00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin Johnny to what do I owe the pleasure? So you know why I'm phoning you.
00:00:31
Speaker 2: I really don't.
00:00:32
Speaker 1: Well, I was intending.
00:00:34
Speaker 3: To re release the Gregor episode for which it is named for you, Okay, so that a new generation of heavyweight listeners can enjoy it.
00:00:44
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, when.
00:00:45
Speaker 1: Was the last time you listened to the episode?
00:00:51
Speaker 4: I mean, to be completely honest with you, and why should I be anything other than completely honest at all times? And forth right? Yeah, almost disturbingly vulnerably frank with you. Yeah, I've never actually listened to the episode.
00:01:04
Speaker 1: I can't believe that.
00:01:06
Speaker 2: I really don't want to break last streek.
00:01:08
Speaker 1: Of never listening to anything I make.
00:01:10
Speaker 2: But I'm told those good I mean, a lot of people paid me, a lot of compliments, people I'd meet in the supermarket.
00:01:14
Speaker 3: So so what I was thinking might be sort of a nice thing for us to do is maybe listen to it together. I guess for you for the first time.
00:01:24
Speaker 2: I'm willing to do this. But are you telling me that your concept for your brand new Alexander Pushkin hit show. Yeah, it's going to be a podcast of me listening to a previous podcast. I mean, I don't mean to like ridicule you on your own hit show. But no, of course not, are you out of your mind? We're going to listen to a podcast. Who wants to listen to a podcast, let alone listen to me listen to a podcast?
00:01:49
Speaker 3: Well no, I mean we're not going to say okay, all right, well with that. With that, I guess I'll speak to you on the other side. Okay, all right, I'll talk to you at the end. Oh but before we get to this encore presentation, a word from our sponsors bad time.
00:02:15
Speaker 2: I was just just stepping out.
00:02:16
Speaker 3: I was just you enjoy music, right, Yeah, this week's show kind of deals with music, and it got me thinking.
00:02:24
Speaker 1: I have a confession to make.
00:02:26
Speaker 3: You know how sometimes like you have dinner parties and they're great. I wanted to say, sometimes how you sometimes play music? Yeah, sometimes I'm a little hesitant to come over for dinner.
00:02:38
Speaker 2: You're always hesitant to come over for dinner. Well, it's not including Mary clods forty fifth birthday.
00:02:43
Speaker 5: Do you remember that?
00:02:43
Speaker 6: I do you know that Bumballeo song?
00:02:45
Speaker 4: I can't find my Gypsy King CD because.
00:02:47
Speaker 1: Your husband hit it.
00:02:49
Speaker 5: It's killing me.
00:02:50
Speaker 1: Killing everybody.
00:02:51
Speaker 3: The reason Sometimes I have some difficulty with my digestion these dinner parties. Is it's the Bumballeo song, It's the Gypsy Kings. Oh this is great. You know what bumbalao? Bumbalaya translates as.
00:03:03
Speaker 1: What wobble wobble?
00:03:05
Speaker 7: All right, we'll speak to.
00:03:06
Speaker 3: You one thing before we go. Okay, I'm going to say bum and then you say bumbalaya.
Speaker 1: Pushkin Johnny to what do I owe the pleasure? So you know why I'm phoning you.
00:00:31
Speaker 2: I really don't.
00:00:32
Speaker 1: Well, I was intending.
00:00:34
Speaker 3: To re release the Gregor episode for which it is named for you, Okay, so that a new generation of heavyweight listeners can enjoy it.
00:00:44
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, when.
00:00:45
Speaker 1: Was the last time you listened to the episode?
00:00:51
Speaker 4: I mean, to be completely honest with you, and why should I be anything other than completely honest at all times? And forth right? Yeah, almost disturbingly vulnerably frank with you. Yeah, I've never actually listened to the episode.
00:01:04
Speaker 1: I can't believe that.
00:01:06
Speaker 2: I really don't want to break last streek.
00:01:08
Speaker 1: Of never listening to anything I make.
