I have nothing left to say, but I'm gonna say it anyway.30 years upon the stage, each record that I make is like a record that I've made.Just not as good as that.
Welcome back to New Men, Jokerman Randy Newman podcast.All you joker new men and women.New women.We have a new woman.
Well, an old woman, but a new, an old woman.Well, you know what I mean?Sorry, Molly. A returning guest, you mean.Returning champion.
A little old lady from Pasadena.
That's right.It's Molly Lambert.
Welcome back to The Stew.
Thank you.Very excited to be on Joker Man, my favorite podcast.
One of our favorite guests and someone who loves L.A.maybe as much, if not more than we do or Randy Newman does.It's unclear how much the man actually loves Los Angeles.Clearly, you haven't listened to this album.That's a good point.Right.
It does say I love L.A.right there on the first track. We'll get into it. It's Trouble in Paradise, folks, 1983.Randy's back four years after the last one.He's rocking the Hawaiian shirt.He's totally swagged out.
He's taking this picture on the hood of a car somewhere on PCH, it looks like, right?Yeah, that looks like it could be near Paradise Cove.No, I think this is this is down by Santa Monica because the the mountains and stuff.
Or it's the other side of Malibu where there's also mountains.
Maybe the photos flipped, guys.Who knows?
Good point. He's got the juice.I love to see it.I love the way this album looks.I love the way it feels.And I love what Randy's bringing here.What's your history with Randy, Molly?
My history with Randy?I'm just a fandy, always.And I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1980s.So this album is like a foundational bedrock of my personality.For sure.
Yeah, it's a funny little album, I think, in that it leads off with, you know, sort of like the Short People sequel in that it's like this anthem that accidentally gets turned into an anthem that may or may not have anything to do with
the nominal subject matter, and then the rest of the record is all kind of very different shit from I Love L.A., but it, like that one, I mean, having been to millions of Dodger, millions, thousands, hundreds of Dodger games over my youth and young manhood, I've heard I Love L.A.
blaring on the speakers of Staples Center and Dodger Stadium one, you know, every single time.And so it's that man like that is it's like it's a Proustian, you know, Madeleine type song to me.
Not the same for you, I'm guessing.
Well, no, no, it's not, not the case.It's more just like, it's only funny if you, uh, like, I guess I want to ask you guys, do you find the song funny?Did you used to, has the song changed for you in, in how funny you think it is or not?
Here's what I think.I think that to love Los Angeles is to accept it as a flawed, insane place.It is not to like make it seem ideal.Like, I do feel like Randy Newman loves the real Los Angeles, which is kind of dusty and shitty and awesome.
It's also funny to hear this song at a Dodger game and hear the lyrics for the first time and go, wow, all these people are singing a song about how LA sucks, kind of.
Yeah, I think that you hit the nail on the head in that I think that I sort of resent its use in that form, like at a game like that, for the reason that cut out of its original context, it kind of feels like only getting half of what's great about this double layer song.
So the album came out It was a flop, essentially.I Love LA, I think, was added at the last minute as a potential single, possibly. But the album sort of came and went and then it was used for a Nike commercial for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
They should bring it back for the 28 Olympics.
Well, that's like, I think it's like the, the 1984 Olympics were like a huge grift as I've talked about on many podcasts.Um, and, and we're sort of the, like they completely,
are the thing Randy Newman is singing about, which is, look at that mountain, look at those trees, look at that bum, he's down on his knees.
And so to use a song for boosterism that's basically about how LA is selling you a false image of itself and selling it to idiots, and then use it for the 1984 Olympics, which have things like the scandal where McDonald's had to pay out a bunch of free cheeseburgers.
Right, because Russia boycotted, right?
Yeah.They said they would give hamburgers for free if the Americans won and then the Americans won everything because of Russia boycotting.
And it's so 80s to be sort of like, you know, look at the greatness of America in a very like sardonic way. But yeah, I think the song is very earnest, actually.
I do think, you know, there's a quote from Randy about, like, the redhead in the convertible.Like, that sounds pretty good to me.Like, I'm serious about that.
Yeah, that's a great quote from an LA Weekly piece, you know, from, you know, some number of years ago.But, you know, he says that straight up.There's some kind of ignorance LA has that I'm proud of.
The open car and the redhead, the beach boys, that sounds really good to me.
That's exactly how I feel.And I don't think it's ignorance in the face.I don't think it's like I'm blocking out reality, but a little bit is.And all the streets he names in the song are like crappy streets in Los Angeles.
Victory Boulevard. Sixth Street.I kind of like Sixth Street, but like Century Boulevard.Santa Monica Boulevard.
I love, yeah.Santa Monica Boulevard, which in 1983, when this album came out, was like a hostral, primarily.
Very different than Santa Monica Boulevard today.
Yeah.And even now, it's still kind of a hostile Victory Boulevard, which I grew up very close to.
Legendary Valley Street, Victory Boulevard.All three of us grew up on these beautiful streets that we all know and love.That's right.It's tricky.It's like. If I say that I don't like it being used at a sporting event, I feel like a snob asshole.
But there's a catch-22 of appreciating the song to its fullest is recognizing that there is absolutely that element to it, this sarcastic, everybody-knows thing, that I think to really love the song is to
enjoy that and enjoy the stupid, bimbo-headed way that it actually is.
And I guess I sort of just take issue with the version of it where when I think of it playing at a public event, I do think about people who do not understand that there's a subtext, another layer to it.
People who don't love Los Angeles fully, which is to say they don't love it warts and all.
It's cold and it's damp.And all the people dressed like monkeys.Let's leave Chicago to the Eskimo.That town's a little bit too rugged for you and me, you bad girl.
It's like born in the USA.There's a way to just listen to the song and not pay attention to the lyrics and just pump your fist.I feel like Springsteen doesn't get a ton of credit for doing that, but it is all my favorite.
Songwriters are people who put a subversive message into the most palatable thing possible.They make a super hooky, catchy song that is completely unavoidable, and then there's a little spoonful of medicine in it. And the video for I Love L.A.
was directed by his cousin, Tim Newman, who also directed all the ZZ Top videos with the hot girls in them.And that just made me be like, oh, this guy created my whole psychosexual identity for me.
