What's up posers, Justin here, just wanted to give you a little note at the beginning of this episode. We did have some difficulty with our recording software and we dropped out for about 30 seconds to a minute during the part of the show where I explained the Patreon. So I'm giving that to you here right now. This week's episode is a Patreon sponsored episode and if you would like to subscribe to our Patreon and choose the album we devote an entire episode to, go to patreon.com/punklotopod for $10 a one-time donation, you get to choose the album we devote an entire episode to. And also we lost our producer credits. So here are the producers. If you would like to become a producer of this show, sign up for the $5 tier and you will get your name said every week here on the show. So this week's episode is brought to you by Philips Booker, Dave Brown, host of the podcast One Band Five Songs, Steve Long, host of the podcast Rebel Rock Radio, and Jason W, writer of the newsletter, songs about chocolate and girls. And that covers that so enjoy the show. I'm your other co-host Dylan Hensley and this is the show where we choose when you're at random and select one punk, hardcore emo or punk adjacent album from that year to discuss. So for this week, we have been assigned a record via one of our patrons and we'll get into that more in a moment, pre-empting any negative reviews before we could even get into it. If you love this record and don't want to hear someone talking bad about it, turn it off. Don't listen, don't go write a review for it, skip it. If you have a sense of humor and you want to listen to people joke about a record you like, stay tuned, but otherwise get out now. Right, right, right, grow up. Yeah, no, this episode does need a disclaimer of this is not a record we would have picked ourselves. It certainly is a, I mean, if someone else was a guest and picked this record, we would do it, but we would probably tell them up front like, we don't really like this record that much historically speaking. So yeah, we've done it before, you know, we did the Smith's album, we did that with one of the members of the band, Pura Oxide, Blonde, and we told him up front, we're like, we're not fans of this band. So he's like, but that's cool. He's like, I don't care. I'm open to discussing it, so yeah, so, and well, you know, all right, like, everyone's heard, you know, this, everyone's heard this record, it, it's, it's a cultural touch song, or we're getting into the record already, I guess we could save some of this, but just more in line with that disclaimer, it's time for some dissenting opinions. There's room for it. If you want to hear people talk about it, how much they love this record on a podcast, I'm sure you can find what. So yeah, I'm sure they exist. This is not that one. So you will try our best to be objective. Oh, yeah, but, you know, going into it, we were like, yeah, I don't, I don't. Like this record has been, has been my impression of it. Yeah. So if you too want to choose an album where we'd have to give you a preemptive warning, patreon.com, we also have two other tiers. We have the $1 tier, which gets you access to all of our weekly bonus audio. And last week we did a bracketology on albums released in 1999 and pretty fun conversation. Little mix of, we've got some metal core in there. We got some riot girl in there. We've got a little emo, a couple of different things in there. So that was fun. And I've been promising for a couple of weeks now, but we will have a new metal core Chronicles episode up shortly, either before this episode drops or right after. I did not have time to do it last week, but that is coming very soon. So you can also join at the $5 producer tier, which gets your name set on the podcast every single week, as well as something you'd like to plug. We'll get into that later. And also it gets you access to the listening club, a monthly group discussion that we get together and talk about albums. The first one we did was the week we're recording this. We discussed better legends, the gray race. And it was pretty fun. So we haven't landed on our next record yet. I think maybe we should do something Halloween-y for October. So maybe a collection of two by the misfits, I don't know. Or to come on which record we're going to talk about in October, but yes. So this week's episode is a Patreon sponsored episode. This episode is brought to us by our buddy Justin, who previously has sponsored a few different albums, most notably "Dylinger 4s, Midwestern Songs of America." And I believe, yes, the FYP record that we covered. So Justin has locked in on a punishing angle when it comes to the Patreon tier, because he likes to assign stuff that he knows we don't like. Now, we love "Dylinger 4." So that was back in the good days. So we've somehow offended him and he's decided to make a listen to FYP in this week's episode. Was there another episode? I feel like there was another album he selected for us, but I'm blanking currently. I don't remember. Anyway, so yeah, the album we're talking about came out in the year 1999. And while we did discuss quite a few records that were released that year over on our Brackatology last week, as usual, we like to take a look at the other albums that were released that same year. So if we look at ReikiMusic.com, punk albums sorted by popularity, it's our album that we're talking about today. It's number one. But at number three, we have an album we have previously covered, which is "The Battle of Los Angeles" by "Raging Us the Machine." We covered that with the band "Contact" and other albums from "99 We Have" covered "The Rituals of Life" by Stretch Armstrong, "Running Through My Bones" by "Type Bros" from Wayback Win. That was sponsored by our Patreon. We have "Clarity" by Jimmy World, and we did that with the band Orange Island. We did short music for short people. The Fat Wreck Comp. We did that with the band "Talk Show" host. And we did some singles action on the year 1999. We did a two-parter where we discussed an entire magazine. We discussed an entire issue of Billboard Magazine. That failed gimmick. Yeah. We did "Cows as Me" by Orchid, as well as Angel's Curse Whispered in the Edge of Destiny. By Envy, we did that with Paul, the TGO of Tor Johnson Records. Then we covered a guided tour of Chicago by the Lawrence Arms, as well as the Distillers self-titled EP with good friend Corey. So we've hit 1999 quite a few times. We have, and there are a lot more records we could talk about from 1999. Yeah. That's a huge year. I mean, how many of the records that we talked about on the bracket that we just recorded were, I mean, there's at least three all-time, four all-time favorite records, you know? Yeah. That's just our personal favorites. And then there's stuff that, you know, we talked about that, like, is definitely really important, like, botch and, like, La Tigre. And, yeah, it's a, it's a deep year, I think. Is 1999 also the year that people are like, "This is one of the greatest years in film history." Isn't that, like, a theory that people have talked about? What are the great, I don't know, what are the great movies of '99, Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, being John Malkovich, Virgin Suicides. I guess there's some pretty critical stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And Doc Saints has its, you know, cult following ghost dog. Yeah. It is considered, like, one of the best years in film. There's, there's Google's AI overview, who says 1939, while others say '99 or 2001' are some of the greatest years in film. '39's got Gone with the Wind' and 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips'. That, that's the kind of era there. But yeah, I've definitely heard people talking about '99 being, like, the greatest year in film history. And then, like, I think there's podcasts about it too. So, '99. '99 was, uh, Fight Club, Office Space, uh, what else? Cider House Rules, Phantom Menace. B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B. Dautama! Of 1999's, like, one of the great, I don't think that's the Iron Giant. People love that movie. Yeah, people do love that movie. The Bone Collector. Heh, heh, heh, heh, sheh, wing. I feel like that is a movie critic who is of a certain age. Who would be saying that '99 is, like, the best year for movies. Or a casual, like, a non-movie critic who's, like, 'We're talking about Fight Club came out that year?' Yeah, a Fight Club fan would say '99 is the best. Fight, Fight Club and the Matrix. And Boondock Saints, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, and the Sixth Sense. A big year, an important year, but maybe not actually the best year, but this isn't a movie podcast. The Johnny Depp Sleepy Hollow, yep, it's, you know, there's a lot of notable stuff from '99, so, you know, I can kind of see it. Yeah. Yeah, I think they talk about it too, being just, like, it's a big year for directors too, like, there's, uh, Eyes Wide Shut is that year, and, yeah, there's, like, a Scorsese movie that year too, yeah. Wild Wild West. Of course. Oh. That's cinema. I get it now. That's why. That is capital S cinema. [laughs] Uh, '99 for Music, though, is the year of Anima of the State by Blink-182. Cool. [laughs] We need to do a Blink-182 record one day, we've said it before. This would be a prime example of one that, uh, we would do a disclaimer at the top if we were to cover it. We have the White Striped Self-Titled Record. I don't think anyone in '99 was buying that album. This is a retroactive, clearly, uh, because I even looked at the track listing on that one, and I'm like, I don't know any of these songs. What are you talking about? I know them because I heard them, but it's not hits. Right. Uh, there is the Pinback Self-Titled Record, which I did a whole series on the Pinback Discography, on Challengeography. Excellent. Excellent record. We're coming up on Spooky Season and Famous Monsters by the Misfits was released that year. Can we do that for the listing club? I feel like we could do that on a Maine Halloween episode. We do need to do a Michael Graves record, despite Michael Graves sucking as a person. Yeah. Uh, well, I think generally speaking, most members of the Misfits stink. