Bandsplain

the new Jane’s Addiction episode w Jessica Hopper is SO great imo

For me it scratches the same itch as the PJ Harvey two-parter w Ann Powers - maybe it sounds corny & obvious but i just love hearing two women talk about music in a way that celebrates and elevates it. sometimes intellectually, sometimes emotionally, sometimes “just vibes” as yasi would say. all-encompassing.

also their discussion of jane says is excellent

i love this goddamn gorgeous beautiful podcast so much

Since I've been listening to this podcast solidly for the last month I've started describing every song I hear in this way. I'm so glad I got over the host's annoying voice because I now love her and this podcast. She's so funny.

i have had to restrain myself from calling my friebds babe in group chats lol

"They've blocked out the wacky hats! They've blocked out the bongos! But I'm telling you, I was there. [...] This was part of the fabric of alternative culture. You cannot erase it."

Two to three hours on the Dave Matthews Band?

I have always called my daughter some form of baby or babe, but since getting into Bandsplain, I've been giving it the Yasi inflection.

<3

omg also Jessica Hopper’s you weren’t truly a teen in the 90’s unless you’ve given a dry handjob under a giant Ritual de Lo Habitual wall poster had me ROLLING

xxpost jimbeaux it’s longer than that, it’s a two parter! also they’re yasi’s favorite band and it was her birthday

Don't drink the motha fuckin' water

what are you all doing while you're listening to this podcast?

working on a computer? hanging out in the living room? running on a treadmill? riding the bus?

i'm genuinely curious.

it's so long i have to listen to it on, like, five different afternoon walks. (i can't listen to it while working.)

The only podcast I listen to anywhere near that long is Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, each episode of which I have to break up into chunks. Long road trips do provide an extended listening opportunity.

I have a 20 minute drive to and from work each day. The stereo in my car doesn't work, I've got a small Bluetooth speaker which is rubbish for music so that's when I listen to Bandsplain. Took me about 2 weeks to get through the Cure episodes.

i listen to it mostly while walking, and while working (work from home) … often in chunks but i like being able to go back to it in installments

plus it’s not like they’re time-dependent, you can take as long as you want to listen to them

I have a pool that has to get scrubbed 2-3 times a week because it was poorly maintained and needs constant attention and I hate it. I listen to this when I scrub the pool which takes an hour.

So far the PJ Harvey episode was my favorite. I like the dense, longer episodes so much that a shorter one is disappointing.

I'm halfway through Neutral Milk Hotel which has been great, lots of stuff I had never heard before. Favorite bit: while recording In The Aeroplane... one of the bandmembers would wake Mangum up in the morning by saying "Hey Jeff, wake up, we're gonna make a classic album." and at first Jeff would say "we are?" After a while he started saying "yeah, we are."

xp: yeah, for me podcasts (particularly long ones) are just what I throw on to keep me from going insane when I do chores. Walking the dog? On goes a podcast for 10 minutes. Washing dishes, cooking dinner, etc.

the “24 Question Party People” episodes that Yasi is putting out on the Bandsplain feed are so great - literally not a bad episode yet

so far: Liz Phair, Adam Duritz, Jason Isbell, Ian Shelton (Militarie gun), and today is Stephan Jenkins (Third Eye Blind)

what's the concept?

kind of a spin on the Proust Questionnaire - she asks 24 questions starting out with light easy fluff & delving into deeper personal/music questions as they go along. It’s quite revealing!

I listened to the Pixies one recently. Gina Arnold! Route 666: On The Road to Nirvana had the exact same impact on me that it did Yasi. I grew up in the middle of nowhere and finding that book exposed me to SO MUCH. It gave me a shopping list for my BMG/Columbia House orders. During the episode, Arnold talked about how nobody read the book except Yasi, so I wrote her an email telling her how much it meant to me. She wrote back a sweet reply. I printed it and tucked it in the book. I did a search and she doesn't get a lot of love around here, but she opened music up for me.

The Cure episode was really good. During the Pixies episode Yasi mentioned that she will do The Breeders in the future which I'm pretty excited about.

i requested Ginas book from the inter-library loan system after that Pixies episode, it’s next on my reading list!

xp that's awesome <3

I checked out Gina's book on Amazon, and stumbled on this gem in the reviews section:

my one problem is i found a number of discrepencies such as her naming chuck dukowski as the drummer of black flag? sorry sweetheart, he was the bass player.

