identity.
But to see stuff like that, I was like, wow, I gotta try that.
You know what I mean?
But no, we...
I don't even know if ZZ Top, where they were in their career, if they knew anything that was going on about these guys that were the opening band.
Except for the fact that in the music business at that time, when you're still selling records, and you're selling 250,000 records every week or whatever for a couple years, it starts to be kooky when it was a thing.
But they were sponsored by Miller Lite.
And...
I just got into this thing.
So we'd go on stage and do our thing.
And there's big Miller Lite posters all over the state or whatever.
And I got in my little troublemaker mind, we're the Black Crows.
You know what I mean?
No one gives us money.
We don't drink this beer.
No one gives us fucking money.
I'm standing under this sign because I have to be here tonight, but I want you to know that no fucking beer company sponsors our music.
No one owns us.
You know what I mean?
These naïve sort of thing about...
I don't know.
My brother and I talk about it a lot.
And as we've gotten older, and especially since we've put the band back together these last few years and have been in a really positive place and a really good place, I realize...
Part of that that we were involved in, we believed in what we feel is really the true essence of rock and roll.
It's like, I describe it as like the movie Quest for Fire, you know, when they have to keep the fire burning in that little thing and they're going across the swamp and they don't want the Neanderthals to get it or whatever.
That's kind of how we felt in a weird way about everything that was out.
You know, one minute you're in control.
Your kids were writing songs.
We're in control of that.
I'm in control of like, this is what we're doing.
This is how we...
Look, this is what we are.
And then you're in the grown-up world and you've made people tens of millions of dollars.
And I'm hardly a savvy business person.
I never could be.
I never would be.
It wasn't in the cards for me.
And so part of our, like, being hard about it or being difficult...
Not being compliant was trying to, in our minds, keep this pure thing.
You know what I mean?
And in a way, that still is part of what we are today.
Well, you know, the other thing is, you know, you remember, rock and roll was, culturally and socially, its place and its importance and its reverence was a lot different than today.
But when I hear new things that I like, and I'm like, okay, so they're singing about drugs, they're singing about sex, and, you know, they're singing about, you know...
Maybe I can't really identify with the violence of poverty and stuff.
And there's a lot of looking at that, there's a lot of reminiscing from people my age and your age that were around when these things were the way you consumed music.
I've been buying records since I was 12 years old, you know what I mean?
And it was weird, maybe that's because my mom and dad had a lot of records.
But, you know, my wife and I, we just moved just around the block in L.A. And we've been together seven years, but we kept our records separate.
I don't know.
We have thousands and thousands.
I just put 4,000 records in storage because we don't have space for them.
Wow.
But it's funny because...
No matter what, I see a record store, I'm going in, and after however many years of buying records, I know what I'm looking for.
And I don't buy records online very much.
How come?
I don't know.
I'm like a kid.
If I've been looking for something and I see it, I get a shot of endorphins.
You know what I mean?
I'm looking around like, I don't want anyone to...
It's weird.
It's geeky stuff.
It's nerd stuff.
But the record store was really important to me as a young person and a musician because before you could go on your phone or before the algorithm, whatever, there's another person that looks cool.
You know what I mean?
They have Chelsea boots on or a cool band t-shirt.
In the suburbs back in the 80s, if you saw someone, you took the chance to go to their house and look through their records.
It's funny that it's still that way.
You know what I mean?
I have so many friends in my life, and we're friends because of records.
You know what I mean?
And it's like, my wife and I DJ all the time in LA, and we go to New York, and we carry our records around.
I started like, well, back in the 80s, everyone used to take a turn playing records at the pizza place.
They had two turntables called Fellini's in Atlanta, where all the As my dad referred to them, Dirtbags and Low Lives hung out.
Everyone in a band, of course.
But then in the early 2000s, a friend of mine that worked at the great record store Other Music in New York, my friend Michael, We started doing these nights and playing like a lot of weird psych folk as a kind of genre and we both loved those records and we called that, we called Gurus Galore.