Because when I saw the video for I Love L.A., I was like, I'm the nasty redhead by your side, and I'm also Randy Newman.
Rollin' down Imperial Highway Big Ness layin' at my side Santa and the winds blowin' hot from the north We were born to ride Roll down the window Put down the top Crank up the beats, boys, baby Don't let the
From the south face to the valley, from the west side to the east side.Everybody's very happy, because the sun is shining all the time.It's like another perfect day.
That's the dialectic of Molly Lambert right there.
Yeah, the video I think is funny because it like to me, the video is way more of like a naked endorsement of Los Angeles and like much more engaged with boosterism than the song itself, because it really is like, I mean, you see, it's like this incredible flashing montage.
He starts in dusty, grimy, black and white New York City.And then it just as soon as the song You know, kicks into gear, it's snap cut to like the beach, the sun, tons of close up shots of women's tits and stuff.
And then there's Randy Newman sitting in a cool old convertible car cruising down the highway.It's so much more.Look at how great this place really is.
Well, it's also like the callback to the Beach Boys of it's like there's this image of Los Angeles that gets used to that lures people in and people come from all over thinking, oh, it's going to be like, you know, beautiful women, beautiful cars, beautiful weather.
And then you get here and it can be the most depressing place on earth, especially because of those things.It's like you can be depressed in Chicago or New York and you're walking around and it's cold and you've got a coat.
You're like, feels correct to be depressed.But the thing here of like the past week when it was 106 degrees, And everybody was losing their minds and so depressed.And it was like, we fucking love it.
We love it.The pyrocumulus cloud.We love it.
And people who come from other places that are shitty and fucked up are like, wow, L.A.is so much nicer of a shitty fucked up place.
Weather is really just a huge part of that.It's like, for most of the year, it looks and feels so nice outside that you can easily be seduced into thinking if a few things more went right in your life, you'd be literally living in heaven.
The gag of this song is kind of like, to the guy in the convertible, even a bum suffering on the street is just folded into his perfect day.
Look at that mountain.Look at those trees.Look at that bum over there, man.He's down on his knees.Look at these women.Ain't nothing like a Nobel.Century Boulevard.We love it.Victory Boulevard.
of us who do love LA who are from here, it's like we're all very self-deprecating about it.We know that other people hate us because they think we have it so good here and it's like, you know, liberal paradise.
And then we know that the reality is completely different from that.I don't know.There's something about people singing at a Dodger game that's so funny.It's so funny It's so Randy Newman for this to become the song that is the L.A.song.
OK, we know people hate us for being so vapid and obsessed with ourselves.This song is just like, OK, I don't mind if I do.Yeah, totally.
So much of my like favorite Los Angeles culture, just use like literature as an example, is stuff that really paints the city in a negative light or not painted in a negative light, but reckons with the negative aspects of it.I'm thinking of like
James Elroy and Joan Didion and Nathaniel West and stuff like that.And at the same time, even as it acknowledges and points out these elements of the city, there is also this undying love and appreciation for it.And I feel like I Love L.A.
I have a different attitude towards it when it's coming from an outsider, like Joan Didion's from Sacramento.It's weird to me that she's like the L.A.writer because she's coming to it as an outsider. And she's a very conservative person.
So her take on LA is like, it is too dumb and sexy here.Back to, you know, Sacramento even just feels more like of the old world.And, you know, she's like very aristocratic kind of lineage.
And so to come to LA where anyone can come, anyone can be whoever they want.There's no center to even hold.Makes people like Joan Didion super uncomfortable, but
Nathaniel West has got some points, but again, I listen to it more when it's from James Elroy, who is actually from here, or Walter Mosley or somebody who I love, or Mike Davis.
You hate on it because you love it and you are aware of its flaws and you love it.
and are aware of what it could even be.You see the beauty for what it is and are aware of how much greater it could be.It were certain things, not the way they were.
The way that it is disconnected from the old world, though, and the way that it isn't necessarily defined, the sense that it could be a lot of different ways is intrinsic to its value and appeal.And the video is really good at
illustrating that youthful energy of Los Angeles.Like when he sticks his tongue out at the end, when everybody's cheering, I love LA, when you get shots of Disneyland and people in the hot tub and the actor playing him playing guitar.
I think he really understands that it's a blank canvas of a city and that there's like a purity to that and also a mindlessness. the ineffable things that everybody recognizes that you can't really describe.
And the song is kind of the idiot attempt to be like, look at how, look at the mountains, look at the trees.
It's kind of beautiful in that way.
I think it would be great to be the sucker who like, you know, moves out to Los Angeles from, you know, suburban Cincinnati or something and is driving in a 20 year old Prius down Victory Boulevard and being like, damn, this rocks.Yeah, I love LA.
And, and I think that, you know, and Randy Newman is also kind of a New Orleans guy.And I feel like there's the same thing in New Orleans of like, the culture here is about having fun.It's not about the rat race.
It's not about like slaving away in a miserable factory job.It's about having fun and listening to music. Yeah, it's beautiful here.The mountains and trees are amazing.And there is also like a ton of insane poverty that is very visible.
And I think that's what makes people uncomfortable about it.It's like that the poverty is so visible because they're like, it should be hidden.Those people should all live in one neighborhood where all the poor people live.
It's like, no, the poverty is everywhere because nobody's trying to deal with it because that would cost money.And we love it.And we love it. Yeah, okay, so here's what I was going to say.
Listening to this album as a whole, there's a bunch of songs about other fucked up places on this album.It's true.The next song.The next song is Christmas in Cape Town.Probably not played at sports arenas in South Africa, although what do I know?
Presumably they're not singing along to that one the way that Dodgers crowds are in Los Angeles.
Christmas in Cape Town makes I Love L.A.look a lot sweeter though, honestly, because this is what happens when Randy is actually unsheathing his blade.We can talk and we have about the double-edged nature of I Love L.A., but
That's not really, he's not really going for the throat there.Christmas in Cape Town is such a shocking next song.
It's like one of the most brutal songs he's ever written.And especially coming after I Love LA, just the whiplash there is, it's unforgettable.
