Transcript
Marc Maron (0:02)
Hey, folks, today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. And if you have a business or you sell things online, you know how important a good website is. Not just to showcase your stuff, but to make sure you get paid. Squarespace gives you everything you need to sell whatever you want to sell. And they make sure you get all your payments on time with professional invoices and online pay portals. Plus, streamline your workflow with built in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools. Check out all Squarespace has to offer, first by going to wtfpod.com and seeing a website powered by Squarespace. Then head to squarespace.com wtf for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code WTF to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com WTF offer code WTF. All right, let's do this. How are you? What the. What the Buddies? What the Nicks? What's happening? I'm Marc Maron. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. How's it going? How's your. How. How are your hands? Did you keep all your fingers over the blasting over the weekend? Everybody okay? Nobody blew up any snakes or frogs or anything horrible? What'd you do? What did you do out there? How did it all go? Have good food? Did you have good food? Did it, did it all work out? Was there any sense of celebration? I don't know. It all seems a little contrary in terms of freedom and independence to what a lot of people are experiencing right now in the world, in this country. But let's not, let's not get. Let's not get sad. I don't know. I have been. Yeah, I mentioned, I think last week the. On the show that I was going to listen to the Del Shannon record. Didn't I mention that it was. I didn't even know the name of it, but I knew it was a record that I was supposed to have in my collection and I got a reissue. I knew it was. It was. It's called the Further Adventures of Charles Westover. It was a 1968 Del Shannon release, years after the Runaway guy. Trying to hold on, trying to make the shift from the early 60s to the late 60s. Big jump for some of those guys, right? Bobby Darin did a couple of hippie records. It's always interesting. The hippie records from the. The kind of late 50s, early crooners. What, am I running a record podcast now? The fuck is happening? I guess after last week and after the conversation I had, I. I must have made myself feel a little guilty because now I'm kind of reengaged with the records and I'm taking the time when I have it, which is rare for some reason. I'm still very busy and, you know, I'm listening to the records. It's very nice. Time travel, man. It's time travel, mystical, magical stuff. And it was weird because I've said on this show a lot of times that the difference between music and comedy is that music is magic. I'll stand by that. But I had a conversation with Adam Pally on his show and he kind of shifted my thinking a little bit, which isn't always. I mean, I'm open minded, but he made me look at it a different way a little bit. But nonetheless, it landed. But before I get into that, today, I'm talking to Alexander Skarsgard. You know, he's a lot of stuff, this guy. True Blood, Big Little Lies, Robert Eggers, the Northman, Brandon Cronenberg's Infinity Pool. He played Lucas Matson on Succession brilliantly. And now he's in this science fiction series called Murderbot. But I think calling it a science fiction series kind of undermines it. It's a comedy and it's pretty funny. I watched a bunch of episodes in order to talk to him and I'm still watching them. I think he's amazing at it. It's a very interesting character he plays. I guess it would be some sort of cyborg is that it's. It's kind of a robot, but it's like a flesh one, you know, I don't know. I'm not up on this, the sci fi lingo. But yeah, it's a flesh robot. The ones that are kind of mostly people but also programmed. And he sort of is one that's been refurbished and he did some. He might in his robot brain kind of remember bits and pieces of an erased event that he was probably at the center of, which we. I don't know for sure, but it looks like he, he, he might have had a glitch and killed a lot of humans at his last job. And he also sort of stacks his, his memory up with kind of garbage space sitcoms which kind of eventually make him learn how to, to be a human in a way. And he's stationed on this somewhat of a progressive, almost a hippie mission with this crew of researchers. But it's funny. I will be back at Largo for a comedy and music show on Wednesday, July 23. Tickets are at largo-la.com and I'm playing with some new people this time, and we're doing, like, a few of the songs I've done before, a couple of new ones. And look, man, I know that some of you sit through my guitar at the end. I don't expect a lot of people to do that, but it keeps me engaged. It keeps me playing. I think I've gotten better. Sometimes I sound better than others. Also, it's like, with the weekly update that I think you can still sign up for@wtfpod.com because it looks like, yeah, I'm going to try to keep that going after the podcast ends, but that keeps me writing. But there is this part of me that thinks, like, well, I got to focus more on music. And then I spend time with real musicians trying to work out songs. And one of the reasons I'm playing with these different people is because I wanted more practice time. I wanted to really feel the vibe of playing with people because I don't do it enough. And when we do do it, it's only for, like, a day, couple of rehearsals before the actual performance. And I don't feel like I've fully acclimated to playing with other individuals. I don't feel like I'm good at that or know how to do it that well. And then I play with them, and then, like, you know, I want to have fun, but I'm so hard on myself and ultimately so insecure. It's a nightmare. Not a nightmare. I mean, I did have some fun, but I. I just. I wish I was more proficient. I've been playing a long time. I think I'm good at something. I think I'm good at how I play, but it's just. I'm not. It's. I choke, man. And I'm tired of it. So there goes that hobby in terms of really kind of leaning into it. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna probably do a lot more music. It's like. It's like, oh, my God. Every time I do it, I'm like, jesus, I kind of suck. What the fuck, man? I know. I know these songs that when I sing, I get, like. I choke up. Like, I get nervous or vulnerable or whatever. My throat kind of closes up. I just. Maybe if I keep doing it, I'll let go. I'll let go and I'll ease into it, because I have had moments where I feel like I'm pretty good at it in my own way, which is all that's important. I think I can do it. But Jesus, any creative endeavor, the main thing you're up against is just that wall inside yourself. 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As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. WTF? Listeners get 10% off their first month@betterhelp.com WTF. That's betterhelp.com WTF. We are playing some interesting songs. I mean, I kind of teased it. For those of you who are listening to the guitar at the end. I'm going to cover a Taylor Swift song. Maybe I told you that. But it's the one that kind of blew my mind and broke my heart. And I don't want to talk about it too much. Maybe some of you will come and maybe it'll be part of my repertoire. I don't know. But we figured it out. It's four chords, but it's. Yeah, well, I guess I can tell you we're going to cover Bigger than the Whole sky. And, you know, that's the kind of risk I'm taking. I'm not just up there playing some dirty blues, not doing some white guy barroom blues shtick. We're doing. We're doing solid numbers, man. We're doing Buddy Holly, we're doing Velvet Underground. We're doing the Band. All right, there's a Jimmy Reed song in there, but, you know, for the most part, I'm trying to. I'm trying to work a lot of muscles on the music thing, but it makes me very raw. Not raw. It makes me vulnerable. It makes me insecure. I've been in a war against embarrassment. My Entire life. But you know what? You will be humbled. You will be humbled by age, and hopefully at that point, you won't give a anymore. Hopefully. So this observation that Adam had about. Because he brought it up, Adam Pally, about music and comedy, and he was trying to tell me that they were similar, and I stuck by my old kind of rule, which is like, not really. But he was talking about crafting a bid, making it work, taking it out on the road, making it like a song, making it sing, making it, you know, do what it's supposed to do is like. It's like music. And I. And my argument with that is always. But music is magic. And a piece of music can live with you forever and you can return to it. And every time you listen to it, you might have a different experience. It might trigger memories, it might take on a whole new meaning. You might hear things you didn't hear before. You might realize that it doesn't hold what it used to. But either way, it's ethereal. And even bad music, even catchy music, there's nothing more consistent than locking into a song. And jokes just aren't like that. Because he was talking about when you put a joke on a record, I'm like, yeah, but who the fuck listens to a joke more than once or twice? Really? I think with the Internet. Yes, the Internet. I think with YouTube and stuff and everything that's available, you can poke around in the history of everything and find something funny from the old days that you can watch a few times. I've definitely done that. But generally speaking, a joke kind of, you know, it's one and done. My argument is that music can change you and it can change with you. And his argument is that, yeah, but some jokes stay with you forever, and they change the way you think, or they provide you a certain amount of relief in moments that you need it, or they make you look at things in a different way. Or you can tell a joke in relation to something that somebody's talking about or you're talking about, and it kind of heightens that conversation or buttons it or is the last word on it. There's something about jokes that are kind of designed to be the last word on things. That's the nature of a punchline, I guess. But I don't think I'd quite thought about it like that. And that was kind of an exciting little revelation there, that there's so many jokes that represent a way of understanding or have shown me how to understand something or see something in a Different way. I've always felt that that's why I like comedy, but I didn't really put it together that you hold those in your mind or you can go find them again, or you can paraphrase them badly, or you can kind of remember them and they give you that same sort of like, you know, not necessarily an out loud laugh or anything, but that moment that you had with that joke at another time kind of, you know, kind of reignites. So they stay with you in a different way. It's kind of in your mind. And songs can do that too. But when you hear a song outside of you, it's always like, holy shit. When you hear a joke outside of you, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know this one.