When I wasn't doing the Black Crows I had this band called the CRB. We were like a little psychedelic folk rock little group that toured around and made a bunch of records.
But we played two sets a night, so it was kind of like Grateful Dead model, like very heady, trippy.
But the CRB, especially in California, we always had friends DJ. The doors opened until after the show and in between sets, playing records.
I don't know.
She's something we've always done.
And my wife used to DJ before I met her and stuff.
But, you know, I know when I'm in Denver, I'm going to this certain bookstore and I know that they have really curated things in there that I'm looking for.
I can wander into, you know, you never know who you're going to meet.
You never know what you're going to eat.
You know what I mean?
The laughs and the...
You know, it's still a lot of stuff out there for someone like me.
We had no government bailout for the guy who was playing guitar or whatever.
But as hard as it was, one of the worst parts of it to me was not just being able to do what we do, but not going to see bands.
You know what I mean?
I have a label called Silver Arrow, and we've been doing this for a few years.
The Black Crows records come out on Silver Arrow.
It's a little different, but...
I'm always going to see bands.
You know what I mean?
Whether it's the Rolling Stones or whether we go see a band at a little club in LA. And I'm always looking for new, you know, things to people that are interesting.
If I could help them out in their careers.
A lot of it is with really young artists.
I want to put them in the studio.
I want to give them good experience.
I want to give them a great record deal because it's changed, the model.
But to do that, you have to go out and get in it.
You know what I mean?
We always laugh.
I'm like, is there anyone older here tonight than me?
You're like, oh, there's one!
You know what I mean?
There's a freaky dude who still goes to see bands.
And it's funny, because I had a nostalgic moment when we started talking about Look, man, don't get me wrong.
My parents did the best they could.
They're just fucking people, too.
But part of the other part of adventure and the other part of being interesting in, like, New Wave Theater, my mom's like, they all look like mental patients, just like you!
You know, like, great.
But was...
To go to downtown Atlanta in the 80s was dangerous, too, during the crack epidemic.
It was a violent place.
Obviously, we were white kids from the suburbs traversing this urban place to get into these little underground clubs to see these bands.
That added to it.
You know what I mean?
And just the aesthetic.
You know what I mean?
I still am an obsessive influenced by the beat writers and beat culture.
And so for me, like, you know...
Jack Kerouac isn't writing about the suburbs.
He's writing about the, you know, Mexico City or whatever.
You know what I mean?
Gregory Corso or Allen Ginsberg, all these poets and people are writing about all these experiences that don't seem to be happening in, like, a neighborhood where they call the houses a five, four, and a door.
I mean, I haven't been to downtown LA to see music in quite a while, but the last time I went there, I saw Gary Clark Jr. in Honey Honey at this very small place...
With, you know, maybe there was like 200 people in there.
I took my daughter and it was like a late show on a Monday night, like 1130. And here we're seeing Gary Clark Jr. in Honey Honey play a cover of Midnight Rider.
And it just felt so special because there was no one there.
And that was part of the reason that we were drawn to these characters and these people and these other outsiders and these other whatever kind of spectrum we're on or whatever that's different.
And their being on Saturday Night Live was a disaster.
But we thought, that's our band.
I remember every fucking person that we knew in Atlanta that Saturday night that The Replacements came on in TV on Saturday Night Live, we all were at parties and watching it and getting completely shit-faced.
They shaved their eyebrows off and shit and were rolling around and changed clothes.
And people were like, oh, dear!
We were like, yeah, cheering it on.
That's how you...
That's it.
Isn't that part of one of the goals is to be that big of a pain in the ass to the...
And who are you being a pain in the ass to?
Some authority.
Something that says you can't do that or this is the way it goes.
That changes.
But I think as a youth...
That's definitely something I'm not feeling with a lot of bands.
I mean, I think it's there in the punk scene and stuff like that, but they're not getting access to them.