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Danzig is like one of those like the lovable ones, lovable dumb guys. Uh, I don't know. Fake pandemic, Danzig. Yeah. Hope it denied her Danzig. [laughs] Getting kicked out of his own movie screening, Danzig. [laughs] I put my model girlfriend in my movies. [laughs] She wears mesh shirt tops with nothing underneath when we go to WWE Monday Night Raw. [laughs] Apparently, side note, what's his name, all, um, all American records. Jesus Christ. What am I playing on his name for? [laughs] Rick Rubin. Jesus. Yeah. That's having like a brain fart. Yeah. Apparently Rick Rubin shows up every single time the WWE goes to LA. Like, he's a big WWE fan, so he probably brought Danzig with him. I don't know how that happened, but I don't think Rick Rubin hangs out with Danzig anymore. Yeah. You think Danzig showed up because he knows Rubin goes to Raw? Try it. Try to get him to come back and do another record with me. I need to, it's been a, it's the right time of year. I probably should go pour out some kitty litter at the Danzig house. [laughs] Okay. 99, also the year of Poison the Wells, the opposite of December, a season of separation. This is another one of those math core records. I wasn't sure if you knew this record, and that's why I didn't actually wind up including it in our bracket options. I don't really. Yeah. I think I've heard it once. I don't know it well enough necessarily to cover it like that, but AFI's Black, Sales and the Sunset. That's a good one. Yeah. It'd be a good one to cover. We have Saved the Day through being cool. So whatever happened, am I canceled, Saved the Day? Yeah. Like, they just, they just stuck around, right? Did they deny it? Was that the, was that the move, just like wholesale ignored it and move along? They're like, we have enough fans. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. But, uh, all right. So this is a case of written music being a really weird website and the type of albums that get highly rated. But if you look at some of the stuff in this like top 40 Nemo, well, we got Paradise Lost on here. Like, I know it's like Gothic, but it's not, it's not the kind of goth that comes from pot. You know? Well, it's weird that today is the day record is so high up here, but I guess it's the one with Bran and Bill or one of the ones with the guys from Mastodon. So that's why. But yeah, we got like Kent and like dredge, mortation, I guess, cause they have some grind elements to it. But yeah, like, what is, what is a wicked Farley's and why is it so highly rated? Uh, we have waiting by the band Thursday, uh, our wolf, your favorite band, never let that go. I can't remember, you just were like, Oh, that's a really important record. It's like, I don't think anyone thinks that's an important record. Well, this is important to certain people, I guess, if you say so, that important record, a place in the sun by lit, so a lot of copies, I'm sure certainly popular, I guess. Not a good record by any stretch of the imagination. It falls apart immediately. Yeah. It's like, Oh, they have one good song. Okay. You still hear that song though. Yeah, it is still pretty well played. We have an early under earth record, act of depression when they were still like a metal band. Yeah. That band has the weirdest arc. They like under earth started as like a black metal influence, like metal core band. And then they turned into a scene core post art, core, emo sort of thing. And then they turned into like a normal gene knock off after that, just weird career. They've also had like a billion band members that probably contributes to it. And then they do like, I feel like even later stuff, like what was voyeurist? It had like a little bit of an industrial. Yeah. I never listened to that one. So I don't know. I mean, they brought in a lot of industrial influences later. Yeah. Accidentally rated the song. So that was fun. Just scrolling. Oh, we got cattle decap, human jerky, funny, breach, the Swedish breach, right? Yeah. The record. I don't know that one. I know it's me God, the one before, but I don't know venom. Yeah. I mean, I think all their stuff was good. I mean, friction's a little rough, the first one, but we have very emergency by the promise ring. The gang's all here by the draft kick Murphy's prayer for cleansing's the rain and endless fall. It doesn't black roses. I use a prayer for cleansing song intro for the intro of metal core chronicles. I think it is the it doesn't black. Is it the intro to that song? I don't remember, but let's do this. So the album we're talking about today is an emo record. So I want to pull up specifically the emo albums of 1999. I'll even throw EPs in there as well, just to get a little more coverage. So bring to Maria. Look now. Look again was released that year, bright eyes every day and every night. The Atari's blue skies, broken hearts, next 12 exits, which I believe I've listened to that one. Pretty good record. The self title plans been saying for stars EP, yeah, still an emo band and not a rock man. I was going to say like, well, what are they going to be? They have like a new record coming out this year. One of the members passed away. I think the lead singer passed away, but I wonder what that record is going to sound like hopes fall to frailty of words, kind of like spitting, nothing makes sense without it. It's like a bike. Our own wars. Joyable record there. Oh, the Julianna theory. Understand this is a dream. Branson's fallen star collection pie balled. If it weren't for the Venetian for Venetian blinds, it would be curtains for us all 99 is a pretty good year for emo casket lottery on the might of princes far side. Yeah, I think 99 it was building up emo wouldn't really make its pop, you know, crossover until after pop punk had its run. I think that the pop punk radio play era lasted longer than most people would have thought and maybe lasted longer than most people even remember, like the blink, the blink era of pop punk. Yeah, there was this run. It was weird because like, yeah, in the mid 90s, like Dookie and you know, that kind of stuff gets radio play and then like the other green day records after that and then Blake when I did you coming in, they were like releasing albums and having songs played on the radio pretty regularly, but like concurrently with new metal and like postgrunge. So like the pop punk, like you're some 41 simple plan stuff, like that kind of was delayed a little bit. Yeah, that stuff feels like on the other side of new metal, like, I mean, there's still, you know, corn songs on the radio in 2000, 2001, but they're nestled now between with like fat lip and like a two's later material and green day post 9/11 records. Well, that's so far, but the emo wave really starts to take hold probably in what Oh 203 once like once like my chemical romance and fall out boy, like start to put out records and and I feel like a lot of those emo bands are more indebted to pop punk than they are the emo that came before them. But yeah, like looking at this, these records that came out like it's a lot of like still pretty well critically regarded stuff, which I guess we should use to transition into the the album that we're talking about today, and that is American football by American football. We're going to keep that one right? Ready? One. One. One. One. One. That's a choice for gay, everything is sad, everything is sad, everything is sad. We're going to keep that one right, everything is sad, everything is sad, everything is sad. Little, little backstory before we get into the record. This was sponsored by our buddy Justin, and we had discussed American football on a news of the world, I believe, around the time he thought to do this. We were talking about the Airbnb. Yeah, yeah, we were talking about American football buying the American football house and turning it into an Airbnb, and then like, because around the same time, like American football was like teasing something new too, and then like, it was revealed that it was just, it's just a covers album, it's like, oh, weird. Football doing covers, that's what people want. So we were talking about that, and he texted me and said, I am thinking about sponsoring an episode for the American football album, or the meme house album, is how he called it in the text, and I was like, you're going to get us in trouble, and then he sent us money, and so we had to do it. So, yeah, we got the American football house as our topic this week, and before we get into anything about the record, we got a little voicemail. Hey, podcasters, Joey here, you left me high and dry, looking for money in my commentary, I don't see nothing, if I'm going to send me some cigarettes or some shit, but that's okay, I got this prison wine, toilet wine business going on, and I've been breaking it in the dough here. Hey, hold on for a second, I'm talking here, no, I know you want to talk to Chinese. The kids don't even look like you, that's not your kid, and, oh, okay, give me a minute. Sorry about that. So any who didn't make it all this money off this toilet wine, so I sent you a couple dollars, want you to review an album, I ain't never listened to it, never heard of it, but I'm hearing you