It's a song where you don't really need to know that much about the situation in apartheid South Africa to understand what's going on here, because... Christmas in Tel Aviv, folks. Folks.
The man also put out a whole record where there's a lot of this stuff going on.I mean, on Good Old Boys, I think he's really kind of like primed his listening audience anyway, plenty for this angle of his songwriting.
And I mean, he started it in Sail Away.He's really always been comfortable being in these characters to say something in a certain way that illustrates how these things work from within.
Yes, and that life being good for one segment of that population means it's bad for another.
And in this song, it's kind of an interesting departure because I think this song kind of is about how it's corrosive to everybody, even the person who's on the side of the oppressor, as this narrator is.
The part at the end, toward the end, where he's like... Beer doesn't taste the way it used to.I don't have as much fun.I don't know why.He's clearly lost in his hatred and he's suffering too.It benefits nobody.
It's like a song about living under a curse.
♪ Jungle town, all the boogers in the street ♪ ♪ Radio turned up very loud, playing Dancing Queen ♪ ♪ They love our music ♪ ♪ La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
It's a crazy second song after, I forgot that that was the song that comes directly after I Love L.A.And then I was like, oh, right.
I Love L.A.is like a, up there with You've Got a Friend in Me for like positive Randy Newman songs.
It just has such a huge kind of like, like cultural footprint.You know, the gravity of I Love L.A.on this record, I think is, you know, is super massive.
And so like everything that orbits it on the rest of the album, like can kind of be lost in its shadow.But when you I mean, that's just once that's three or four minutes at the beginning of this.There's so much else going on.
Not to get back into I Love L.A.too much, but I do.I've always felt like the instrumental bridge part in I Love L.A.is like very sinister.
Well, talk about sinister instrumentation.I feel like I feel queasy the whole time listening to Christmas in Cape Town, you know, not only because of the story and the lyric, but just the music has got this like kind of like sickening feeling.
Yeah, it has this diseased carnival atmosphere.Like he's really embracing that on this record at various points.It really leans into that.And I think
The title of the record is perfectly illustrated here, A Place Haunted by Oppressive Racial Injustice and Cruelty.There's a couple line deliveries and just moments that I think are so good.
The part where he sings about the lunch pails with pictures of Star Wars painted on the side, just another heartbreaking detail of many, strengthening the song where
It's Christmas, this thing that's supposed to be joyous and nice, having just zero weight, zero meaning, in fact feeling bad because it clashes so much with this awful reality you're faced with every day.
Randy says the same thing for his part in this media packet.To talk a little bit about the thematic core of the album, he says, it sort of hangs together.It's about people with dot dot dot problems of one sort or another.
There are three cities sung about, L.A., Miami, and Cape Town, all possible paradises none of which really turned out that way.You know, Los Angeles seems like heaven on earth compared to Cape Town in these first two songs.
I tell her, darling, don't talk about things you don't understand.I tell her, darling, don't talk about something you don't know anything about.I tell her, darling, if you don't like it here, back to your own miserable country.
Christmas in Cape Town ain't the same All the boys on the beach still blowin' The summer wind still kicks the clouds around
What's crazy also is that I Love L.A.was not even the first single.The first single was The Blues.
Yes, which I guess we can start talking about.The Blues, the worst song on the record.Yeah.What?
He's gonna tell you about his dear old mother.Earned up in a factory in Springfield, Mass. He's gonna tell you about it, baby brother Hustlin' down the city streets Sellin' his ass for a dollar bank
He's gonna tell you about his uncle Neddy Locked up in a prison out in Oregon He's gonna tell you about his best friend Eddie Killed in a bar fight with a pair of greens and a sailor
He's got the blues, this boy He's got the blues, you can hear it in his music He's got the blues, this boy He's got the blues, you can hear it, you can hear it
Let me just start.Let me just start off.Take it away.
Fuck Paul Simon.I'm with you.Why?Paul Simon was down in South Africa recording Graceland like a year after this album.
Yeah, he literally, he broke the apartheid picket line to record Graceland and he said that his friend Henry Kissinger told him it was cool.
His friend.My friend Henry.
I just hate Paul Simon.I'm a Paul Simon hater ass.I really think he is an untalented.
It's been established that I'm also an anti-Paul Simon.
You can say that he was friends with Henry Kissinger and that's not good, but we're not going to call him untalented.Give me a break.
No, we're going to call him untalented.I think he can suck an egg.
Okay.Maybe he can suck an egg, but he's not untalented.That's hooey.All right.
Fine.He's just a pedophile who married a 16 year old. I hate his voice.I hate his attitude.I think he, it's interesting to see him in contrast with Randy Newman because they do things that sound like they should be similar, but are so different.
He does the thing that people think Randy Newman does, which is to be like sort of maudlin.Hey, remember the olden times we had the Victrola, whatever.
So you don't like him on this song?
No, I think he sucks.I hate his voice.
I hate his attitude.Yeah, but isn't that what this song's about?He's kind of coming on this song to sort of razz himself a little bit.
I don't think he has the capability of razzing himself.I think he thinks he's great.
I'd be curious what Randy Newman thought he was doing with having this feature.
I think he thought, I better have my famous successful friend, Paul Simon, who's capable of writing the big boring type of song that I refuse to do. on this album so that maybe I'll get a hit.
I think that is actually part of it on the record.I don't know if you guys can see this.There's a big sticker on the front of this record that says contains the hit single The Blues in parentheses beneath it, a duet with Paul Simon.
So I do think that there's absolutely like a commercial aspect of just like, let's get Paul Simon on here.
Yeah, for sure.It's the label being... And I think this album comes at the end of a string of Randy albums where he's trying to crack mainstream.
He's trying to have a hit song, and something within him will not let him just write something that doesn't have the little stinger in it, because that's just who he is.And I think after he exercises this from his system with this album,
Then he starts writing the Toy Story songs and stuff.He did it.He doesn't have to do it again.He's like, okay, now I can sell out.I've proven that I won't change myself, and now I can.
For what it's worth, Randy himself, not terribly fond of the song.I've got this great new Robert Hilburn biography on Randy, actually, that's coming out soon.A Few Words in Defense of Our Country.
