The World is Made For Me

Mike Watt has a podcast called The Watt from Pedro Show. For the latest hefty installment, Mike Watt and Jim O'Rourke discuss Japanese grammar, play some songs, talk about film, and share embarrassing childhood music stories. 96k mp3.

What can I say, Jim O'Rourke is ridiculously interesting. I have always been a huge fan, ever since I heard Gastr Del Sol, then Bad Timing, then Eureka, then a thousand of his improv records, then the million records he produced for Stereolab, Smog, US Maple, and many other cool bands (although it was interesting to find out that the reason he worked on so many of those early Drag City-related Chicago releases was because he worked FOR FREE). Listening to him talk, it is really wonderful because he is just so unabashedly uncool. He "shoots the moon" with uncoolness so much that he is actually really cool. Despite what I consider to be astounding life accomplishments, he just sounds so humble and unconcerned with being cool. Although it seems like a huge loss that HE ISN'T EVEN DOING MUSIC ANYMORE, I think it is really commendable that he is dropping everything because he always wanted to learn Japanese and because he wants to start doing film.

The timing of this coming out is really interesting to me because when we were in Texas, Andrew pulled out the Bad Timing LP from my brother's record collection and asked us "what is this?" so we put it on and Andrew ended up really liking it and I too remembered how much I liked that album and how I listened to it and nothing else over and over again on a trip to Lawrence Kansas once. Andrew asked what Jim O'Rourke was doing right now, and I said that I had heard he was living in Japan and concetrating on doing film, but I didn't really know for sure. Then this wonderful gift of a podcast falls into my path.

Here's what I think is happening: Having listened to The Secret audio book on the way home from Texas, the "Law of Attraction" has really been kicking in. I have been wanting delicious talk radio type stuff to listen to, in addition to thinking about Jim O'Rourke. And then it happens! Ask and ye shall receive! Coincidence? Yeah, probably. But hey. We listened to The Secret for probably four hours, and it ended up being a little too much for our puny minds to take. Apparently Oprah plugged this book/movie/whatever, but I would be interested in knowing why. It was mostly interesting, and occasionally new age to the point of being hilarious.

But back to this podcast. It is great. It gives you plenty of content, this one clocking in at around three hours. I felt like this one was made just for me, because it is all so tasty and interesting. Great job. I am done being a fanboy for one day.