00:01:10
Speaker 2: But I'm told those good I mean, a lot of people paid me, a lot of compliments, people I'd meet in the supermarket.
00:01:14
Speaker 3: So so what I was thinking might be sort of a nice thing for us to do is maybe listen to it together. I guess for you for the first time.
00:01:24
Speaker 2: I'm willing to do this. But are you telling me that your concept for your brand new Alexander Pushkin hit show. Yeah, it's going to be a podcast of me listening to a previous podcast. I mean, I don't mean to like ridicule you on your own hit show. But no, of course not, are you out of your mind? We're going to listen to a podcast. Who wants to listen to a podcast, let alone listen to me listen to a podcast?
00:01:49
Speaker 3: Well no, I mean we're not going to say okay, all right, well with that. With that, I guess I'll speak to you on the other side. Okay, all right, I'll talk to you at the end. Oh but before we get to this encore presentation, a word from our sponsors bad time.
00:02:15
Speaker 2: I was just just stepping out.
00:02:16
Speaker 3: I was just you enjoy music, right, Yeah, this week's show kind of deals with music, and it got me thinking.
00:02:24
Speaker 1: I have a confession to make.
00:02:26
Speaker 3: You know how sometimes like you have dinner parties and they're great. I wanted to say, sometimes how you sometimes play music? Yeah, sometimes I'm a little hesitant to come over for dinner.
00:02:38
Speaker 2: You're always hesitant to come over for dinner. Well, it's not including Mary clods forty fifth birthday.
00:02:43
Speaker 5: Do you remember that?
00:02:43
Speaker 6: I do you know that Bumballeo song?
00:02:45
Speaker 4: I can't find my Gypsy King CD because.
00:02:47
Speaker 1: Your husband hit it.
00:02:49
Speaker 5: It's killing me.
00:02:50
Speaker 1: Killing everybody.
00:02:51
Speaker 3: The reason Sometimes I have some difficulty with my digestion these dinner parties. Is it's the Bumballeo song, It's the Gypsy Kings. Oh this is great. You know what bumbalao? Bumbalaya translates as.
00:03:03
Speaker 1: What wobble wobble?
00:03:05
Speaker 7: All right, we'll speak to.
00:03:06
Speaker 3: You one thing before we go. Okay, I'm going to say bum and then you say bumbalaya.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: I do it, and then I'm.
00:03:23
Speaker 1: From Gimblet Media.
00:03:24
Speaker 3: I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight Today's episode, Gregor.
00:03:40
Speaker 2: This guy's gonna ram you from behind because you're going eleven miles left, although you usually don't do it from the right line. But okay, let's not get kill. Do you have a driver's license?
00:03:52
Speaker 3: This is Gregor and Me on our way to lunch, and what you're hearing is typical when I'm driving. Gregor comments on my speed. When I eat, he comments on my table manners, and when I eat yogurt, he comments on the way I lick the inside lid, calling it both letchrous and unmanly. Some might say that Gregor is overly critical, possibly even prickly, but I would not. I love Gregor for many reasons. His loyalty, his generosity, his being the kind of person will pick you up at the airport at.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: Four in the morning without even complaining.
00:04:25
Speaker 3: But it's perhaps his courage to say the things that were all not exactly thinking, but maybe thinking about thinking, that is most thrilling. And so when he showed up at my office mocking himself instead of me and speaking in biblical parables, I was concerned.
00:04:45
Speaker 2: Was it the Pharaoh and the Joseph story who said the seven lean years and seven fat years?
00:04:49
Speaker 7: Yeah?
00:04:49
Speaker 2: I had this insight today that the fat years are about to end.
00:04:53
Speaker 1: Would these have been the fat years?
00:04:54
Speaker 2: That's what I realized Literally this morning. I woke up and I was like, wait, those were the fat years? You know, in every conceivable way, financially, stability, prestige, all the job stuff, and like creative accomplishment stuff. I just feel like it's like going up and spoking. I'm watching it go up and smoke.