never heard of this twinkle, twinkle, emo, I don't know, house with a light on band, he don't like it, so I'm going to make you listen to it. So this one's on me, next time you send me some cools, okay, and we'll be even then. So you too, you do your nerd shit, you talk about your whatever, twinkle, emo, I don't know, I don't know, I ain't going to listen to it, that's your problem. Not my problem, and, okay, and we'll see what kind of show you got, and hope you get a beat down from it, okay, and, you know, we all win that way. So you take it easy, I'm getting out soon, so you better watch out, I'm going to fucking pull up real bad, so, alright, take care, and this one's on me, okay, you take care, bye-bye, and you know, while you listen to that bullshit, I'll be listening to, "Med-boo." Take care. So this actually comes by way of Johnny, yeah, though I guess he just had Justin send the money for him. So it doesn't feel like he cares at all about what it is that we're talking about. So we dropped the ball on the cigarettes, we'll get you covered, I didn't know they still made cools, they may, maybe they make them exclusively for prisons now. He said he's getting out soon, though, I don't know, maybe we can put in a call to the parole board. Well, we could definitely play them that recording of him threatening to beat us up, so we'll see. I don't know, that wouldn't be very prison abolitionist of us, though, it might not be consistent with our politics, but he's threatening to beat us up, but he wants us to send him cools and cigarettes, I don't know, man, it's kind of backwards, I don't know, is it reverse psychology going on here, like, I don't know. It's a tough love kind of relationship, I think. Good luck. Your remaining days in there, Johnny, watch out, don't hog the phones. Yeah, right. Yeah, I don't know that you're getting out on good behavior, unfortunately, yeah. We won't speak to the parole board, well, you send us the money, we'll call this even. Okay, so, all right, what do we do with this thing? Well, I mean, let's do it, I mean, let's just do it, the way we normally do. All right, let's do it. All right, let's do it. All right, let's get into the stats. So American football formed in 1997 in Urbana, Illinois. I've seen it also listed as Champagne Urbana area. I assume they're just really close together there. And this was released September 14th, 1999 on polyvinyl record company. Did not know they had a long name like that. And the person on this record is Steve Lamos on drums, percussion and trumpet, Steve Holmes on guitar and organ, and Mike Kinsella on guitar, vocals and bass. The album was recorded by Brendan Gamble, who had recorded with braid prior to this record and will later go on to produce planes mistaken for stars, Branston and albums by Black Cross, which is weird, the Patterson's from Louisville prior to American football, Mike Kinsella played in the band's cap and jazz and Joan of Arcadia. And Lamos was in the firebird band with Chris brooch of braid fame. And in 1999, polyvinyl also released Rayna Maria's look now look again, Aloha's the great communicators, Paris, Texas. So you think it's hot here and braids, please drive faster single. So yeah, that is the little bit of the backstory of the record and we'll get into more about that later. All right. Well, what is your experience with American football and this album? So I was just looking at my last FM plays for American football because I was trying to recall when I first heard them and I first heard songs from this record in 2009, which makes sense because I probably had downloaded some cap and jazz stuff in early 2009. And so I was probably just kind of like branching off from there and just like generally interested in like braid and, you know, a lot of the other Midwest emo stuff of this time period. And I listened to, it looks like I listened to about four songs and dipped out. So even in 2009, you're like, nah, this ain't for me. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe listen to like a song or two. Yeah, I would have heard stuff, you know, after that point. And then it looks like the last time I listened to the meme house record was in one time. I listened to the album in full in 2014 and I have not touched it since according to my last FM. Yeah. So you were probably pretty accurate. So you were that into cap and jazz in '09 that you were like, yeah, I'll listen to the other stuff. Yeah. I mean, I was just generally interested in like there was like stuff like Algernon Cadwelleter and, you know, those bands were starting to take off and I was like, yeah, I was interested in that stuff. So it, yeah, it would have been a natural progression to just check out American football because people would have been talking about that on tumblr or whatever. And I just would have seen the member association to cap and jazz. So yeah. I checked. I had forgotten that I had given them a listen that early on. Yeah. That's pretty early because that's even like before emo revivals like, I mean, there are a couple of bands, but before it was like a wave, you know? Yeah. I mean, I was definitely listening to cap and jazz in like 2009. Yeah. Yeah. Wonder what was going on in 2014 where you're like, I'll give this another shot. I don't know why specifically I listened to it. I do remember listening to it around that time period and it would have been most likely. Let's see. In 2014, it was September of 2014. That's funny. It's been 10 years. Exactly. Holy shit. I mean, I got to look at the date. Oh, man. It was on September 16th. Oh, so literally 10 years and 10, 10 days. Yeah. Since the last time I listened to this record from beginning to end, I may have been kind of looking through right your music around that time period. I think that's around the time period where I started to dig into your music a lot more and would just kind of do like, I don't know, just check out records that seemed important. It may have been like an anniversary record prompt because it was released in September of '99. Yeah. I remember listening to that one record or listening to this record that this that one time and I think I've said this before, but it's just like the lasting impression of this record is like, first song never meant. I'm like, all right, kind of decent. And then it's like, I remember the trumpet starting and then I just black out for the rest of the record and then it was over and I'm like, what? What was that? I'm trying to think of when I would have listened to it. I definitely had listened to it before. I probably checked it out during that time period during the emo revival because, you know, concilla worship was like a very big part of that revival sound and probably listened to it just out of like, well, I guess I should listen to it just to, you know, say that I have like and I have no memory of ever putting it on or listening to it. I remember the horn being a standout, I think that's interesting, horn in here and that opening riff on the record being like, kind of standout. In fact, that opening riff becomes like a musical meme almost at this point. Like people use that riff in like TikTok sounds like they mash it up with other stuff too. So it's definitely like that riff is that riff is pretty legendary. But one of the things that I remember the entire time during the emo revival was when like they kept popping up, like it just kept happening where there's like, man, there are so many bands that like do this like noodley twinkly emo thing and it's like, man, everybody is obsessed with like doing American football style, you know, can sell a worship. And I like some bands in that era that were doing some of that stuff. Like I loved snowing and blinking currently on like the other bands from that sound. I like that band Invalids who was doing a lot of that kind of stuff. I'd say Castavet did a little bit of it, but they weren't doing whole, whole hog can sell a worship. It's also bringing in like, Casket Lottery, Braid and like Hot Water music influences on their stuff. But I definitely got to a point where I'm just like, once we got into like the third and fifth round of new bands that were doing the same thing, like, all right, dads, boo, prawn, boo, free throw, you blew it, uh, just snoozers, just all of them, like every band that was just like doing that, it was like, I was so over it, you know, and I like snowing because they were, they have to have like a punk edge to their song. So they were faster, like they weren't just doing the tapping thing. And like our buddies, Muslim Balm, you know, they were doing some interesting kind of stuff like that. But they were like as influenced by the anniversary, you know, and like, get up kids. So yeah, the ones who were just doing straight up, it's all tapping all the time, uh, just those didn't do it for me. And especially the ones who were like, and we're going to sing like them too. And I'm like, ah, yeah. So yeah, I just, even back then, like I gave it a shot, I went, not for me and then got irritated by the amount of bands who just like kept doing it over and over again, reiterating on the same thing over and over again. And the memes with the actual house memes and just a lot, a lot of Cansella overload over the years. And it's, I don't even blame the Cansellas. Like that's, that's something I want to make clear. They didn't ask to be copied that much. I'm sure they're like, wow, there's a lot of bands doing what we're doing. Maybe they might have been weeded out at one point, probably flattered. But they were like, we did one record back then and that's it. And people just can't get enough of it. So yeah, I just had a negative just like, I'm so over this record, like a decade ago. Honestly, I can