But if you're spending your time arguing with people on Twitter all day, like, nothing is more depressing to me than seeing old rock stars argue about politics on Twitter.
It is so goddamn depressing watching rock stars virtue signal and attacking people personally for having differing political beliefs, like, and then looking at their timeline and realizing these poor fucks are addicted to this shit and they're doing this five, six hours every day.
We played a lot of new songs from our latest record.
It was amazing.
And then we finished in Europe.
And my wife and I stayed in Sicily and went back to London at the end.
And I've been doing it for 35 years of that.
1990, first time I go to Europe.
And it's still like, I don't care.
35 years?
It's a lot of shows.
I don't care if I wake up and I'm tired.
And we have friends all over the place.
Which is a beautiful thing.
Friends in Amsterdam, friends in Paris, friends in London, friends in Madrid, friends in this, you know, Germany, whatever.
But we're constantly out doing, you know what I mean?
There's no way we're not heading the town in any town and finding what it has that makes maybe it unique or special, whether that's tastes or touch or whatever.
I mean, it's...
It sounds silly, but like I said before, there's still adventure in the world.
And I'm not talking about jumping out of an airplane adventure.
Yeah, that's one of the things I loved about Anthony Bourdain's show, you know, that he would go and really immerse himself in these cultures and eat their food and hang out with their chefs and hang out with the people and get toured.
You know, someone would take him on a tour around the town.
I saw live footage of it, some live cell phone footage of it.
Unless you've experienced that live, when you're around the sky, and the sky becomes an angry monster, and everywhere around you is dangerous, and the winds are 120 miles an hour, it's so humbling.
I was in a tornado in Atlanta in the early 70s, and that was...
I mean, I was probably too young to be, like, traumatized, but I remember feeling my parents' trauma about this thing going over our house or whatever.
I mean, when hurricanes hit places and devastate them, it takes decades for them to recover, especially without aid.
And then sometimes it's like the people that are there, they just don't want to do it anymore.
It's like when you realize you're in a place that this happens and there's other places where this doesn't happen, you just get the fuck out.
But there's a humbling of being attached to nature in that way that I think.
I grew up in Boston, and there's something to the people that live up there that understand that every winter it's going to get so cold that you could die outside.
In our animalistic DNA of like still being that person, you know, these people, again, it's a quest for fire, being these people who are really not just completely immersed in their environment as well for survival and sustenance and everything.
That it's still like in the way I guess, you know, there's an instinctive thing in those moments that has to be the exact same chemical reaction in every human being in any expanse of time that we've been like this.
I did that as a kid, and it's still one of the coolest.
But I was like, you know, it's funny when I look back, you know, they have like up the streets, they'll have like the fountain at the end of the street or where the water would come, and you could see like where people lean their hand.
There's like an indention for the centuries of people leaning in to get a sip of water.
I just put my hand on that.
As a kid, I almost couldn't stop thinking about that.
Versace party in London, and there were a bunch of famous people there, but everyone sat down at a table and, you know, different things, and I was just like, Oh, and he was with Richard E. Grant.
They were making Gosford Park.
Richard E. Grant, also, I was impressed to see and meet because of the film Withnail and I is one of my favorite movies of all time, and there's Withnail, you know, like, there he is.
I mean, it's Richard, but...
But there's Bob Altman who is, you know, lord of my imagination and, you know, one of the best films, my favorite film, some of my favorite films of all time.
And so after when the dinner kind of like is less whatever, people are up talking to other people, I just go over to him.
I'm like, fuck it.
I'm just going to, you know, because I would be a little bit timid or shy in that situation.
And I would never think anyone, I still to this day never imagine anyone knows who I am or what I do or whatever.
I transfer all my notes to phones because occasionally I'll write something on the phone.
The best thing about the phone, honestly, is like sometimes I have an idea.
Maybe I've had a couple of cocktails, too, which is like, you know, Memory is slippery.
When you're drinking with friends and you're having a good time, but you have an idea, I'll just run into a bathroom stall and I'll hit the voice recorder and just say it.