00:05:12
Speaker 3: Gregor is forty eight years old and by profession he makes marketing videos for a cleaning product usually found in the bathroom. I can't tell you the name of this product for fear Gregor will lose his job. In other words, he's not the Filmo tour he dreamt of being back in his college days, underlining back issues of Kye to Cinema. On top of that, he says that over the past few years he's seen his career slowly sucked downward, not unlike Oh, I don't know, the spiraling waters of a sink unclogged by a chemical drain opener designed to flush pipes and attack clogs at their worst.
00:05:49
Speaker 2: What's that children's game where everyone goes around the chairs musical chairs, chairs, and everyone sits down and you're like, oh, that friend of mine became a CEO. These four friends are like EVP, SVP senior whatever at their things. That friend of mine wound up sitting in the president of Estonia's chair, and then you're like the music stops and you're left standing.
00:06:13
Speaker 3: I've heard him reel off this list before, and Gregor fully admits it. The success of anyone he knows, no matter how thin, his connection to them, feels like a reflection of his own shortcomings, including the ascension of his elementary school's librarian son, who is now the president of Estonia.
00:06:31
Speaker 2: The point of the story is, where's my presidency of my Estonia? My circumstances I was. I was like, oh things will you know, about to break through, about to change, And now like you could say, well, this is just to setback, it's you know whatever. Soon your ship's going to come in. But it's just not you know. I mean, that's just the simple truth, the uncomfortable truth.
00:06:55
Speaker 3: Of all Gregor's stories about the success of his acquaintances and friends, there's one story that he returns to most, and not only is it the greatest success story of them all, it's the one that touched his life the most intimately. The story all begins about twenty years yars ago in Manhattan, when Gregor was living in a small apartment in Chinatown with his older brother Dimitri. One night, they had a friend of theirs over for dinner, a techno musician friend.
00:07:20
Speaker 2: He was really poor at the time. He was living in like I think in like a basement in a warehouse or something for forty dollars a month. He was an articulate, smart guy, still an articular smart guy, but he's sort of an unlikely rock star in that his hair had mostly fallen out even when we were still in our twenties. But I watched his ascent. He played the bigger and bigger crowds during this techno kind of stuff, and then eventually he got a record contract, and I at the time got hold of a very obscure set of CDs which were field hollers Oooh.
00:07:54
Speaker 3: Trouble, So I.
00:07:56
Speaker 2: Thought it was really interesting stuff. I loaned him this box set of.
00:07:58
Speaker 7: CDs Ooh Lone Trouble.
00:08:02
Speaker 2: So he then sampled it very heavily Trouble God and created a record which got him very rich and very famous.
00:08:14
Speaker 3: This guy you're speaking of, This guy's Moby, Moby, bald headed, bespectacled, castle dwelling, multi million records selling Moby. But back then he was just Gregor's pal who spent weekends at Gregor's family's place and attended family birthday parties too. In bars and during long car rides, Gregor and Moby had long, earnest conversations about God and the things they believed. They were living their twenties together, and those CDs Gregor lent Moby. The box set Sounds of the South was recorded by the ethno musicologist Alan Lomax. Beginning in the nineteen thirties. Lomax and his fam John made thousands of field recordings, mostly in the American South. These recordings are among the most important in American music, preserving dozens of African American songs from the early years of the twentieth century. Wait Sometime, Better, Nola Sometimes. Another hit on Moby's album is called Honey. It makes use of the song sometimes sung by Bessie Smith Jones. Jones was taught these songs by her grandfather, a former slave born in Africa. This is Moby's version, So everybody feeling like I've here elected to play for you, the live version of the song with all of its foot stomping and audience cheering. It's how I imagine Gregor hears it echoing in his head during those sleepless nights when his Kishkas are slowly being corroded by battery acid.
00:10:05
Speaker 2: Sometime when I discovered this, but I was like an evangelist. I was like, this is amazing. You got to check this out. He was over the house and I was like, you got to take this home. This amazing stuff. This is the best CD I've heard. I don't know how long I've been listening to a NonStop rotation. I love the CD. So it wasn't just laying in a pile, and he happened to put it in his bag and walk out the door. I said, I sold him on it.