And in it, Hilburn says afterward, and after the song came out, Newman expressed misgivings about the song itself.It made fun of a kid who had trouble, a kid who would rush to his room and play the piano.
He told Joe Smith in some sort of interview, that was wrong.I can't think of another song of mine.I regret in the slightest, but I do regret that one.
Yeah, because he regrets putting Paul Simon on.
It's weird to me, and it's corny, and I don't like to hear Paul Simon's voice on this record, and I kind of get what he was going for on this song, but it's still just like, I don't know, it's a failed experiment as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, it's not on the level.After the first two songs, you get to this song, you're like, well, it's a drop off.
Yeah.Yeah.I don't need this one.
It's failed, I think, in the sense that the actual verse that he's referring to there is at odds with the premise.
I thought, based on the beginning of the song, that it would be about just transparently dressing down a certain kind of overly maudlin songwriter.
Paul Simon's verse is a little too... It doesn't really do anything nasty.It is just actually sympathetic.I don't know.I like the song more than Randy Newman does.
Paul Simon presents himself as very soft and lovable, and then he's just full of poison inside.I think Randy has all these songs where he's outwardly full of ego and poison in a character, but Randy seems like a chill guy.
Yeah.Yeah.Paul Simon almost seems like the type of guy that Randy Newman would write a song about.
I mean, isn't this fucking Christmas in Cape Town?Yeah.
I think we're going a little too far saying that Paul Simon's responsible for the apartheid regime in South Africa.
I mean, look it up at the time.That was a major, like people were fucking pissed at the guy.That Sun City is kind of in response to Paul Simon recording Graceland.What's Sun City?
Sun City is like a, we are the world, but you know, like an anti-apartheid in South Africa. For a guy who's constantly posting about Israel and Gaza on his Instagram, I think you should take it seriously.
I don't look to artists to be politically right or wrong.
I think Paul Simon, especially doing Graceland, which I think is a terrible album.Oh, come on.Beloved by the most boring boomers on earth and their children. a certain type of twee New York person that I cannot stand, that I want to sing I Love L.A.
to.I think, again, he is like a Randy Newman character in being like, I'm going to solve apartheid with my music. It's this condescending, patronizing attitude towards people who have less than you have, missionary work type.
They don't know that I'm going to fix it for them.
I think Bridge Over Troubled Water, pretty good song.
No, fuck that song.Fuck that song.Bridge Over Troubled Water sucks.Sounds of Silence fucking sucks.
Brutal.Oh man.Throwing Flames.
Kodachrome, gun to my head.I would, I hate Kodachrome.Truly it is, like all these songs are like about the kind of nostalgic, like, hey, remember we used to row a little boat around and take pictures and it's like, they're based in nothing.
They make you feel nothing. Whereas Randy Newman takes you on a journey.
He does.With Mr. Paul Simon.
A year ago, I met a girl.I thought we'd hit a massive groove.But you don't believe me.And all we'd hit was the blues.
It's got the blues, you idiotic music It's got the blues, just for...
Fortunately, this is a podcast about Randy Newman and not Paul Simon and we can scoot right along to same girl This exists in sort of a corner Randy's discography these like quiet plaintive Character sketches basically that have almost no Development to them whatsoever, but you get this very vivid Strong sense of you know, just a place and a time and an individual this one works, you know as well as Almost any other I think that he had written
uh, obviously about, you know, a woman who is sort of fallen on hard times and seems to be a heroin addict at this point.Pretty brutal.
Well, it's, it's not just about her.It's about this romance.It's about, it's sung by her ostensible romantic partner.I think it has this kind of interesting balance.It used to, this song used to scare me.Like when I first heard the song, um,
I found it unsettling in like a sort of haunting way.It's this weird line that it walks between being romantic and really, really morbid, and it actually kind of blurs that line completely.
You're still the same girl you always were.
♪ On the street, that's all ♪ ♪ A few more homes in your home ♪ ♪ A few more years with me, that's all ♪ ♪ I still love you ♪
The lines about a few more nights on the streets or a few more years with me, it sounds like, oh, maybe you just have had a few more nights on the street and that's why you look a little rough, but I still love you.
But there's another way of hearing it where it's like, you only have a few more nights, a few more years left.
Yeah, I think you can read it in both directions.To me, like this all was like really kind of like the narrator of the song, the speaker of the song seems like, you know, just a straightforward, straight ahead villain.A villain.Absolutely.
You think he's you think he's pushing it on her?
There's another song on this record where that's absolutely the case.Well, that's also the case on that song, but you know, I think there's no right or wrong answer.
I just don't think that that's part of the text of this song at all.It isn't part of the text, but that's the thing is you can, it isn't text, but it's subtext and you can read it in there or you don't read it in there.Sure.
What does Randy say in the, in the text?
He doesn't actually have any comments about this one.This is one of the few that he only commented about the hits.Well, that's the thing.
I think there's two Randy Newmans.There's Randy before I Love L.A.and Toy Story and all that stuff, and there's Randy afterwards.His reputation, obviously, was that he's like an ironist.
He can't write anything except through a veil of disdain and irony. I just feel like even in those songs, it's like, yeah, like he's not like that.That's what fucking Paul Simon is like.He never condescends to the listener.
Even to his own detriment, you know, with a song like, you know, Short People, which he came to resent because no one fucking understood the message and people were trying to ban it for like prejudice against literal, you know, short people instead.
Like, you know, he shoots himself in the foot sometimes because of his unwillingness to condescend And yet he continues to soldier on that way.That's the sign of a true committed artist.
I do think that his not commenting on this particular song does suggest that this is as simple as it seems.I think it's more powerful as a pure love song.
The same sweet smile that you always
Same blue eyes like the sun Same clear voice that I own Still the same girl
Yeah, and to find sympathy for these grotesque people.I think there's a lot of Southern Gothic in his music in that way, too, of people whose lives are sad and shambling, and he's not just repulsed by them.He's interested in that.
I think a lot of the narrators of his songs have this kind of Blanche DuBois you know, they're yearning for a past that never existed.They're yearning for a world, a better world.They think what, you know, what it used to be like.
Well, that's the next song is... Yes.Speaking of a past that never existed, Mikey's. This is one of my favorite songs on the record.I fucking love this song.