Because there's people who can write, there's people who can play, there's people who can produce and record, and there's people who can dance and sing and perform.
He was doing a residency once at House of Blues in Vegas, but it was like really late at night, and I had to do something in the morning, and I passed on going.
I mean, at least if you look at, like, when I look at my age people, we were just, we were close enough to the Beatles and close enough to the Sex Pistols and close, you know what I mean?
And the Stones and Zeppelin.
That shit's long gone for a lot of younger people, you know, as time moves on.
Because I think, well, we were called Mr. Crow's Garden, and it's a book.
It's like a children's book from the 20s called Mr. Crow's Garden.
With an E, so it's a name, you know, he was Mr. Crow.
And we were kind of, you know, into like psychedelic, you know, like it was our, that was the name of our band.
So when we made Shake Your Money Maker, a few years had gone by since we first were Mr. Crow's Garden, and now we don't sound like that.
And George Triculius, our producer and our A&R guy and our lifeline to the music business, to the world, who signed us and stuff, he was like, we need, you know, we've got to change the name.
So there was a little bit of time where before we said we'll be the Black Crows.
And that's when Rick interjected that that's what he...
Because we're Southern.
Aren't all Southern people fear-driven, ignorant bigots?
I don't know, because the poet in me and the armchair occultist would believe that...
The only way we achieved what we achieved, became what we became, is because of the way, some reason, also leaving the E in it, that was the one thing that I said we would do.
And by the way, leaving the E in it was also great, and it's still great to this day when someone requests something or wants something from you and they misspell the name of the band, we're like, no.
You know, we're on tour, and we're working that record, and I'm the one who has to get up in the morning, and okay, so we're playing.
We're in Cleveland.
Now we're playing Cincinnati.
I have to go to 10 radio stations in Cleveland and Cincinnati and do the handshaking and the talking and, you know, sell the band.
I meet all the...
Like local promo people, you know, so they pick you up and stuff.
And most everyone was really super cool and they would be the people that could get you drugs and pay for drinks and stuff, you know?
But, wow, I would be driving in the car with some of these guys and they'd be like, must be tough being...
You know, like talking down to me like...
You don't know me.
Just because I'm Southern and I'm a musician doesn't mean that, you know, talking down to me like I'm stupid or something, or I'm like, whoa, whoa, you don't know.
It was the thing that they held over all of our heads is that if you develop an act that could be converted into a sitcom, all of a sudden you're Tim Allen and you have $50 million in the bank.
Or your Jerry Seinfeld or your Brett Butler or your Roseanne Barr.
There was like a few of those people.
Yeah.
And there's a bunch of people that had managed some more obscure shows that people forgot about, but they made a lot of money as well.
And it was this thing that if you could get on a sitcom and then all of a sudden you're the king of queens.
You know, like my friend Kevin James, that was his thing.
But it's just the problem is you're never gonna make everybody happy and now way more people have an opinion they can express like because of social media.
Like everyone can express their opinion.
It's not as simple as you hope to get the favor of a reviewer.
Like someone who's cool, really likes bands, comes to see, oh, Bob's here.
This guy's fucking cool.
He's gonna review our show.
And you're like, you kind of trusted Bob.
Bob was a good guy.
He really loved music.
Wasn't trying to tear things down.
Those guys don't exist anymore.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, now what everyone's trying to do is get people on social media to like them and or not be mad at them.
The pursuit of other people who you don't even know, their love and attention, and you'll morph and change and adapt whatever you're trying to produce in order to gain their favor, that's a fucking folly.
That's such a foolish way of interacting with human beings.
You need experiences from people where when they resonate, when they put out these works, whether it's a book or music or anything, This thing represents their soul and their perspective and their actual...
This is a thing they've created.
Not a thing they're doing so they hope you like it.
Not a thing they're doing so they hope you don't get mad.
Not a thing they're doing where you highlight social issues so people think they're a virtuous person.