00:10:26
Speaker 3: And Moby makes use of several Lomax recordings on his album Play, which went multi platinum. Play eventually became one of the most commercially licensed albums ever recorded. At the time, the songs were used to promote everything from luxury cars to credit cards. And before Play, according to Rolling Stone magazine, Moby was quote bumbling around New York as it has been and then was there an intermediary step before that, and then hearing it on the CD where he said, hey, by the way, thanks.
00:11:04
Speaker 2: No, I said, this is amazing thing. Next thing I heard it's on the radio and I said, hey, can I get that box setback? And then years of not being friends.
00:11:14
Speaker 3: And according to Gregor, that was all he wanted to get his CDs back. He was looking for neither riches nor credit, just the CDs, which he claims were only alone. And so this is how it went. He began leaving Moby voice messages by Gregor's count, about a dozen that all went unanswered. Then, in a final act of desperation, Gregor penned a song called Moby give Me Back My CDs, which he sang into Moby's Answering Machine with accompanying karaoke music to the tune of Brian Adams Heaven. After much cajoling, Gregor dug up his lyrics, which I will now perform for you.
00:11:56
Speaker 1: Moby give Me Back my CDs.
00:11:59
Speaker 3: The Recordings from the Field, the Alan Lomax box set CDs. I think there were seven.
00:12:09
Speaker 1: Those discs are all.
00:12:11
Speaker 3: That I need, the ones I gave you from my house. I think you'll be sure to see there were seven. And that message, Gregor says, was met with over a decade of silence. Did he ever explain, like, did he just ever come out and tell you, honestly what became of those CDs? No?
00:12:34
Speaker 2: I think he was busy, like playing, like, you know, a concert to ninety thousand people in Rykovic and drinking champagne out of a prostitute shoe. Couldn't be bothered. Obviously, I put an exaggerated value on the CDs. I'm sure he could have sampled anything, and he had a plenty big career before that and after that. I mean, I'm not insane, but it was more that displaced feeling of like I had this thing go off and bloom without me. I'll tell you an interesting detail on that. Yeah, whenever MOBI music comes on, I can't listen to it.
00:13:08
Speaker 1: But do you think if you get it back you won't feel that way.
00:13:10
Speaker 2: I feel like I could work it through like therapy, where I could then listen to the music again. You know, there's a sense of what about my you.
00:13:16
Speaker 1: Know, where's my gold album?
00:13:19
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:13:24
Speaker 3: Gregor has theories about why nothing ever happened for him, and they revolve around an aspect of his personality, an aspect he refers to as a lack of affability.
00:13:35
Speaker 2: Like a lot of times I'll say something completely earnestly mm hmm, like past the water, and they're like, are you being sarcastic? Like that happened to me all the time.
00:13:46
Speaker 3: How could you ask for the water sarcastically?
00:13:48
Speaker 2: I come across as being sarcastic when I'm not.
00:13:52
Speaker 3: So it's almost like a handicap of it's a huge handicap.
00:13:55
Speaker 2: I think it's fundamentally, as I understand my own life, that is my cross to bear, that's what's wrecked my life.
00:14:01
Speaker 1: Well, I think you would even like you told me that.
00:14:04
Speaker 3: Story about where you were in the conference room at work. They're like complimenting you on your new glasses or something and saying, hey, what does your wife think of those glasses? And you were like, how the fuck do I know? I whyn't you ask my wife to find out?
00:14:18
Speaker 2: Do you remember?
00:14:19
Speaker 4: Yeah?
00:14:19
Speaker 2: I don't remember. I mean so they said, like, what is your wife think of that? I was like, how do I know? Ask my wife?
00:14:32
Speaker 3: Recently, Gregor and Moby have found themselves back in touch, though in the most tangential impersonal way possible through group emails and texts.