The sound of this song is kind of unlike any other that he's done where it's it really just inhabits the stupid little synthesizer.It sounds like this guy's brain runs on a single AAA battery.
My Marie She's gone off somewhere Unexpectedly And she wanders in here, baby Tell her I'm lookin' for her I ain't mad or nothin' I just wanna talk
The whole thing is like you're trapped in a barstool next to this guy and he is telling you his life story and you can't get out of it.
He's just rushed in all sweaty and he's like slapping you on the back while he's asking the guy to put it on his tab and then he's just like looking for his girlfriend so he can scream at her.
Probably.Yeah, for who knows how long.Yeah, years.The part where he says,
about the music that we like never used to be all this weird music playing where are we on the moon just like a rant just like a drunk old bastard ranting at Mikey the bar owner
Yeah.And I love that Randy is not a guy... He's not a purist.He likes new technology.There's a drum machine on songs on this album.He's clearly interested in what the other people are doing that are making pop songs that are good on the radio.
And that's what I love about the way this song sounds is like that stupid little plinky plonky synthesizer that just it's annoying.It's catchy at what in in one degree, but it just becomes annoying.
But like, I feel like that's Randy, like, like kind of playing the music the way that this guy interprets like, you know, synthesizer pop songs circa 1983 to sound to him.
Didn't used to be any Spaniards here, now you got them.Didn't used to be any Mexicans here, now you got them.Didn't used to be any Chinamen here.Didn't used to be this ugly music playing all the time.Well, with all the food.
Whatever happened to the old songs, Mike?
I love the ending of the song where he's talking about the Duke of Earl.You know that song?
Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl
Written and recorded by, of course, a black man who, you know, this character in this song might refer to, you know, using the outmoded slur of spade.Again, just like brilliant kind of dressing down of this guy without even this guy realizing it.
Wait, he says North Beach, right?He says North Beach, yeah.Which, this song isn't set anywhere in particular.I like to think of this as the San Francisco song here, because, you know, obviously North Beach here.
Which is, if it is, that's like Chinaman here.It actually is San Francisco.Like, this is the first Chinatown ever, right next to it.
I think that's intentional, because if you listen real close, after he says Chinaman, you hear him go...
That's a California thing, too.It's like it's always been diverse, but... Oh, San Francisco's falling apart.
It's becoming... It's worse than ever. That's what everyone's always saying about it.
It's funny though.Then I go there and I'm like, it's not, it's the same as Los Angeles and it's the same.
What they mean, what they mean by that is there's visible poverty and mental illness everywhere, which is what, you know, anywhere worth being, there's going to be visible poverty and mental illness.
It's worse in California because we're supposed to be newer and better and more enlightened about these things.And then we somehow find new ways to make it even worse.
This is a perfect transition, actually.I couldn't think of a better transition because the next song... Oh my god.That's this idea of like, I don't know why this place has any people on the street.I don't know if you understand, I moved here.
She drives her kids to school.She does it loudly too.She wrote this song for me, listen. The other afternoon, my wife and I took a little ride into Beverly Hills.Went to the private school our oldest child attends.
Many famous people send their children there.This teacher says to us, we have a problem here.This child just will not do a thing I tell him to.He's such a big old thing.He hurts the other children, all the games they play.He plays so rough.
Only teacher, wait a minute. Man, my ears are clogged or something Maybe I'm not understanding the English language Yeah, you don't seem to realize
Randy says about my life is good.Has nothing to do with me.Just to be clear.I never behave that way.I mean, my kids do go to private school, so it's not absolutely alien.And I do know people like this.
You tell them something bad about themselves or their kids and they can't quite believe you're saying it.
That's like the people that I love L.A.who just unquestioningly love it.Like this is their song.
Right.Yeah.And this is the closest related to I love L.A.
in a way.They should start playing this song at the end of Dodger games.Everyone just screaming my life.
It's good!I don't think that I have much to say about this song beyond just to say to listen to it, because it has just such a beautiful way of expressing itself.
It is kind of a Petit Bourgeois, you know, theme song.
I think this whole album is like the Petit Bourgeois album.It is
Yeah, in many ways it is.Absolutely.
A lot of it feels like it's about Randy Newman being in place, being around rich fucking assholes and metabolizing that into a bunch of songs about how they must think about the world.
But this one, he jumps in front of the bullet by being himself basically as himself in this song.
Yeah, he writes himself into it.Rand, I'm tired, you know, as Bruce Springsteen apparently tells him at the Bel Air Hotel.
And the conceit that the whole song is him talking to his son's teacher saying that, like, I've got some friends coming to town.I'm going to get them some real good cocaine because they don't get much where they come from.
And I'm going to fuck his wife.And by the way, I'm friends with Bruce Springsteen.It's so funny.
Well, what is funny about this is that, like, in 1983, when this record came out, Born in the USA was still a year away.
The most recent Bruce Springsteen album was Nebraska, an entire album about, like, the destruction of the American dream and the middle class's, like, inevitable fading away into misery and nothingness.
So this guy is like, he's completely not even tuned into where Bruce actually is.He's just thinking about... Hungry Heart.
Yeah.Cadillac Ranch. I like the part where he's talking about what he was talking about with Bruce, when he's like, we're talking about some wood block or something.No idea what that's about.And that some guitars we like.
And the delivery he has of just like screaming, my life is good, toward the end.Brilliant.
He said, friend, I'm tired.How would you like to be the boss for a while? Yeah!
Another catchy number, Miami.
Miami opens the second side of the album and it is like the sister song to I Love L.A.in so many ways because it is about Miami.I have an ongoing personal theory that Miami is for L.A.people the way L.A.is for other people.
Go with me here.People from Los Angeles and from California, our ideas about Florida are the same as other people's ideas about California.Wow.
You hear people in California say this all the time, like, oh, Florida, that's where everybody's like a dumb, sexy, hot idiot.And it's like, that's what they think about us.
Florida and California as these places where you can project all of the issues of this country onto and be like, well, that's where it's really bad.
That makes a lot of sense in regard to this song, because the narrator of it is sort of like the I Love L.A.narrator visiting Florida to be even more of a sicko.Sure.Yeah. I like that he's sort of like, I get in so much trouble when I'm down here.