And it's like, I mean, in a way, in a counterculture way, whether it's a poet, a musician, a jazz musician, anyone, you know, Robert Mitchum.
You know Robert Mitchum's cooler than Kurt Douglas?
Because he got busted for smoking pot, okay?
So Robert Mitchum's cooler than you, Kurt Douglas.
The outsider in culture.
You know what I mean?
The loser and the outsider are other themes that we do not celebrate as much.
And I'm not talking about some fabricated pop star who pouts and is like, look how dark I am.
That's not...
What I'm talking about.
And that's always there.
Again, showbiz and corporate things, you know, can manipulate these kind of archetypes and put them in the genre-specific things that they want because they know.
I mean, it's funny because that's, you know, more than ever, not just for the fact that I really had to go through certain things to come full circle with my career and my brother and what the Black Crows mean.
In my life, a lot of things.
A lot of it's starting with my wife, Camille, and stuff.
But one of the things that keeps me excited and one of the main things that I love is I know that we're...
Call us old-fashioned or call us naive or...
Anything you want, it doesn't matter.
We were talking about that stupid flame idea, this purity, but I know when we go out on tour and we write songs, make records, play concerts, it's something that is raw still in there.
We're not in-air monitors.
There's no computer on our stage.
You know what I mean?
You see these fucking bands cancel a show because their laptop didn't work.
And I think, historically, and because of science and things...
You know, it's like that idea of, well, this was the Bronze Age.
It started on Thursday, but then they find a corpse in the ice in the Italian Alps, and the guy has a bronze sword, and he's 2,000 years before they thought.
But we went to there, which is where the Illusinian mysteries were, and I got really lucky to go with my friend Brian Murorescu.
I was there with my family and Brian was there at the same time and Brian Muroescu is a scholar who wrote this incredible book about the use of psychedelics in ancient Greece that's now been confirmed through they take these old pieces of pottery and they found ergot in the pottery Yeah, of course.
They think all their wine was laced with psychedelics and these people were and they invented democracy.
Oh I mean, they're tripping balls and trying to give everybody an equal participation in society and figuring things out.
But you're around these structures, and these are fucking thousands of years old.
No, these people are like rethinking society the same way they put a stop to it in the 1960s.
When the government made all psychedelic drugs schedule one, when they were doing that so they can go after the anti-war protesters and the Black Panthers and they changed the counterculture movement.
Well, you know, it's now in how many states, Jamie?
Legal in how many?
Didn't we say it was like legal in 19?
I think it's half the country has legal marijuana.
Half the country.
And the other half the country wants it.
Like, what are we doing?
Like, how the fuck is it 2024 with all that we know about all the drugs and that this one?
24 states, three territories in Washington, D.C. have legalized recreational cannabis use.
Seven states have decriminalized its use.
Commercial distribution is legal in all jurisdictions where possession is legal except for Virginia and Washington, D.C. Personal cultivation for recreational use is allowed in all jurisdictions except for Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey.
That's surprising.
And Washington State, that's even more surprising.
I think it's just a dumb thing for us to be hanging on to, the fact that they're still allowing grown adults to tell other grown adults what they can do with their consciousness.
With all the data that we know about things that are very harmful, that are not just legal but prescribed by doctors, How about just everything is harmful that they allow in the world?
It is crazy when you go to the Coliseum and you realize the extent of the construction of it and how elaborate it was and how many different things they had going on.
Artistically, I mean, that's also something I think about when I go to Italy.
Like, there is something about their life and their lifestyle that contributes to this incredible body of work when it comes to art, when it comes to music, when it comes to sculptures and paintings.
A friend of mine gave it to me a couple years ago.
It's a British Secret Service officer, comes to Naples in 1944, directly in the, you know, push of the Allies pushing the Germans and then fascists up the peninsula.
From Sicily and then landing in Italy.
And it's an unbelievable book that this guy writes.
And it's...
The sadness and the tragedy of it, and like anything else, war is dramatic.