(coincidentally(?), I also just started Yasi's podcast with the Liz Phair episode, where she describes her experiences with condescending gatekeeper rock dudes)

i went back and listened to the Gram Parson episode with John Strohm. Super-good episode. Strohm’s a huge fan but also brings a lot of musical insight, and he has a lovely chill vibe w Yasi.

Parsons*

Misfits was probably my least favorite. It was informative, but there was no chemistry between the hosts.

Randy Newman, on the other hand, was fabulous. Molly Lambert and Yasi almost broke my brain with the multi-layered vocal fry. They were having so much fun together that it was infectious, especially in the back half when they had loosened up and were getting into Randy's awkward years ("Masterman and Baby J").

The 24 Question Party People with Liz Phair also did this, but less so.

Radiohead episode blew my mind; they had a dude who knows a lot about music composition and it gave me new respect for a band that I already loved.

Molly Lambert is great - her podcast Heidiworld about Heidi Fleiss was so good

Radiohead episode blew my mind; they had a dude who knows a lot about music composition and it gave me new respect for a band that I already loved.

― Cow_Art, Tuesday, August 1, 2023 12:44 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

If you liked that episode you should listen to his podcast Dissect. It's rap focused and insanely detailed, occasionally ridiculous, but all around a great listen if you like the album he's dissecting.

The Talking Heads episodes with Rob Harvilla are a good time and well worth a listen. Yasi cracks me up, and they have a great dynamic together. The Paramore episode was interesting, as I'd known some but not a lot about their start and band turmoil, but I found the guest a bit short on insight.

I have to admit that the "new" format with short song snippets is a big improvement...Since I only really listen to the episodes of acts I already dig, I'm not sure there was much benefit to 1-1.5 hours worth of music I already know well being mixed in.

I had to bail out of the Dave Matthews Band Redux episode (part 1) after a couple of hours. I had already heard the original (shorter) version, and it was just too much DMB, who I don't like at all. I would get interested in the story and feel invested, and then they would play a clip and fuuuuuuuck no, it's just the wrong sound for my ears. Every instrument sounds like the worst version of that instrument. Nope nope nope

The Misfits episode wasn't too great, mainly because the guest was kinda humorless and thinks Danzig is a lyrical genius or something.

I'm enjoying this but only listening to ones about bands I like. Maybe I'll try others once I run out of those, I dunno if the vibes are enough to carry me through hours of DMB talk. Really enjoyed the epic Cure one, liked Jane's Addiction and Paramore.

I enjoyed the first part of the Talking Heads one, but I pretty quickly found the second one a little self-satisfied (even by the standard set by the first episode). I think I found it frustrating that so much of it is really well researched and funny/perceptive, but there are also these gaps that they (sometimes amusingly) just have no interest in filling. I dunno, felt kinda like a sober episode of Drunk History. I'll probably still finish it, though, it's mostly pretty enjoyable. And I really want to hear the Cure one.

The Cure one is so good. I never had any sense of their social band dynamic and it was fascinating. Poor Lol.

My favorite ones are about bands that I like that I haven't done deep dives on already. I've probably read most of the source material they used for the Talking Heads episodes, so it just didn't have much new stuff for me.

I tried the Songs That Explain the 90's (Birdhouse In Your Soul) and I couldn't get into it. Something about the cadence of the guy's voice. He dipped into that a little during the THeads episode but not enough to bother me too much.

PJ Harvey is probably still my favorite.

I actually find the length of these a plus rather than a minus, because I can just dip into it here and there — in the car, at the gym, mowing the lawn etc — over the course of days or a week.

I am a lapsed DMb fan. Became an outright DMB hater after a fan shushed me at the the one concert i attended lol

but I found yasi’s DMB deep dive pretty charming! I have encountered quite a few women my age recently talking about their DMB fandom (incl my fave writer Samantha Irby) & it has made me think that i should attempt a re-appraisal & maybe revisit what i liked originally idk

by the same token though i can’t say it would convert absolute haters … i think you have to be at least slightly open to them

I'm slightly open to DMB in the sense that I more or less enjoyed a long set by them at Bonnaroo, under sufficient influence of my jam-band-loving friends and assorted friendly substances. But I could not tell you a single thing about the actual music. But I know from her frequent namedropping of them that Yasi is a huge head, so maybe it would be fun to listen to her go on about them.