You don't really get told about the nature of that trouble at all, but it's pretty clear based on inference that there's just a trail of carnage behind this character that we don't really
see everything about what he's saying is kind of like breathlessly narrating something irrelevant to the fact that there's like blood on his shoes from what some guy just did.It could be Tony Montana speaking this song.
It's the guy who's friends with Tony Montana.Yeah.Just like a guy kind of walking around with Tony who's like, yeah, I have a friend.He has a boat.
♪ With the river everywhere ♪ ♪ She's a very fine girl ♪ ♪ She's been awfully nice to me ♪ ♪ When we walk, as we sometimes do ♪ ♪ All the way out Collins Avenue ♪ ♪ Well, it's very, very fine ♪ ♪ Very, very special, very ♪
This song also feels like, like when I saw the Beach Boys, when I saw the Mike Love Beach Boys, I have to preface it every time with the Mike Love Beach Boys.Like there's such a darkness to Kokomo.
They're only mentioning colonized colonial government countries. And it's all about how fun it is for a white person to go there on vacation.
There's a thing about like the, I wrote a thing about Jimmy Buffett once that was kind of saying this, or I was like, Oh, you came for Jimmy Buffett.No, no.I love, I came, I came for Jimmy Buffett.
I'm pro Jimmy Buffett because I was, I, I feel that Jimmy Buffett is more like Randy Newman than people give him credit for because his songs are also about dopes on vacation in
in foreign countries who don't understand the culture there, and his audience just completely embraces it unthinkingly.And so he made so much money off of it.But he's also like a busker guy.Margaritaville is a very depressing weird, dark song.
But then his fan base became people who just love that.I love going to Mexico and going to an all-inclusive resort.
Cheeseburger in Paradise.
Come on.The machine got bigger than him at a certain point, and so people were just like, he's the good time guy.He loves a fun time.But all his songs that aren't like that are so dark and weird, and even the ones that are.
I would be great if Miami embraced the song Miami.
Singing this at Marlins games and Dolphins games.
Yeah, exactly.I think it's a little too weird for that.But yeah, I've always thought the song sounds great.It's like
that evil funhouse thing but yeah unlike Christmas in Cape Town which has that in the sense that like you are you've been trapped in the evil funhouse long after it's worn off being fun at all this is like you just got to the evil funhouse time to have some fun it's pretty it's fun it's cool yeah exactly
The evil funhouse thing too, that's very like the wobbly.Yeah.The songs all wobble a little bit.
It feels like he- The klezmer type of thing.Yeah.
Yeah.Well, that thing, the Gershwin thing is what the funny and very like smart little note.It quotes musically Rhapsody in Blue right before he says Miami blue. Wow, musical scholar.
Only took the 500th time of me listening to it to figure it out.
That's where I like to stay when I'm down in Miami.
Best dope in the world, and it's free.
Miami's great song, catchiest song on the record besides I Love L.A., a record that is not very interested in being catchy in most parts.It's nice to have another little toe tap in here.
And I think Randy Newman could have made a whole career making I Love L.A.type songs, you know?Oh, absolutely.He could have taken that and run with it and made a hundred more songs or like Santa Monica, what a fun place to go.
It could have been Matt Farley just writing these albums about all of these different places across the country.
Nobody could be Matt Farley though, but Matt.Next is actually the most evil song on the record.
Oh yeah.Go on.It's got some competition coming up, but go on.
I think that this song is by far the most sinister, and I also think it's the most misunderstood.I've seen people on YouTube comments and just like, the genius annotation of this, woof, boy does it stink.
This is a song that's called Real Emotional Girl, And it doesn't really become clear until you take it all together and especially toward the end of the song.But this is like an advertisement in the catalog for Jeffrey Epstein.
It's not a sensitive description of someone this narrator cares for.This is a product review.
♪ Wears her heart on her sleeve ♪ ♪ Every little thing you tell her ♪ ♪ She'll believe ♪ ♪ She really will ♪ ♪ She even cries in her sleep ♪ ♪ I've heard her many times before ♪
Girl, you love me half as much as this girl loves me It's real emotional
This is totally the guy at the beginning of Election who's sleeping with Tracy Flick who turns... And when he's like, her pussy gets so wet.Exactly.That's this guy.
And you're like, oh, I wish I could un-hear that.
Yeah.But people listen to this song and they go like, this is so sweet.And it's like, yeah, the character
There is a thing to it that is why it's, I think, a really genius song, and why it does have a real resonance, is that the character that this unreliably nasty character is talking about, you can read through it, you can see through the lines at the real person that
this sort of stunted fool is only able to see as like a unique thing about this particular piece of ass is that she cries sometimes.
She's got daddy issues.She's kind of fucked up.It makes her really good in bed.
This whole album is like conversations at parties with scumbags.
This song versus Same Girl, I think, really makes Same Girl feel like, to me, more of like a tragic love song that has to do with both those characters being doomed, similarly doomed.
This song, there's actually stuff in the text of it to support that you don't want to know, like, you don't want to know this guy.Like in Miami, when he says,
I love that little detail in Miami, by the way, which is just that he points out one guy, he says, he's a real bad man.I mean, he's really very bad.But it's like, you know that the guy singing that song is a scumbag.
So it's like this awareness that scumbags have of worse scumbags is part of this record.
Oh yeah.It's like when a cokehead is like, oh, that guy's a huge cokehead.
You don't want to trust that guy.And then this song is kind of the other side of that, of like a scumbag who's kind of, doesn't know exactly what to do with encountering something really vulnerable and human.
It just becomes another thing to manipulate.
He, yeah, he agrees that, you know, the reading that Evan is giving is what Randy was going for here.At the same time, he doesn't know that he nailed it entirely.He says a lot of girls love their daddies and then they move away and get stiff.
That's what this song is about.Oh my God. When I wrote the song, I wanted the guy singing it to be a bad guy, but I don't think it quite came off.Still, he really shouldn't be revealing confidences about her like that.
She broke her heart and now she lives alone She's very, very careful, yes she is She's real emotional She lives down deep inside herself She turns on easy, it's like a hurricane You would not believe Got to hold on tight to her
It's a great song.Take Me Back, North Hollywood Anthem.
where all the real people live and all the real stuff happens.