War is pain and violent.
The aftermath of war is something that people rarely can wrap their heads around or are interested in.
Maybe because it's even, you know, you take away the drama of the battle and stuff, it's bleak.
But there's something about, and this guy is not Italian, English guy.
But he captures the spirit, the humanity within, like, this transitional period in Naples, but unimaginable stories.
Depravity, but also great exalted human things as well.
And then just some things that are incredible, like, you know, Italians in their clothes.
And even the rich, the aristocratic class in Naples to the person that could, when they didn't have any fabric...
Around this time after that, they're walking around Naples in beautifully tailored suits made of old army blankets that they would use black paint on to make them look chic.
Yeah, and I was like, wow, I would love to see that garment in a museum.
But just all manner of...
There's another American guy who was there at the same time and wrote another book about it, which is also very interesting because this guy was one of the only books of that time that talks about the gay scene with the soldiers in Naples and stuff, too, during this thing.
You know what I mean?
Incredible stories, incredible survival and heroics and art and culture that still survive during the darkest time.
Well, it's always interesting, too, when you're thinking about things thriving and existing against resistance in a dark time or a different time, a time of much more difficulty.
And you get a chance to...
Sort of feel what they felt when they were doing what they were doing.
I mean, I think culturally, historically, I mean, I think one of the great reasons Europeans have a much different attitude, you're talking about, you know, Sicilians, Italians, everyone, French, Spanish.
To have two events, like the World War I and World War II, yeah, we have very little...
It's hard for us to understand what those two events must have felt like through communities, cities, families.
I just read another amazing book called Wine and War, and it's a history of the wine business during the Nazi occupation during World War II. Unimaginable, wild shit going on.
But the French people, you know, because the Germans...
They knew as well.
What's the blood of France?
It's the wine.
What is the thing that holds it together in all these things?
But it's also a great commodity and also something of great elevated status.
All this stuff with the way they dealt with the Vichy...
I'm like, wow, man.
These guys had a lot on their plate for five years.
In the book, I mean, and also just history, I think that's one of the reasons I think Germany, I mean, a lot of French people just didn't want to do it again.
History repeats itself all the time, and we know this.
There was a lot of infighting and political things within the French government at that time, whether that's through the military or whatever, that made them really a soft spot.
There was no cohesiveness of the way they would think about fighting or defending or whatever.
There was a really good professor that was kind of explaining things to us.
And he was talking about the different psychedelics that they believed that they would use and the way they had structured all their buildings to align with constellations and the way they had sort of worshipped this whole...
It's an integration of the sky into all of their architecture.
But isn't it funny also that our culture is dictating a certain health thing?
Take the sober challenge.
Go to the gym.
Buy these gym clothes and walk around in them.
Do all this, but we're not going to take care of anything else.
You know what I mean?
Like, you don't care about our mental health.
You don't really care about our health.
You know what I mean?
You don't do anything, but it's like, but culturally, let's start putting this out there.
You know what I mean?
Like why, you know, there's When I first went to New York City there were bars and bookstores and weird junk stores and all sorts of things that weren't corporate.
And now it's just gyms and banks.
And I think, I don't really go to the gym, but I imagine you could get an ATM in the gym next door to the bank with the ATM. I'm sure you could.
But if I'm not doing it, at my level of the game, if I'm not doing it, you don't have to do it.
You don't have to.
All you have to do is make something that resonates with people and avoid anybody else's input.
I've had a lot of bad input come my way that I've ignored.
You know, and especially in the early days when things started to kind of take off, everybody has an opinion about how you can grow this thing to the next level, which is what I want to talk about.
You know how to take the show to the next level.
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You know, thought about having more celebrities and more this and that.
He was already so huge that when he would stop by in comedy clubs, this is like after the Pimp Chronicles, he would only go to a bunch of different clubs, and if you weren't there when Cat was there, you missed him.
So he only came to the comedy store like a handful of times.
And the Comedy Store, that was my haunt.