never take you to all my teenage feelings for me, to see through, to be true. Oh, the rules are there, but the why, the why, the unclear. Oh, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture. Oh, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture. Let's talk a little about the backstory of the group. So Cansella and Holmes, they're two steeves in this band, so I'm going to be going by last names, which had to have been confusing, two steeves in one band, and there's only three of you to begin with. They were friends from childhood and then later roommates in their college age years and Cansella played in a band with Steve Lamos called The One Up Downstairs. And they according to Mike, he said that band broke up with their fists. So apparently, there were like two other guys in that band too, and they were just a band that literally beat each other up, and that's why the band broke up, so that's interesting. He had already, Mike had already been doing Cap and Jazz and Joan of Arc prior to this record, and so at one point, the two steeves wound up jamming together, so he's living with Steve Holmes, he played it with Steve Lamos, I guess they were just hanging out one day and decided to jam in their house, and then Mike was like, "Hey, I could add something to this." Like this could be a thing, and so then they wound up becoming a three piece. It was a two guitar and drum band, no bass in this band. They wound up recording a self-titled EP in 1998, and there's no bass on that record at all. And then for this LP, Mike winds up playing the bass for it. The band's name came from a poster that Steve Lamos' girlfriend saw that said, "Come see American football, the most overpaid athletes in the world. I don't know what kind of poster this would have been." Where was this poster hanging? I don't know anything about this poster. I should have looked up to see if you could find that, but who made this poster? I don't know. Very weird thing to make. This is like a handmade poster that I would understand, probably. And so they record this record, they put it on polyvinyl records, and then they wind up playing live for a while, and then they decide, "Man, we're just going to make this like a studio project only," but then they just usually agreed to dissolve it and just stop doing it. So that's kind of it. They're Urbana guys who played in other bands just by happenstance, just recorded a record. It played some shows, and I guess because I think they said it was because Mike was like wrapping up college, and so the idea was like, "Maybe he's going to move on and do some other stuff. That's kind of why the band wound up dissolving." And Mike and so does wind up doing other things, he does Owen. I think Joan of Arc releases stuff during this entire period. I don't think Joan of Arc ever, let's see if I can find the run. I think Joan of Arc is still an active band. Yeah, they have Jesus Christ. How many fucking Joan of Arc records are there? There are 22 Joan of Arc records from '97 to 2020, most recently. And no one cares about them. The most active band that, I guess Mike, Mike was Owen, okay, okay. That's because it's Tim's band. Yeah. There's too many cansellas. There's three cansellas. There's Tim and Mike. They're the brothers, right? And the Nate is the cousin. Mike just played drums from '95 to '99. So like, okay. Mike's a drummer then? What the hell? What did he do? All right. What was he in Captain Jazz? Was he the drummer in Captain Jazz too? Yes. He was a drummer in Captain Jazz. Tim was the singer. What about owls? Owls? He is the drummer. So American football is the only band where he's not the drummer in the cansella. He did vocals for the nicked rakes, which that's nothing. That's not a real band. Lies. I don't know what it is. There's only two people in that one. Mike and Nate. So that's a fairly new one. That record came out '23. Went up downstairs was just one EP and he was in there there there as well playing drums. So mostly known for being a drummer, yet he is the American football guitarist and singer. Very interesting. Weird. So this was a just like a one and then band, you know. He was the Owen guy too, right? Is he the Owen guy? Mike is the Owen guy. Okay. And Owen has the fuck ton of records too. Oh, I see. Rain music had it listed. I see. So it's like members of it's got all the bands there. But then if you go further down, it goes also known as Owen. It's like, because, because Owen's really a singer-songwriter project. Yeah. So he starts Owen right away. Owen starts in '01. Yeah. They break up in 2000. He starts. Owen like a year later. Okay. That makes way more sense. So between Owen and Joan of Arc, that's really what he was doing. Well, no, he was only in Joan Arc until like 99. So really Owen is what he's doing the whole time. So yeah, the cansell is really confusing. I never know which one is which. Because I think all of their bands sound the same except for Cap and Jazz. So yeah, the record comes out does well. It gets like college radio play, but isn't like a huge seller at the time. Polyvinol is a known label at this point. You know, they did the Raina Maria record the same year. They have some other stuff by them. The cansell is coming out on the label. They're not huge. They're just like, Hey, this is banned. And like the people who hear the record, a lot of them like it. And it's kind of it. Like that's the story kind of ends there and they break up until they become a cult band. They become a tumbler.com band. The amount of times I've seen the American football house scrolling through tumbler. It's mind boggling. I can't believe that many people were just listening to American football, like everyone, like just scroll and scroll. It's all you're always going to see somebody listening to American football and sharing a song. So they wind up becoming this cult band and then being this like super influential record on the email revival. But why? So I think Owen did kind of well. I've always, I've always thought that American football got a little bit of a boost from Owen doing well in the early mid 2000s. And people being like, Oh, let me check out the other stuff that he did, like just branching off of that. There's so much like member association and Captain Jazz is definitely like remembered for being a pretty important band, just within the context of Midwest email and American football. Like, yeah, it's like a one off project side band that didn't last very long. So like I, I get why I get why people listened to American football, why people check this record out. It was part of, you know, a relatively short lived genre music sub genre music scene. Uh, there's just so much association with like braid and Captain jazz and promissoring. And you know, just like all of those bands at that time period that it, it makes sense that people would want to listen to something that's related to them. So I've always understood why it was something that people heard, but to me and why I listened to half of it and bounced. It was just like, eh, you know, there's other bands doing this that have like other things going on. There's more to them from this same time period that are more important. And like it, to me, it was just like, oh, this is just part of the context. And that's why you maybe check it out. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what specifically made this, this record, the one. I know it's at a certain point, it hit a tipping point of just like, mimefication. And now that sustains it. You know, that's been sustaining it for, I mean, like almost 10 years at this point. But that that that initial like rise in popularity, I don't know. I don't know what what it was. I don't know who specifically was citing this record as like an influence. Maybe that's what it was. It was the Algernon guys were like, oh, you should listen to American football. That's my favorite. But honestly, Algernon sounds more like cap and jazz than the American football. Like most of like the first ones, cap and jazz seemed like the more important to shaping what even more revival started off as, I mean, I guess that's what that was the case. Like they were like, yeah, cap and jazz. And then they're like, oh, if you like cap and jazz, you should check out because there's not a ton of cap and jazz either, you know, so I guess it's like, if you want to hear more, check out American football, because the American football is probably the second closest can sell a project to cap and jazz, sonically, I mean, well, the first couple Joan of Arc records. Are they like that too? Are they noodly? Yeah. I've never listened to a single Joan of Arc record of my life. Same goes for Owen. They look like the most boring thing in the world. Owen is like singer, songwriter, chamber, folk, yeah, the Red House painters worship, you know. Yeah, Joan of Arc is in the same vein of cap and jazz. Okay. It is funny to me that like the shortest live projects are the bands that people care the most about from them, like cap and jazz and American football being the thing that people are like the most, but it's not what they've devoted most of their lives doing. Joan of Arc and Owen are. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess it makes sense if you're following polyvinyl records and like you're digging what the consellas are doing during the 2000s, I could see being like, I like cap and jazz. Let's get into American football so I could see how out of those catalogs of records, those being the ones that stand out the most. So it kind of makes sense. It's when it became like this, it became a meme like it just the existence of their name, the album cover and their sound, just like meme, me music, just reiterating on the same type of idea. And you're so close to wax or dirty, 'cause you understand me, you may accidentally miss it, you may never miss it, you may never miss it, you may never miss it, you may never miss it, you may never miss it, you may never miss it, you may never miss it, you may never miss it. So I listened to it twice this week to get ready for the show. And my biggest takeaway from the record is there's some okay ideas, there's some cool ideas, but otherwise the boring is, the boring is record, the record is boring. It's 40 minutes long, it's too long and most of the songs are too slow and boring. Yeah, yeah, I would agree. I put this on and I was just like, all right, let's spend 10 years, let's give it a try. I really, I wanted to be surprised by it, not mad, I'm just disappointed. But I put it on, I'm like, it was kind of cool weather, I was like, all right, this is right, it's right. The right environment, it's been a while to reevaluate something, I've been surprised already this week by revisiting something and it's like, gimme, gimme something different to chew on this time. And I, and I was, and I was thinking like, you know, I feel like I've matured as a person in my tastes. I can appreciate a lot of music that I would describe as boring and never meant is fine as a song. Yeah, the opener. I, I get the meme at this point, but I don't think that it's that much of anything to come back to as a song, you know, it's not that good. And and the, you know, the thing is like, like the general consensus, people like people love the first three songs on this record. I don't think the majority of people who listen to this record love the middle of this record. The middle is actually the weakest part. Yeah. So yeah, never meant kicks the record off. It's got the riff, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, and great riff. And in fact, Justin, like texted me, he says, like, I love that opening rift and then as immediately as soon as that riff is over, I fall asleep on this record. And yeah, great opening rift, rift, great opening riff. And it's been copied a billion times to the point where it has reduced the impact of that opening rift. You're like, Oh, okay. That's what everybody's doing. That riff. Well, I mean, even just literally that song's been played so much. Yeah. You've heard it so many times that it's just like this doesn't have any impact on me now. Summer ends is the next track and this is where the horn appears for the first time. So that gives that song a little, a little bit of a boost that, you know, it's, it's oh, wow, we got a horn in here. And that's interesting. That's a little different. It's got some bongos too, like it's not, it's not full drums. And like I like the rolling kind of drum thing towards the end of that song, like the rolling snare thing towards the end of that song, I mean, it's okay. It's probably better than the stuff in the middle of the album. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty, you know, it doesn't sound like it. I see the appeal of that song. I ultimately don't really like it hooked by much of anything. The trumpet on this record, frankly, I find cloying more than it is interesting. I don't think that the playing is particularly inspired. It's definitely like, it's definitely pretty amateur trumpet playing, you know, the tone is just pretty sad trumpet, like mellow tone, no crack to it. There's no, I don't know, trumpet can be very exciting and I think trumpet can be very moody and expressive. I mean, I'm not a Miles Davis fan, but like, that's the direction to go. And it's, you know, they can't, they don't have those chops, I guess, but it feels too much like, well, I can kind of play trumpet, yeah, put that on there. I do think there is one other standout on the record. And that is honestly the third track on the album. It is over six minutes long, so that's a negative in its favor. But listening to it, it kind of unlocked something for me. This song sounds a little like a pinback song and it made it make sense to me why people were calling pinback and emo band at this time. Oh, yeah, I'm like, oh, because this other band was doing like a similar thing. It's not really emo music. And which then also led me down the path of this isn't really an emo record either. It's a math rock record with some emo in it, maybe even a post-trock record, yeah, to some degree. Yeah. So I enjoyed the song, honestly, just because it reminded me of that. Yeah. And that song started, I was like, okay, here we go, because it's got that, it's one of the faster songs and like even like one of the harder songs towards the end of it too. And it has that cool bass kind of like ascending, do, do, do, riff, like it, like that's interesting. This is going in the direction that I didn't remember this record really going. It's because they don't do it again because they don't do it again. This is why I don't remember it. And I was like, I kind of like this, but then like the latter half of the song, I was like, I don't know. I think it's a little like dronie almost for the end. Yeah. I think they could have kept it here. I get what they built up to, but then I think they just dragged out that that build up for too long. Yeah. It loses the energy that it starts with. I do think the closest they get to that again is but the regrets are killing me. That one also kind of had a similar sort of pinback, he sort of intro to it, but it also has like some acoustic guitars in there as well. I do like that weird riff on, you know, I should be leaving soon. That riff that sounds like a convenience store alarm when you walk in, it's just like an old Nokia ringtone sort of sound. And that one has like that real big like buzzy bass tone to it too, where it's just like really, they're real light on the holding the note. So you hear all that buzz on the fret. I think the drumming is pretty interesting and I'll see you when we're both not so emotional. It's definitely one of the more upbeat songs on the record. Yeah. It's like rock drumming. Yeah. Yeah. It's like pocket drumming. It's like that's, those are lots of goats notes. That's cool, I guess. So I was really, I was like, this is not an emo record and it just influenced emo is really what happened there. Like this is definitely more Matthew and I was looking at the like references and inspiration that the members of the band were pulling from and I want to get it because there was actually a decent list of everything that everybody was because each member was kind of into a different thing at the time and I'm trying to get that pulled up here because it was too long to write down individually. So there was a little, like there's an interview with Steve Holmes and he was talking about their sound and influence and I'll read this and it kind of gives you an idea. So with this band, we really did make a conscious shift away from the post hardcore emo, whatever sound and seeing that we had come out of freshman year. I was tuned turned on to a lot of bands that would influence our sound Nick Drake, Red House Painters, Elliot Smith, Coding, The Sea in Cake, The Smiths, Morrissey, Slow Dive, My Bloody Valentine, Can, and Steve Reich. Mike always liked the slow, sad, dreamy, pretty stuff and I picked that up from him. Tortoise and post dark bands like Slint were an influence. Lamos brought in his love of 70s jazz fusion via weather report in Miles Davis. I was also big into the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Unless they're known 60s bands and 90s bands that ate that sound. So none of the influences on this record are emo. The influences are singer songwriter, math rock, post rock. Well the drummer being influenced by jazz fusion makes a lot of sense. Yeah. But I hear, I can tell that he was going for that Miles Davis in the trumpet. I hear a lot of like the slow core stuff too, like doing the Red House Painters because like listening to it, I was thinking, I was like, you know, I listen to music that I do consider what people would consider is slow or boring. Like I love low and I love Arab strap. And those are two bands who have incredibly slow songs and their discography. So slow is not an automatic like no from me. You know? Yeah. I love Nick Drake, I listen to Boston over records, you know, like, I like Yolatango when they do slow, noodley, cooing, pretty songs too, but I don't know if it's, I'm just being, I don't know if I'm just being contrarian because it's American football. But like I don't have the same like, I don't really care for slant. I don't really want to listen to tortoise, but I don't have the same like, I mean, the slant is a little bit meme-ified, but like I respect slant. You don't listen to slant, but you like Rodan and you like, you know, June of '44 and those bands have slow songs too. And I like, yeah, shipping news, I like, yeah, related stuff. So I can even appreciate, you know, I can even like stuff like, but the thing was listening to this record, like one of the things that came to me, I was like, why is it that if a band like Unwed Sailor is doing the same thing, that I like it more than this or like a Don Cab? Yeah. I think it really boils down to, you're just, it's what you're picking up on that does, you know, like tickle the brain positively and negatively. And this, it's the particular chord structures and maybe the tones and combined with some vocals, like very little to nothing on to not much on this record hit me in a way where I'm like, oh, that's cool, I like that, you know. So it has to just come down to just how just the chord structures and like just the particular like notes that they chose to play where those other bands you do like because it's just the type of riffs that they put together, it