plus yasi coming at their music so passionately & from a lyrical/emotional appraisal rather than pure music-nerd definitely helps in these on the fence situations

like if it had been just the guest dude Grayson telling me about them i would have noped out STAT lol

it has made me think that i should attempt a re-appraisal & maybe revisit what i liked originally idk

i still like before these crowded streets and the lost record/lillywhite sessions which i guess by proxy means busted stuff but i still have never heard those versions out of stubborn devotion to the first leaked and unreleased record i ever downloaded

just think there’s a ton of good songcraft and dope band interplay and arrangement work on those albums still, e.g. “the stone” in particular, totally his best song. crowded streets contains prob my favorite alanis vocals ever on both her features. lillywhite sessions sound so defeated and strange to their extreme benefit

i'd rather listen to people talk about/splain bands i don't like than the ones i already do like and do not require splaining for -- i don't need anyone to tell me what's great about bands i already love but the ones i truly cannot understand are more interesting. for that reason i enjoyed the DMB ep i listened to.

mostly i am not interested in hours of splaining if i already know why i like a band (personally)

Yeah it probably depends on the depth of your fandom. I've loved the Cure forever but honestly never really delved much into the backstory. So I learned a lot. Same with Paramore, where everything pre-2013 was kind of a blank for me. Jane's Addiction I knew more about, but honestly I can listen to tales of L.A. debauchery for hours happily. (And plenty I didn't know about, like the weird movie Perry Farrell and Casey Niccoli made with Warner Bros. money.)

yeah same

That’s what I loved about the Mats ep, which features the guy that literally wrote the band’s history.

Re: DMB, the Bandsplain ep gave me the push to revisit after a fifteen year hiatus, and though I’m perfectly glad to have outgrown that phase, I maintain that Dave and Tim Live at Luther College is a goddamn gorgeous beautiful album. Nearly every version on there is better than the band’s.

I really enjoyed the Mats ep too; Mehr is such a great ambassador for the lore of the band, and he & yasi clicked so well

Almost done listening to Mats part one right now and yeah, even if there’s very little new to me, still enjoying hearing Mehr go over it once again and the chemistry between the two of them.

The turn in the conversation now is making me think about similarities between Paul and Robbie Robertson.

Theme music by Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast?

the one & only
she also guests on a v enjoyable No Doubt episode

If you are a Jane's fan and you have not seen that movie, you should seriously see that movie.

It is not good by any means, but it's something.

Me and my friends watched that repeatedly in high school, there are lines of it that pop up in my head all the time.

"A lobstah! We dipped it in hot buttah!"

"What is this - grease? I'm sorry. I'm used to gettin' grease on my hands, workin' with pizza and all!"

Television episode is v enjoyable- I like the eps that feature Yasi’s more cantankerous “ugh dudes, why tho” mood lol

also
1 maybe she just brought Evan on the pod to publicly roast him for his behavior at her xmas party & i support it

2 Evan being able to work Dylan into ~every~ conversation thread is so deeply nerdy & wonderful in its way

3 Yasi re Marquee Moon being too long “ok wrap it up bitch” cracked me up

I gotta admit, I was a little disappointed that - after ALL. THAT. BRITPOP. - we got Motley Crue, the Hair Metal Hall of Fame, and thennnnnnn...Alanis Morrisette and Evan Dando's memoir? Not that those episodes wouldn't be interesting to me, but I had been psyching myself up for more 80s madness. Guess we're out of the Theme Zone and back into just random episode topics.

Today’s live episode Emo draft is very good - guest Patrick Flynn from Fiddlehead, and CR who is always good value

lots of good convos

i wish CR would do his own music-focused podcast

man the Germs ep with Pleasant Gehman is fucking great, so many cool stories & anecdotes! Right up there w the Patty Schemel guest ep.

I have this teed up to listen to, very excited

xp re CR, i am in the bag for a bunch of ringer podcast content, i’m v basic that way, and Ryan is pretty sharp and funny on so many diff topics, would love to hear him do a music pod

i totally agree!

sidebar: Yasi has been reading Lita Ford’s book (based on recent insta posts) so my sicko fingers are crossed that we get a Runaways ep soon

I have this teed up to listen to, very excited

xp re CR, i am in the bag for a bunch of ringer podcast content, i’m v basic that way, and Ryan is pretty sharp and funny on so many diff topics, would love to hear him do a music pod

― sknybrg, Thursday, March 5, 2026 4:17 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Years ago, CR had a one-off, loose music discussion show with Chuck Klosterman called Music Exists.

i got my Runaways gift!

although i was really disappointed that the Jackie Fox assault was added as a late footnote; she mentioned something about the timing & not being able to research as much. But it felt less thorough and incomplete. and it showed in the way she spoke about Fowley.

