Welcome to Raw Impressions Monday's Music Mini episode. Hi honey. Hi. Happy Day.
Happy Day. You know I'm struggling a little bit today. Not so happy day. Yeah I took one of your sleep aids last night.
You make it sound like I'm some, you know. Well no I'm going to sit over the counter sleep aid. It's a unisom. Unisom.
Unisom uses antihistamine. As does Tylenol PM but they're two different antihistamines. Which I cannot quote you the exact titles of each but they're different. And the antihistamine that is in yours.
Unisom. Unisom say it again. Unisom. That one doesn't agree with me because I think it's the same one they use in NyQuil and that makes me feel depressed and murderous.
I also like NyQuil. You do. Yeah I use unisom from time to time and it helps me. It helps me get past that two AM wake up where I just, my body just wakes up and goes I think it's time for you to run over everything, everything in your life right now.
And Unisom turns that little switch off and says actually not right now. Adele needs more rest. My aid of choice is alprazilam but my doctor has decided that I shouldn't have it. I have an appointment this month.
Yeah you lose got a GP appointment coming up everybody. Yeah. So in case you're wondering. I can talk to him about my alprazilam usage.
And convince him you need more. I don't know. I hear it causes dementia. Damn.
I'm not into that. Yeah. Stop that then. Wow okay.
That wasn't a very low dosage alprazilam. I was actually micro dosing it. It's amazing when you come micro dose these days. It's pretty much everything.
Ahhh. Can we just get to the real story here? It's mini music Monday. It's time to talk about music.
Yeah we're back in Massachusetts. We're back and ready to roll with the podcast. So we're back. Yeah this is our reentry.
Yeah we're kind of shaking off the dust bunnies. We're like oh yeah what is this? I don't know. Three weeks correct.
Yeah I feel like I lived there. I thought I'd moved. I got confused. I was like wait a minute.
I have another house. I don't live in LA anymore. It's confusing. Well you did live in LA for a long time as you die.
So it's kind of hard to snap back out of it. Yeah. Been into it for such a long time. It was a significant amount of time.
So yes but we live in Massachusetts. We're in our home. We only have one home and we're in it right now. One car.
It's a minivan. And one home. Greenfield MA everybody. So it's mini music Monday we're back.
God I know you missed us last week. I'm so sorry. I missed us. We were apart from most of our trip out there.
I know. That sucked. Didn't like that part. Well this week I would like to talk about an old song of mine.
Yes we're going to circle back here and get to the point of this episode. I want to go way back. I want to go to 1986. I'm not very good at remembering dates that things occur in my life.
So in 1986 you would have been twenty. Twenty years old. You were born in 1966. So we have twenty years old.
A member of Dinosaur Jr. Dinosaur at that point. Oh okay. We had yet to be forced to change our name.
We were dinosaur. Alright so. We were a three piece electric rock band based in Amherst, Massachusetts. Although I at that point still lived in my parents house in Westfield, Massachusetts.
And I would drive the seventeen to twenty miles to Jay's house to practice in his parents basement. Although he was living at UMass at that point. But his practice space was in his parents basement. That makes sense.
That's where Deep Wound practiced as well. Who's Deep Wound? Deep Wound was our original band that Jay and I had together. It was a hardcore band.
Super fast hardcore band. I got to play a Deep Wound song at some point. Definitely. We should just do a Deep Wound to many music Mondays in time.
We should. But right now we're doing what we're really talking about. This is not that Monday. What we're talking about is a song that appeared on the very first cassette that I released.
Yeah this isn't a dinosaur song. No this is a Lou Barlow song. Although I titled it Centredo. Oh.
Sort of a pre-sebado band called Centredo. Well actually it wasn't a band. Well it wasn't because Derek Gaffney played drums on some of my recordings. So confusing.
Hey. Good God. I thought confusing was that I aspire to be confusing back then. What is Centredo and what's Centredo?
I don't understand. Is it a band or it's not? Centredo was me with Eric Gaffney playing occasional percussion and I released a cassette called Weed Forrecent. Okay.
Which was Weed Forresting. It was about, you know, if you can say like if you're Forresting weeds as opposed to trees because I considered my songs to be weeds because they weren't quite fully matured. You know what I mean? Oh.
Okay so that's what the song title or that's what the album title is. Right. I considered what I was writing not to be full songs but fragments. Weeds as compared to Mighty Oaks.
Right. Completed trees. Yes. Because I was working with Dinosaur Jr.
at that point and Jay was presenting Mighty Oaks. Mighty trees. These incredible songs like Repulsion. Right.