comes down to more of just like an individual person's playing, I think more than anything because logically I should like it. Like I went into this record, open-minded as I possibly could, which I do for most records, you know, if it's a record that we're being assigned, I sometimes will have a negative opinion on the band, but a guest wants to do it. And so then I try and listen to it with as open ears as possible and like give it the best shot that it can. And many times I come away with maybe not being like a fan of the artist or even necessarily like a big fan of the album, but I do often come away with much softer feelings on the band. And I do think I came away with this from this record with softer feelings on American football. I didn't, I wasn't like, I wasn't like hating every second of it, you know, I wasn't just being like, whoa, I wish I still didn't, I was wanting it to end because it was long. That was my biggest, like, all right, let's wrap this thing up. But I broke it into two lists and well, yeah, there was a 30-minute break in the two halves of this record for my listening and it didn't make me like the back half anymore. Yeah, I mean, sometimes a break does help freshen up a record, but I mean, I would say my opinion on the band, I guess I don't really have anything against them. Yeah. They made a record that they felt like making it that time and really had no control over it becoming a cult hit. Yeah. It feels, so I guess this is kind of, I guess this is like the deeper thing and I mean, like, you know, am I the question of, am I being contrarian or whatever? Like, I connect this record to something that happens a lot. I mean, I think it's something that just generally happens culturally, but it happens a lot, particularly in independent arts scenes and I mean, just music as being the, you know, the bigger one, like where things get hyped and certain people make enough big claims about a record that other people follow along because they don't want to look like they didn't get it. And that happens a lot in the 2000s and we kind of developed a music cannon for the, for indie rock and this record in particular to me feels less deserving of its status than a lot of other records that I don't like. And that's a sense, I think that's the biggest thing that really rubs me the wrong way is it's like, I, you know, upon listening to it, just kind of zone out, don't really get much out of it. I don't think that they lean enough in the directions that I'd find interesting and whatever. It's just not for me. And that's something I can, you know, it's whatever, I can move past that. But it, it's the seeing it every day on the internet for like 10 years. It's grading. Like that is naturally grading to just be like, wow, I thought that was pretty boring. And it's, let's play the never meant let riff for a cheap laugh. And also just like, has spun out a whole revival scene that seems like it will never go away. Yeah, there was like a dip in the amount of records that were produced in that sound, but it never like went away entirely. Like the revival that started, let's say like, oh, nine, their revival like started then. And then like, what was it? There's like a year in particular or people are like, and that's the year like 2011 or something like that. I think it's the year that people act like was the greatest year for emo revival. And that was when we had already checked out at that point. Yeah. I was like, this is the same, this is the same man over and over again. Yeah. I mean, and not even to like stress the importance of novelty or anything like, I don't even think that every band has to be super original. It's just man, how many micro variations on American football can there really be? And it's just weird to me that like this record became the one that was like the template for so much of it, because I understand not everything's for you, you know, for every person subjected to our form, like all music is, you know, person to person, you're going to decide whether you're going to like or dislike something. And I understand that my particular taste of music and your particular taste of music don't line up with some of the more popular music. And it's not to be like this. I'm cool. I'm too cool for this kind of thing either. It's just whatever it is, it's don't like it. It just doesn't work for me. It's not for me. But you're right. When it becomes the, will you people please shut up about this record? It's not that good. Like I get what people like about it. I do. I get people liking this style of music. I understand it. I like this style of music. I don't think I like the most popular and most highly praised bands from this genre of music. But like, I like Jimmy world. I like mineral. I like braid. Yeah. I like having jazz. I like having jazz. Yeah. I'm just relevant. Um, I maybe don't love it and don't want to listen to it that much. I just, I was thinking about this because we're to also like, we're in the middle of like the, uh, you know, the over hype cycle for that, uh, MJ Linderman record. Yeah. And just being like, can we stop talking about this now? I mean, I can't believe I'm, I'm begging for the album cycle, the short span of an album cycle to actually kick into effect here, but it was it. I was thinking about saw, I saw someone tweet like the day or the week that record came out like a day or two before it came out where someone said, please be normal about MJ Linderman. And they didn't know they were not. Yeah, I don't know, it is weird. I also understand too, that when something becomes really popular, it's just because that the most amount of people like it. So it doesn't necessarily mean that it is actually the best thing. It's just that it appeals to the widest face as, as possible, which is why so many times were like some of the biggest and most popular bands doing a particular thing you're not into because it's trying to go for some, I don't know if it's trying to go for like intentionally going for like the biggest audience possible. I don't think this record is a case of them trying to go for the biggest, biggest audience possible. I think it's just whatever it is, it's just so happened to, to line up with what the most amount of people agree with. So it's not a true recommend, you know, a true quality decision or it means it's like it's good enough that enough people like it, I don't know exactly where I'm trying to go with that. But I've always just thought it's like, it's the aggregate, you know, it's the rotten tomatoes. Right. Certification. It doesn't mean that it's the best thing that ever made, it's just that the majority of people had a good experience with it. Positive, yeah. A positive feeling towards the record, yeah. It outweighs the amount of people who had negative feeling towards it. So I get it, I get it, I understand that, it's the way, and it's just the way we talk about music too. It's always been that way. That's how people always talk about music, the fucking Beatles, you know. Just like, oh, some of the most beloved Rolling Stone magazine albums of all time. It's like, yeah, it's all like nothing truly left field. It's always just like, yeah, the most amount of people like this thing. And that's why it shows up over and over and over. I guess it's the repetition that just gets, gets annoying because really when I listen to this record and I think about what it is and when it came out and the reception at the time, it was these guys, Urbana guys, friends, bandmates, they came from another scene, they're like, yeah, I have some ideas for some songs. Cool, cool. It's a jam session that turned into a band that lasted two years. Yeah. Yeah. More or less. Yeah. Yeah. Max. Yeah. And it was just because they were in college, they already had other projects that they were working on. They had some ideas, they got together, they played it and like, that's pretty fun. And then they were like, here you go, polyvinyl, who they already had a relationship with. What do you want? You wanted to do anything with this? And this is a time period where it was pretty cheap to produce stuff. You know, it's a CD era for the most part. And why not? Let's put it out there. Because it was a label that wasn't like, huge, you know, they were putting out stuff that was well regarded. But like, do you know what that Paris, Texas band sounded like that I mentioned earlier? You know, you know, Raina Marie is because they wound up releasing multiple records throughout the years. So when it came out, it didn't even seem like it was that it was like well regarded, well received, reviewed, some college play, they probably played locally. I doubt they did big tours. And it was just like a little time and place record. And now they own the house. And now they own the house, which I'm sure they're like, there's probably some degree of just like begrudging, like we got to buy the house, don't we? So there is actual reason for that. So in apparently in 2023, it was going to be torn down. And so that's why it was, there's like a whole list of people who bought it. It's not the band themselves didn't buy it, it wasn't just them. It was actually a list of everybody who bought the house. The band announced they had purchased the American football house pictured on the cover in order to save it from being turned into a condominium. But it was like them, polyvinyl, somebody else, and like an organization all bought it. So it's like, it's split like many ways by, I think there's actually a Wikipedia for the American football house too. I feel like the house also became part of it, part of the, it's the Walter White House of Emo. Yeah, it's the Amity, Amityville or house, vinegar, pizza on the roof of the American football house. Yeah, the house still had tenants by the time it was purchased. So yeah, it sounds like the landlords were like kicking people out and they were gonna knock it down and turn it into, you know, condominium. Okay. It was purchased collectively with polyvinyl records, Chris Strong, photographer at Tiba Jefferson. So I think that's the photographer who took the photo of the house. The Chicago-based open house contemporary, not sure what they are, but so it was like, hey, we should save this house. It feels historically significant. And if it were to be knocked down, torn down, that would, I think that would suck. Like, even though this is not my record or my band or my album or anything, it's a landmark. Like, I'd feel sad if the Discord house porch was like knocked down, you know? Yeah. It's actually more personal to me, but yeah, the American football house being a subculture monument is one of the more charming things about the record. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. That's cool for those people, for fans of that, that they can go see that house. Yeah, I would always want something for fans to be able to go see forever. I don't know how I feel about being turned into an Airbnb. I guess there is the element of people were just showing up. So it is very similar to the Breaking Bad House, where people were just showing up to take pictures on that at the house. And I'm sure the people living there are like, oh God, here they come again. No. I mean, the Breaking Bad House was like people on her property and yeah, throwing pizzas on her. Really? Constantly. I mean, yeah, the American football house is they just had to get close enough to get the angle. Yeah. Which is still pretty close. You had to be pretty close to the house. Yeah. It wasn't any of their houses either. It was just a house that was near where they lived, which I thought that was interesting. Like it was nobody in the man's house. It's just a college townhouse, you know, yeah. So I mean, that's neat. The house is a meme of his own, which is, that's unique, really. How many album, well, most album covers aren't just photos, but like, yeah, it's a rare thing to have that kind of a thing be an actual physical place you can go to, you know. Well, it's like the physical graffiti building. Oh, yeah. In New York. It's in New York. Right. Yeah. Well, it's like the Amityville Horror House where they redid the window. They get, they remodeled the outside of the house. So it didn't look like the Amityville Horror House anymore because they were so tired of people coming up to it. Yeah. And I imagine like as probably annoying as it is that people were coming up to the American football house and like the Discord porch being in a movie or a TV show, that's probably even more annoying than it. So I could see what, but then don't buy the house. I mean, I get the, the Breaking Bad House was, that was their house first, right? Yeah. She owned the house before, she lived there before. And it was like, I think like she had bought the house from someone in her family prior to that. So like, yeah, I mean, people obviously took that too far. Yeah. It was fine when you were just driving by and taking a picture of it. It's just people just kept coming onto the property all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I think the Amityville Horror House, like you can't see the windows from the road. I think you can only see it from like the actual backyard or something like that. So that was probably like, wow, these people in our backyard again, you know, just constantly trespassing. So they redesigned that one to look different. People would stop coming to see it, but then like they sold the house and then somebody redid it and put it back the way it looked in the movie, which is how you should do it. I imagine like the Hadenfield house from Halloween is probably another one though. There's like a replica of the Halloween house in North Carolina, the Halloween houses in Pasadena. Yeah. I've seen it. It's very easy to see from the street. Yeah, it's like right there on the street. That one's probably not as they did. They kind of lean into it. They'll put Michael Myers in the window. Yeah. Yeah. During Halloween and stuff. So like they they know what they have. Yeah, the Breaking Bad house, it's them sitting in their lawn chairs outside of the house to make sure that nobody comes close like that. That's gotta be a real shitty existence. Just sell it at this point, you know, but yeah, you could probably sell it for more than what is actually worth. Oh, yeah, easily. You just got to sell it to probably an Airbnb because that's who would who would buy. So it makes sense. I guess to like for it to be an Airbnb because then you can be like, well, come to the air, come to the American football house and spend the night in it. I didn't know this. So the band winds up reuniting in 2014. They are doing a deluxe reissue of the record, which features like live tracks, some like practice sessions and was kind of it like there's not a lot of extra material from American football at that point. They put up the preorder, the preorder crashes the website. It's in that high demand for the reissue. And the album winds up hitting the billboard 200 chart at number 68, you know, for 15 years after it was released, it becomes a billboard charting album purely on a reissue. But the band gets back together and then they release a new record. The 2014 album, it's just another self title because I think all of their records are self-titled. The 2014 album cover is the inside of the house. So even there leaning into the house, though, I don't know what the cover to third one is, it's just like fog. So they kind of ruined the gimmick. They should have done something else, taking a picture of the toilet. Here's the American football toilet. Yeah, it's like the inside, it's like a stairway and like a door. That's what the LP two cover is, which I'm like LP two cover should have been the view from the window. Like we messed that up too. The stairs, that's not a famous part of the American football house. The interior stairs, no, give me an outside, give me an inside look from that window. That's what you do. Yeah. I don't know. Everything about them. And people don't like the reunion record. People like the third one more. Really? Yeah. But people don't like that. Oh, yeah, they do not like that. That's a low rating, 2.87. That's funny. It's never came out 2016, not 2014. But it's hilarious. People were like, yeah, come back. And then they're like, oh, but not like that. Yeah. Don't do new music. No, we just want to see you, which I think is really what everybody wants with our union. They just want to be able to see them because they haven't seen them before. Usually the ones who got to see a band the first time around are like, I've already seen them. I don't need to see their union. It's the ones who were like, well, I wasn't there. Give me the reunion. But yeah, it's very rarely like, give me new music. Or when you do, it's always like, that was very good. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's just an overrated record, you know, I didn't really, I mean, my, I guess my issue with the record has always been its ubiquity. Yeah. Which reminds, reminds me of, did you ever watch that Helvetica documentary? No. There's a line in that documentary where someone is like, uh, why is bad taste ubiquitous? Well, I think of what I think of this record. I'm just like, I don't know. I don't get it. I don't get why it's so popular. Why this one is so popular Midwest, emo in general, and those bands I get. Yeah. Why this singular record from that genre that it's barely even really actually accurately representative of. Yeah. I don't know. I just think it's purely the story of it, I think, but even then it's not that exciting of a story. No, it's not. And it's not really a story at all that we made a record and didn't do anything with it. Yeah. It's, yeah. Cause it's not even like a story like botch where it was like, no, this band made some cool records and they hated each other the whole time and they didn't have anything in common with each other except for Helvet. And then they broke up before they could really capitalize on like the success and the influence of their sound, which I guess that's part of the story is that like American football broke up before, you know, before they could really capitalize on their influence. But not really because they were doing other stuff that entire time, like that's the part that is just like, you're like 15 years of their careers. Well, yeah. And they were part of a, of a very active scene. Yeah. I guess it's a combination of cap and jazz and American football, both being like short lived, but like happened as wasn't even really short lived. They just didn't put out that much. Yeah. Is it a case of just what if like, well, what if is Owen, that's what you're what if is. It's just like more stripped down, you know, there's like an O six record that's pretty popular from Owen. Like that's probably like the most well known Owen record. Yeah. So maybe that's the one that's the closest to it sounding, but I don't know, I think it'd be funny if there was like a American football style record in the Owen discography, but nobody cares because it's not called American football at home with Owen. Yeah. It's just like singer songwriter. So, I mean, I guess it's part of it. They're just like, we don't want a singer songwriter. We want math rock, like, why is math rock the thing you want? There's like a million math rock bands too, so much math rock. And I don't get that popularity either. I like some math rock, but I don't know. There's a fervor for it that seems