And that's where I went with all my friends and all the best comics in LA and Europe.
We all collaborated at the Comedy Store.
And I never got to see him there.
I'd heard he smacked somebody once.
He got to fight with somebody in the front porch one night.
I missed it.
I'd always admired him.
And I'd always talk nice about him.
I didn't understand why he thought I wouldn't have him on the podcast.
But once I met him, he's a joy.
He's a funny, smart dude who's a lot of what he's saying, he knows what the fuck he's doing.
He's very tongue-in-cheek and just having a good time with it.
I mean, his energy and stuff's incredible, but his singing, I mean, they did Wild Horses that night, and I looked over, and my 14-year-old was, like, crying, and I was like, I'm so proud of you.
It's from the 80s, and Stichino's a toothpick, yeah?
So he's Johnny Toothpick.
What's the story?
It's a famous story.
He's a school teacher in Naples or whatever, or in Italy, and this girl whose wife or lover or whatever, some big gangster in Sicily, he's in hiding because he ratted on someone.
I don't know, something...
She sees him, and he looks just like him, so she brings him to Sicily, and he's walking around.
People are like, yo, what are you doing?
You know what I mean?
So it's that kind of thing, but it's an unbelievably funny movie.
Do you remember there was an Italian singer who created a very popular song where it was fake American lyrics?
God, I'm trying to remember his name, but it was a song where he's singing fake words that sound like he's singing like the Rolling Stones or the Beatles or something like that, but he's doing it with fake words.
It's like what he thinks American songs sound like, but it's gibberish.
I say we sing the songs in the same keys, you know?
It was funny.
We played the Forum.
We were the first concert in the Forum, LA Forum, after COVID. And it was a bit...
I had never played there.
It was a big night.
It was, you know, friends and family.
It was great.
But George Duculius, who's produced our first records, first two records, and signed the band, after the show, he was like, if I had known you'd still be singing them 30-whatever years later, we could have put the keys down for you, you know?
I was like, that wasn't how it worked back then.
Because, you know, in rock and roll, you have the verse, and then you get to the chorus, and you want to get it exciting.
So they're like, man, I saw you when you played this song.
And that's the other thing about music.
It's like rock music.
You can do a lot of stuff, but one thing about the songs we've written, and I meet people...
And people play the songs we've written at weddings and at funerals, you know what I mean?
Not just parties and not just things, but like, you know, my brother, I wrote, you know, when we wrote She Talks to Angels, I always have time and I'm always humbled by people's experiences with that song and addiction and things in their lives, whether it's them, a family member, loss, Or people that have overcome things, you know what I mean?
And that we, you know, just wrote that song one day when we were kids, and that means so much to people.
I mean, there's a lot of songs like that in our repertoire that people come up to.
But the fact that that can be captured in a song, and like you said, sort of carry you through these bad moments, we realize other people are experiencing grief, hardship, depression, darkness, terrible thoughts of loss.
And that's the reason why those songs are so popular.
Again, I think people for some reason think the music business is supposed to be the gauge.
They're just like any other fucking salesman.
They always have been.
Just because one salesman had a cool taste and one didn't, don't kid yourself.
They're not artists.
They're salesmen.
And there's cool people and not cool people, but they're not, you know what I mean?
And I think, like, now we live in a time, and you see it a lot, you see people making comments about it in our industry, about how you're just following.
Whereas before, yeah, you had things that were popular, but someone, you know, someone said, fuck, sign the Stooges.
You know, Danny Fields did that, but he had great taste, but he was still a record company guy, the business side of it.
Someone, you know what I mean, someone said, sign Susie and the Banshees or whatever.
Someone said, dude, I mean, Bob Dylan, you didn't know when they made first Bob Dylan record that he'd be 83 years old, Bob Dylan, you know what I mean?
I'm looking for still that maverick spirit or somebody who does have the wherewithal and or vision to see that maybe something is a little bit outside the box still could have not just it would have importance and it can be popular as well.