Well. I got the Swan. He was writing these songs and I was sort of. I love those old songs.
Great. Fantastic. Incredibly inspirational for me. But I was on my own at home in my parents house working in a nursing home.
Night Shift during the day I would be recording away on my four track. And I wrote a song called Whitey Peach that I'm going to tell you the story about Whitey Peach. We're going to talk about Whitey Peach today. One of my most requested songs to this day.
People request it. Men. Women. Children.
They request this song when I play live. So I think you need to tell the story first. I do. I'm a young man.
20 years old I guess. These are all guesstimations. We're going with 20. We're going with 20.
You know I'm just going to stick with it. These are all facts. So we would practice with the man with Murph and Jay. And we would be learning Jay's incredible new songs.
And after we were done practicing we would head out and look for parties. Say if it was a Friday or Saturday. Young dudes. We would pile into either Jay's family station wagon or my own or Murph's Subaru Brat.
Which was a really cool little. God that makes me smile. I love that. I love thinking of Murph tooling around in a car called a Subaru Brat.
Oh yeah. And there was a back seat. You could sit in the back. There was just this plastic seat in the back.
Open air in the back. And I would actually bring my ukulele and play my ukulelele and Murph like tooled around the Amherst. Shootsbury. I love this visual.
I wish there was a video of that. I would write songs in my ukulele but in his brat in the back. And then but we would go to parties. Yeah.
And we would you find the house party you know a lot of colleges in the Amherst area. And so you find a good party and we would go into the party and we would pretty much always go to the kitchen where we would stand any circle or semi-circle and continue what we were talking about at the last party we were like amplifiers. But you know I would always I would never really look up. I never engaged in these parties.
And I never like walked around. You weren't wild. You weren't like a little talk to me type. Yeah I wasn't like hey let's talk to girls the party.
That was not in my. You weren't chugging the beers and grabbing the karaoke mic. You know you were looking down at your shoes. I was looking down at my shoes in the kitchen.
And if I was lucky enough. I bet you were so cute. If we were lucky there would be a cat in the house. Because then we would all focus on the cat.
I have a very vivid memory of us. A somewhat vivid. None of my memories are really vivid. But I remember like a cat would come into the kitchen and then we would all descend upon the cat and just start petting the cat together.
If you can imagine three young men all just petting a cat because it gave us something to focus on. Yeah. And those days are hard right. Trying to meet people.
Oh so. Socialize if you're not just naturally that social it can be challenging. It was. The cat is a wonderful kind of icebreaker.
It was. Yeah. But we were only we I mean again I just never spoke to anyone outside of my little circle of dudes that I rode around with. Anyway so I looked up and I made eye contact with a girl.
Mmm. And it lasted I mean it had to be like. In the kitchen. Well she was in the like the living room area.
So you looked up from the kitchen. Into the living room. And your eyes met. Our eyes met.
Okay. And we had solid eye contact for maybe two seconds. And two seconds is long. Yeah.
One. Two. Boy I can even my heart is even kind of racing thinking about it. And then I look you know immediately back down.
And I continued I drove myself home to my parents house. You know got up the next day my you know and I wrote a song about it. Wow. Just this two second connection that was so overwhelming to me.
But I went home and I wrote a song about it. And you wrote Whitey Peach. I wrote Whitey Peach. Okay and so do you sing the song now and then we talk about it or do we talk about it and then you sing it.
Because there's a thing we want to discuss right. We do. Yeah. There's a.
Maybe I should play it first. Let's play it first. Wait are you going to play. Which version are you going to play.
I'm going to play the clean version. Alright let's do it. Just kind of dirty. Girl.
Do you see the thing I see. A lion linking to. A lion looking your eyes. Me.
Bumpy young thing. Just reaching for something to reach. A yum beautiful. Baby sweet Whitey Peach.
There's a man in the finger fist. Shaft a tip. Man to roll. And to you scream.
Hawn a young ape. Walk a myth. Not as dull as I seem. Dritping my way.
I'm quite usual. Swear it's a beautiful day. Whitey Peach. So.
Well how about I let you share with me something I just learned from you. Yeah. At the end of the first verse. Just baby you're beautiful.
Baby a sweet Whitey Peach. And in the original version I said. Baby you're beautiful. Baby a sweet Whitey Peach.
I adore. Right. And I changed that when I learned the song I said but I used to play these pretty awesome. I mean it felt awesome to me.
Electric versions of the song. And I changed that to baby you're beautiful. Baby a sweet Whitey Peach. I adore.
But that doesn't change the fact that on the original version on this little cassette that I did, Wheat Forest and it says. W-H-O-R-E. And as I've been playing this song quite a bit lately because like I said people request it. And I thought do I sing the original version.