I was bracing myself as soon as Fowley was mentioned because of how Hickey talks about him. I thought it was strange that they weren't trashing him more.

Yasi announced May would be "Madonna month" - four episodes, 22 hours. Holy moly.

I am sooooo ready :D : D

I haven't listened in a while, I will definitely listen to her talk Madonna.

There was a recent episode, I think the Germs one, where she kept stepping on the guest’s words and finishing sentences for them. Still a good episode, I’ve always been mystified at how big a deal the Germs seem to be vs their music sounding like that

yasi? cutting off and talking over her guests? you don't say.

I stopped listening a while back because she was a bit much, but as with Stone Roses/Happy Mondays, a bit much could be just right for Madonna.

Madonna month delivering so far!

Pt 1 with Mel Ottenburg is loose & chaotic & fun, not as nerdy as I’d like but a good time
Pt 2 w Patrik Sandberg is so full of excellent detail: Sandberg shades in lots of detail that Yasi doesn’t, they make a great duo for this section

Agreed. I’m somewhere in between fanboy and hate-listener but the Madonna eps have been perfect. Mel in his element — not always a great guest but doing alright here. Patrik made ep 2.

Mel is a reliable “vibes” guest as long as yr ok with the vibe being “kinda cokey” lol

Patrik was so good on the Depeche Mode ep, I knew he would deliver on the Madonna front. excited for who’s up next.

Yeah I thoroughly enjoyed Mel in episode 1, especially when the two of them would break out into song. It was a good way to get the cliffs notes on her biography without doing the work. I had no idea the extent to her scrappiness and how self-made she was. Pretty incredible. Haven't started on Pt 2 yet but it's my favorite "era."

I tuned out on Madonna between "Justify My Love" and "Frozen" so the delving into Erotica and Bedtime Stories was pretty revelatory for me. Erotica is such a sea change from her 80s work - no attempts to be faceted and engage different pop audiences, just straight ahead dance grooves and much more a cohesive statement than that stuff that came before, much more like Ray of Light than I expected. The Sex book felt a bit try-hard at the time (not that I didn't hella enjoy thumbing through a friends copy) but this episode gave a lot of context to show how cohesive her outlook was, how camp the shock tactics were. Even if some her press responses seemed glib at the time, they hold up as ahead of their time. I like how they're knitting together her twin instincts of Pop Icon and Downtown 81 Iconoclast.

I've always been pretty agnostic on Madonna, while recognizing she is vaguely important and MTV and whatnot.

I'm in part 3 and this is one of my favorite Bandsplains and I am absolutely loving it. Her music is still not my thing apart from a handful of big singles, but Yasi has me wanting to see the Blonde Ambition and Truth or Dare documentaries. Is this stuff just not out there through legit sources? It's weird that Blonde Ambition isn't on HBO. A Streaming rights thing I assume.

Part 4 with Caryn Ganz is really good too, made me consider some later stuff I’d dismissed - though some still justifiably dismissed lol

When Yasi clicks with the guests I can listen to them talk about anybody, but this has been exceptional. I have gained tons of respect for Madonna; there was so much I didn’t know.

Collectively, they create plausible formulations of Madonna’s mindset over the decades, making the misfires as logical as the triumphs and her self-awareness more legible.

The 50 song version of the Finally Enough Love comp seems definitive - misfires still sound pretty great as remixes and the title is about as self-aware a mission statement as you could get upon reaching 50 number ones. I recall trying to listen to Madame X and I must have given up before reaching I Don’t Search.

Sidebar: if anyone was a fan of the Stone Roses eps w Miranda Sawyer & John Niven - Miranda now has a fun podcast of her own called Talk 90’s To Me & Niven is a guest on a recent ep talking about his A&R exploits

Collectively, they create plausible formulations of Madonna’s mindset over the decades, making the misfires as logical as the triumphs and her self-awareness more legible.

It would be fascinating to see a comp of Madonna and Neil Young's careers, considering how both artists have traversed a wildly-similar map of turns towards the spotlight and into the ditch, high-highs and interesting misfires

Movie episode is great!

Yasi: Okay, so this one got trashed but it’s really good!

guests: No, it’s not.

Yeah it’s funny how Madge pilled she is from the 4-parter that she’s riding for almost every movie <3

Just reminded of how much Niven enthusiastically saying 'bitch' multiple times wouldn't hit quite like Yasi might

I was unfamliar with Mel Ottenberg prior to listening to part 1 of this thing, and then who should pop up on screen when I'm watching the Charli XCX movie The Moment the other day? great cameo by him.