disproportionate. Yeah. I don't know. Why this album? Who knows? I don't know. Didn't answer that question. I was hoping I would. No. Can't figure it out. Didn't get any closer. Nope. I know. I neither like it nor dislike it any more than I did before I don't I don't even necessarily think it's like a bad album either. Like I just don't care about it. I'm not excited by it. I mean, ultimately, I guess if an album does not excite you, then is that mean it's a good record? It's like, I don't know. It doesn't excite me, but it doesn't mean it doesn't excite other people. I think that Apple song that everybody's doing the TikTok dance for by Charlie XCX isn't an embarrassingly bad song, but people love to do the Apple dance, so yeah, not to date this exact recording, but yeah, people just like stuff. I don't know what it is as an intangibility you can't you can't manufacture it. It's organic, you know, so in that I commend them for making a piece of art that has stood the test of time to the point where they were able to come back from it. I mean, if there's anything to take from it, it's make whatever kind of record you want to make and yeah, maybe it'll be something because it's it's definitely not a record that was made for the specific purposes of being popular. Yeah, it was a honestly kind of sounds like it was a pretty low effort record. They talk about like that they slaved over it. It just seems like it was a organic process of working out some songs with a new band. Yeah, they do talk about like, oh, we didn't even have names for these songs until like a couple hours before the art was finished, because we just called the songs like the B song the C sharp song like they just they just didn't have names for the songs because they didn't they didn't they named it after the tuning or the yeah, because apparently every single song had a different tuning was also part of it too. Yeah. Yeah. So they're just like, all right, this one's in D, you know, like, and then like nobody knew what the lyrics were because of the time they didn't have a PA. So all he did was just like yell them in rehearsal and practice, but like they didn't know what he was saying in those lyrics, which that that's a common thing. Yeah. Nobody knows what they're what the lyrics to the songs are about until you either ask to read them or they come out on the record, you're like, that's what you were saying, which I think I think people should ask. If you're in a band with somebody, I think it's fair to be like, hey, carry the lyrics to these songs because I don't want to be in a band with somebody. If they're saying some fucked up shit, let me read them. Yeah, I mean, just, you know, I give lyric and chord charts. So yeah. I mean, we didn't when we were in the hardcore band together, I don't think we knew what you were saying. I don't. Yeah. I don't think we did. I do think we did ask to read them at one point though. Yeah. And I think we read them. So I don't know what these songs are about, but yeah, they're not saying, yeah, they're hardcore lyrics. They don't have to act. It's more about just like the phrasing than anything. Yeah. I don't know. It's whatever. Yeah, it was it was just like, yeah, I got, we got this thing when we want to play some music. Okay. Cool. We jammed and then we came up with songs and they were like, it is good enough to play live. And then they were like, these are good enough to record and give it a polyvinyl and like we're done. That's it. That's the whole band. That's the story of the man, American football. And then for some reason, the internet became obsessed with them. It's like, if they hadn't broken up and they'd released as many American football records as Owen or Joan of Arc records, no one would care, no one would have cared. If they had kept going, no one would give a shit. I think that is actually the case. No one would have cared if they'd kept going. They'd had probably enough of a fan base to keep, you know, to stay active, but that had been it, you know, one and done. And I think the album art and font and everything and that opening riff are doing all of the work for this record. Yeah. I mean, I guess for certain kind of person, the alternate tuning thing is a big deal, which I think is one of the like more annoying influences from this record. Yeah. I think alternate tunings are mostly dumb. I don't know. You're playing steel guitar. You don't need to tune a regular guitar to a chord. You're not unless you're doing like art music, like drop tunings, that makes sense for the ease of like just barring the top three strings for those power chords. But I'm like, I can kind of understand the double drop tunings where you drop the high E too, but even that's like, okay, Zeppelin. I mean, I have lots of bands who play with tunings all the time, like English beat, they've wiggling famously played with his tunings all the time to the point where people were Pete Townsend can't figure it out. And like pin back, you know, to use a contemporary, they use all sorts of weird tunings all the time, but it is also just the two of them too. So they also play their instruments like percussion. I don't know. I don't know. We, I think it just became too much too many bands doing the exact same thing as American football later. You want to rate it and get out of here? Yeah, sure. I give it three flat, 3.0. That's where I'm at. I'd probably give it like a two and a half. Yeah, just too, I don't know too much of a meh listen for me. Yeah, meh is really the record. All right, I think that will do it for us. If you listen to this entire thing and we're mad at us the whole time, please don't leave us a negative review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It's just a taste in music. It's not, it's not, not a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like we, I feel like we try to listen to it and talk about it in good faith. I think that there's an inescapable amount of baggage to it that is going to come into play and that is something I think people can't handle. That's very common. I see that a lot. That's a big part of the like the needle drop Fantano guy giving the MJ Linderman a low rating that it's like people can't handle that he's partially responding to the hype of it. Hype does impact your listening experience for something, though. Yeah. When a bar gets set high, it really is hard to not compare it to that. I do think we have entered this really weird, you know, when we were talking about, people were talking about stand culture before, they was usually referring to like the biggest pop stars in the world, like your Beyonce's and your Taylor Swift's and your, your K-pop, you know, BTS fan bases. Like that was who stand culture was kind of talking about is like, yeah, just don't say anything publicly bad about any of those artists or else the, you know, the K-pop fans are going to come for you in your mentions, which was like a bad unhealthy reaction, but it was siloed into pop music. So it was kind of like, ah, whatever. It's like the most popular music in the world. Who cares? You know, you're going to get those weirdos. But then it has infiltrated pretty much all other forms of music at this point. And now it's like, you can't, you can't be critical of a band. Well, we got optimism. We got, you know, pitchfork nerfing their rating system, you know, we got the dude backed hard. So we want to take it further back off just being like, you don't have anything nice to say. Don't say anything at all. I think you can deal with a little bit of, look, we weren't doing personal attacks on the, you know, the guys in this band. And in fact, all we, I think we were pretty positive on them in the sense of they made a record they wanted to make and it stood the test of time. That's really all it is. Yeah. And I even said, I don't think it's a bad record. I think it's a good record that I just don't like. So yeah, there is just too much of this, like, like when, what, foxing got that negative review and pitchfork and everybody flipped the fuck out on Twitter about it, how you just don't get it. It's a bad faith review, said it sounds like early 2000s indie festival music. And I listened to like some clips from that song and I was like, that reviewer nailed it. It did sound like passion pit and that kind of stuff like it, he nailed it. And even the band was like, look, don't, they, because the people were like going out for the writer online, they had to go and like mute their account and the band was like, stop it. They were like, do not do this. Like just a negative review does not, you know, change anything about how we feel about this record. So yeah, it is, is weird. So I don't know. Don't give us one star reviews because you don't, you didn't like our taste or do it. I don't give a shit. It's a free country. All right. Well, that is it. So thank you all so much for listening. Thank you to Joey three toes for using his precious dollars to get us to talk about a record he does not listen to. Yeah, he's never heard it before. Um, good luck. I wish you continued success with your toilet wine business. Oh, yes. And keep on listening to madball, I guess, and look out for the punk lotto pot, American football toilet wine line coming soon, collaboration with John three days. All right, everyone, thank you so much. You can follow us on all foreign social media, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook at punk lotto pod, punk lotto pod, gmail.com, punk lotto pod, patreon.com slash punk lotto pod. And yeah, I think that'll do it. So thank you all so much. And we will talk to you next time. To order punk, call the number on your screen. Rush delivery is available. Remember this special offer is not sold in stores.