And like I said I get requests from women about it. And I've actually been doing like a trigger warning before I sing it because then I'll sing like the original version. And I've never I mean I'm just. But yeah I told you about it just recently like it actually says that word.
Yeah I didn't. I'll be honest I've never heard that album the Wheat Forest. I mean I've heard you sing some songs off of it live but I've never like sat down I've never opened it up. So I've never read the lyrics.
I've never read the lyrics. I didn't know. I really I think I'd only heard you play that song. Actually maybe.
Maybe a handful of times actually. Not that often. And you did play it recently in Amherst. And you told a lovely retelling of that story.
And then you played the song and I was standing there in the audience and I was thinking oh this is such a cool song. This is such a interesting sort of like that you're kind of talking about like that sexual tension you can have with someone in this like brief little moment in your youth and or even in adulthood. But I didn't know what the trigger warning was for. I didn't hear that word.
And so I was sort of scratching my head but I thought I don't know maybe he's just there's something I'm missing right and then I think it was yesterday or the day before we were up at night talking and I think we were talking okay so we were planning out mini music Monday and we were saying yeah you should play Whitey Peach and then I don't know how it came up but you then revealed that that word was whore. And I have to say I was really taken aback. I was well I mean it was it I don't really know if I'm being articulate it just it really surprised me because it felt very very unlike you and I feel like I do know you fairly well and but I didn't know you then you know and I will say this I think no matter how much I try to repackage it I can't I can't get over the fact that like I don't think that word is good in there and I don't like it. And so it was interesting to hear you say that you yourself had kind of adjusted it to I adore and yeah I think it's so of that time as well like I like to blame it on that time because a lot of but I don't I don't think it's well but I mean I think it's more to just give it context because I mean I think it is important to say to share that yeah it's like Jesus I did write that and that oof like some things do not stand up well in history right I don't think that stands up.
I don't either but I do think I try to figure out why I've been thinking about it like why did I throw that word in there but though the song is kind of it does have an aggressive undertone to it especially the second verse to you know there's a man finger fist shafted tip so I'm imagining that there's these I'm I'm saying I'm not good enough for this girl she wouldn't like me anyway there's so many more cooler and more competent people out there for her you know I'm I'm not worthy of her but you know but there's still an aggressive undercurrent to it. Well right because then it's aggressive to call her whore because of your insecurity. Yeah exactly it's my insecurity that's coming out is like aggression volumes to how I mean what is a huge issue with men and women to this day I mean it's like if a man feels threatened in any way by a woman it's like kind of the immediate go to is right something very degrading yeah yeah it taps in on something very I mean it's almost traditional the way that I mean of course that's changing and like I was saying like I never I didn't I'm looking back on it like I didn't feel that aggressive about it and certainly when I did get a girlfriend and also when I made female friends I never felt that way you know but it is definitely like a I don't know it's a remnant of a time and it's like and I do like I said I do like to want I do have this impulse to blame it on the on the tone of the time so because we were listening to a lot of very aggressive music that was about I mean there was a Nick Cave event called the birthday party and even in the bad seats there's always an undercurrent of like I would say sexism to all of that stuff and actually most music at that time big black a lot of the really aggressive music that I was listening to did have a hostility towards women and even like the early grunge stuff like so much even like the toadies big hit that was about murdering somebody Nirvana played the unplugged he played like this old blues song about murdering a woman hey Joe the song big it's about murdering a woman nearly young down by the river I mean there's a lot of like aggression towards women is something that it was like yeah it's very common I have to say it's sort of it's making my stomach tense just thinking about this when you're just like listening like song after song after song it's like it can go on and on I mean but you know imagine being me Lou imagine being a woman and having to like navigate this and having to also like be like I was telling you like your song would fall under the category of the cool girl thing where women who let's say were in the indie scene in like the 80s and the 90s they would have to go like oh I'm a cool girl I can handle those that music oh it's cool that he said whore I get it or whatever you know like but inside you might feel like garbage or you might not even know why you know it's just but that is definitely thankfully being called out now and like I know that Steve Albini has come out and has owned a lot of his shit and I think that that's good and it should happen and I hope to see more of it and so I will say is your wife and somebody loves you I was I was bummed to know that you wrote whore I should have told you you never known well it's there it's there but you know but I feel good over the fact that we're talking about it because I know it makes you uncomfortable it makes me uncomfortable but you know we got to talk about this stuff right you know how I should do the second first I could just say like baby old beautiful baby sweet whitey peach yeah what that hang monday's music mini episode