You know, it's like the working class, regular, especially dusty part of LA.
If there's one, you know, kind of trouble that I have with this record here and there, it's that like some of these songs are just, they're like, there's so much going on and, and like the, the lyrics are so lengthy and detailed at certain points, like it, it stops being as purely enjoyable on like a musical level the way that something like Little Criminals is.
And it does other things, you know, that other records that he made didn't necessarily, you know, it's a very adventurous and exciting album, but I appreciate the opportunity to just like play a catchy little song here about sort of just like a fail son, basically, you know, it's about another idiot, but like there isn't a really deep, dark demon lurking beneath the surface necessarily.
It's kind of him, though, in a way that's pretty obvious on some level, but it's also not quite him.
It feels like, at least to me, like he's sort of testing out the direction that he'll fully explore much more on the next record, Land of Dreams, which is very plainly autobiographical, at least on several songs.
This one, I think, changes some of the actual details Uh, but feels like a sort of dry run of that mode.Yeah, I see that.
I like some of the lines, you know, greasy little shack.Uh, don't want to live here by this dirty, dirty old airport in this greasy little shack. God, that's that's the beautiful Burbank Airport to you.
It's a Burbank Airport, the Bob Hope Airport.
We love that dirty old airport.
We love Bob Hope.Do we love Bob?Do you have to either of you?
No, we don't.He's a racist.He's an old racist.
At least his airport is nice.Yeah.
Everyone tells me I was down to lose a man.
♪ It's not hard to understand ♪ ♪ Sure I got trouble ♪ ♪ Maybe you got them too ♪ ♪ I'd like to explain what has happened to me ♪ ♪ So it doesn't happen to you ♪ ♪ I was born in Los Angeles ♪ ♪ Many, many, many years ago ♪ ♪ Lived out in North Hollywood then ♪ ♪ In a steamy little bungalow ♪
Playing cowboys all day out there in the back What a perfect family Hey!Hey!
You guys have a little bit of a Crosby and Hope dynamic on this podcast, though.A little bit of a... Interesting.
Which one's which?Yeah, which one?
I guess don't answer the question.I defended Paul Simon at all.So I guess I'm Bob Hope.You're Bob Hope, clearly.Whichever one of them is more racist.But I'm a big Bing Crosby fan.
Ian's Bing Crosby.Bing Crosby, also a psychopath.
Allegedly.Good song. We can keep rolling.This, I think, this is the most evil song on the record to me. Well, you have like a crazy read of this song.I don't think it's crazy.
I think it entirely depends on how you interpret the word rope in this song.But there's a party at my house here at the end, which is just the most anodyne, replacement level, rockin' daddy bullshit song
It's, you know, it's like proto-Wilburys for most of it.Proto-Wilburian.
And then at the very end, like he gets a little too, he gets a little too horned up and starts really focusing in on the, you know, the physiology of a particular guest at this party.
And, and things kind of get a little dark right before the song cuts to black.I love this song.
A lot of these songs are like somebody getting a little too drunk and it turns.
Yeah.He's got the Howard Dean moment at the end of this song where he's just like one too many cups of punch.
Right beneath our breasts.Magnos nipples.Pink as a rosebud.Hey Bobby, get the rope.All right.There's a party in my house tonight.
Her face gets all red and spotty like she's been out in the sun too long.And that little blue vein right beneath her breast.Man, those nipples.Pink as a rosebud.
There's a party at my house tonight.Well, then he says, bring the rope.I just interpreted that as connecting to when he says he loves to see her jump up and down.He wants her to play jump rope.I don't think he's trying to tie her up.
I think that could be it, but I think that if he wanted it to be clearly understood as a jump rope, he would have said jump rope, but he didn't.He said rope.And so I think you can read it as a jump rope.
I think you could also read it as literally a rope because this guy clearly has some weird sexual psychosis going on to him and he's just gotten a little too turnt off his own imagination.
The one line that does actually support that read is at the beginning he says, everybody wound up nice and tight.Nice and tight.Yeah.Literally wound up.
What if she likes it?She might be into it.That's why she comes over.We haven't heard from her.
That's a good point.We haven't heard from her.We haven't heard her side of the story, innocent until proven guilty.
I think that when Randy Newman wants to write a song about a guy tying up and killing women.He just does that.And he has.
And I think on this one, it's more about a guy who wants to throw a party and can't really get through the part where he sets up the party before he has a fit about how much he can't stop thinking about this one redhead and her tits.
And this is the second redhead on the record.So that's kind of a theme.
We could say. Next is I'm Different.I don't have much to say about that one.
It's funny.It's good.I get this one.It, uh, it's, it's, it's... It's fine.
It's Randy Newman's My Way.
I'm different.Don't care who knows it.Something about me is not the same yet.I'm different.That's how it goes.
♪ Ain't gonna play your goddamn game ♪ ♪ Got a different way of walkin' ♪ ♪ I got a different kind of smile ♪ ♪ I got a different way of talkin' ♪ ♪ Drives the women kind of wild ♪ ♪ Kind of wild ♪ ♪ He's different, don't care who knows it ♪
He's not gonna play your gosh darn.
Maybe not essential to the overall dramatic arc of the album, but it's fun.I like the backing vocals, and especially the way that they almost sound like the Vivian Girls at certain points.
It's a very sweet, melodic, kind of candy-coated vocal that meshes well with Randy's sweet and melodic and candy-coated is not typically how you'd describe his voice. It's fun.It's good.
You know, there's a great live show from around this time where it's on YouTube and I actually watched the whole thing and had a great time watching it the other day.It's Randy Newman with Ry Cooder and Linda Ronstadt and supporting him at the Odeon.
Just playing a show at the Odeon and he fully plays Christmas in Cape Town.Wow.
Also, I just am learning from the Wikipedia page that the backing vocals on Christmas in Cape Town are by Don Henley and Bob Seger together.
And the backing vocals on I Love L.A.are Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham.
That's right.Second Lindsay sighting in as many episodes here.We just did Warren Zevon's The Envoy last time.And he's on the overdraft.
Perhaps someday on Jokerman podcast, there will be more discussion.
Oh, really?Perhaps a Fleetwood Mackery?
Perhaps someday.Stay tuned, folks.The record ends with a song about the American dream, about America.Oh, boy.
Oh, yeah.Song for the dead.
Deep in the field A lone soldier stands Mud on his boot Blood on his hand Bury the dead
Going out on a somber note.Yeah, this one's, you know, like, it's crazy that this album starts with I Love L.A.and then ends with this song.
Well, it's like it's a reverse track of American history.It starts in the present and then it goes all the way back to the past, to the Civil War.That's not the Civil War. It's not?You don't think it's a Civil War?
I don't think this is the Civil War.He says gooks.I don't think they had that word back in the 1860s.
I guess in my mind, I always thought this song was about the Civil War.
Well, he says, slip off my pack, which sounds kind of like World War I or before, but no, then he says gooks.
Well, that's like sometimes, you know, a lot of a lot of the Randy Newman guys are guys using a racial, a racist term so antiquated that nobody even says it anymore.
We have literally talked about that on previous.There's one.I forget what song it is.It's not coming to mind.Well, he says WAP, like that's, you know, the anti-Italian.Well, he says WAP.He says WAP.He says WAP in a civil way.
That's the real antiquated one.That's the one you have to look up in the dictionary.
you're like, I don't even know what you're talking about until I look it up and then I wish it wasn't in my search history.
Suffice it to say, this song is about one of our soldiers, one of America's brave soldiers, sitting down to speak to the exploded corpses of other soldiers on behalf of the leadership
and explains to them why it is that they had to be blown apart to defend a mud hole.And he says, well, our country is very far away, but it found itself jeopardized, in danger by these very... And then he says, that slur.
So it's basically... You know who used that slur a lot?
He was the most popular entertainer in America for like the entire 20th century.So I don't think there's a slur he didn't say.
Yeah, I mean, I think this this song isn't it's the culmination of the whole album, which is the theme of the album.It's like my life is good because someone else's life fucking sucks.
Exactly.Yeah.And that's what makes the last verse the last lines.You know, we'd like to express our deep admiration for your courage under fire and your willingness to die for your country, boys. we won't forget, we won't forget.
And then if you just, if you flip it over and start it over again, it's, I love LA.And that guy has never, never even occurred to him that these poor suckers are out there dying in this mud hole so that he could drive around in his Cadillac.
And again, I think every type of music that Randy Newman loves comes out of the fact that all this fucked up stuff has happened in America.All of the stuff that may, that is just deep in the DNA of his songwriting,
is stuff that happened because of slavery and because of American colonialism and all the fucked up stuff.He makes it complicated in a way that you can't just easily tie it in a bow.
It's a fool's errand to try to tie it in a bow and to try to cut off any connection to this thing, which is problematic, that thing, which is problematic.He doesn't start a song without
coming from the understanding that nothing is untouched, nothing is unconnected, nothing has its own perfect life that has nothing to do with anything else.Right.Everything's in the context.
The breakneck sort of whiplash feeling you get between what one song is about and what another is about.
I think that it's so stark and so jolting that you have to look at it as an artistic choice that he's saying all these things exist in the same world, and it does feel crazy that they're right next to each other.
I'll wrap it up with one of my other big L.A.theories, which I think one of the reasons L.A.is so fucked up, because it could be good.
That's also what makes it a tragedy, is it could be a place with public space and public transportation and services for poor people and all the stuff that a normal functioning city should have.
Instead, it has these insane extremes of wealth and poverty. right next to each other is because of this refusal to acknowledge its own history and to look clearly at what happens in Los Angeles.Nobody wants to look clearly except for Randy Newman.
Pardon me, boys, if I slip off my pad and sit for a while with you. I'd like to explain why you fine young men had to be blown apart to defend this mud hole.
Now our country, boys, though it's quite far away, found itself jeopardized, endangered, boys. by these very gooks who lie here beside you for ever near for ever We'd like to express our deep admiration for your courage under fire
And your willingness to die For your country, boys, we won't forget We won't forget
Have you guys ever heard the Kris Jenner version?
Kris Jenner did I Love L.A.?
Yeah, guys.Oh, my God.I was like, wow, this is like the lore I can bring to Joker Man.Good God.This is why you needed a female guest on your Randy Newman episode.
This is ringing a distant bell.
She made a video for her 30th birthday.She changed the lyrics to I love my friends.Wow.
and it is a shot-for-shot remake of the video, all the same B-roll as the video, and then her different friends, such as Faye Resnick, OJ Simpson, saying, we love it.And it's Kris Jenner as the star of the video going, I love my friends.
Well, we know what song we're going out with here on this episode. Three stars.
Three out of three.Come on, you know how we do it.
It's only the three star system.We only got three stars.
Three stars, absolutely.Thank you so much for joining us, Molly.This was a delight.Do you have anything to tell the listeners of Jokerman Nation to look out for or follow you on?
Yeah, I've got a, speaking of North Hollywood, I've got a podcast that will be coming out early 2025 called Jenna World that is about the history of the porn industry and the San Fernando Valley.
Two of my favorite things.
It's about Jenna Jameson as the sort of, the Jenna Jameson, also a real emotional girl.So yeah, if you like, if you like stuff about how LA sucks and is also rad, you're going to love Jenna World.
My whole life is about moving from Hollywood to North Hollywood and then trying to like claw my way back over the hill to my rightful place of Hollywood Boulevard where I live in the mind.
The Hollywood Boulevard of the mind.
Hollywood Boulevard, the physical place. Is I Love L.A.the song?I love, I love going there.
It's a great place.And as you saw the other night, Evan, Randy Newman has a star right there, right outside of old Musso and Franks.Right outside the door to Musso and Franks.Does it get any better than that?Does it get any more I Love L.A.than that?
Thanks for having me, guys.
Thank you.Thank you, Molly.
November 5th, and now I'm 30.Riding down my highway with my friends at my side.My life without them wouldn't be complete.They are my joy and pride.I've learned a lot from all my good friends about turning 30.I'm the last to reach that stop.
We're gonna party till we just can't It's like another fun-filled day.
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