00:14:42
Speaker 1: Gregor's older brother.
00:14:43
Speaker 3: Dimitri, remained friends with Moby over the years, and Dmitri recently had a baby, so he loops in Moby, Gregor, and one other old friend on updates. This has evolved into a small group of friends exchanging witticisms and fun facts like did you know that the fatty flesh around the elbow is called a wenus? So while the new group email friendship isn't the same as the old close one, it's still an open door. And so I couldn't help asking the question, now that that door has swung open again, do you see this as an opportunity to ask for those CDs once again.
00:15:19
Speaker 2: I was thinking about it, were you, just because it's kind of a little symbolic of what I don't even have a CD player anymore, right, But I was just thinking, for talismonic purposes, it would be interesting to have them back.
00:15:31
Speaker 1: Say more about that.
00:15:32
Speaker 2: I think that it might soothe me.
00:15:34
Speaker 1: Do you really think it would.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: I'll actually give you the clarity which just came to me. Now, okay, it's not instead of the money and the fame and all that stuff, what it is is tangible evidence. Understand you did this, you exist, you did it, you pulled it off.
00:15:51
Speaker 3: You want to be able to say, see these CDs on the shelf.
00:15:55
Speaker 2: That's the ones that I gave to mommy, Because for me, this would just be a version of proof.
00:16:06
Speaker 3: Wanting the CDs you lent someone decades ago and expecting them back is of course insanity, but insanity's repeated often enough, especially between friends, can begin to feel pacifying, lulling, even.
00:16:21
Speaker 1: Excuse me, in a way, you just want your due.
00:16:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, Do you think you can articulate that in a way that would make it understandable to him?
00:16:32
Speaker 2: Do you think I'm pretty confident I can't, because he's still pretty sensitive.
00:16:36
Speaker 3: Okay, pretty sensitive, pretty sensitive. Like the time Moby seemed to bristle when Gregor emailed him about something totally innocuous, a condolence for the death of Moby's friend David Bowie.
00:16:50
Speaker 2: You know, I said some witty thing about David Bowie dying, he wrote, like texted back, like the picture of him and David Bowie in the cover of entertainment.
00:16:57
Speaker 1: Let's back up for a moment.
00:16:58
Speaker 3: What was the witty thing you said about David Bowie's death?
00:17:01
Speaker 2: You know, like good night, funny man.
00:17:04
Speaker 1: What does that even mean?
00:17:06
Speaker 2: That's usually what I say when people die.
00:17:14
Speaker 3: If this is a sampling of the hot takes Gregor has in store, I fear that this newly opened door between Moby and Gregor might not remain open forever. I also knew that if he has any hope of ever getting back those CDs, he'll need a middleman or interlocutor or interlocutor. So, perhaps, against my better judgment, I allow myself to be swept up by the moment. I just don't know if this is going to lead to anything but heartbreak. But why don't we go after the CDs all right? And with that ringing call to arms, my path was set and the mission begun. Say I'm Moby, Like, how would you ask, Hey, Moby.
00:17:58
Speaker 2: Can I have back those CDs? I've never understood any approach other than a direct approach, So that's what I would do.
00:18:04
Speaker 3: After the break the Hollywood Hills, a surprise encounter with Rue Paul and maybe Moby. Maybe the airline tickets were purchased, the hotel was booked, but a couple days before we were set to leave for La, I got nervous. If Gregor already was in a bad place, could my meddling possibly make things worse?
00:18:38
Speaker 6: Hello, hey Annika?
00:18:40
Speaker 8: Yeah, Jonathan.
00:18:41
Speaker 3: I decided to reach out to the person who knows Gregor best, his.
00:18:46
Speaker 1: Wife, Annika.
00:18:48
Speaker 3: So do you know about this this little project that your husband and I are undertaking.
00:18:54
Speaker 8: So I think that the is a strategy to like ambush Moby and try and get him to give back the CDs that he lent Gregor thirty years ago or however long it was ago. Is that true?
00:19:08
Speaker 3: You make it sound like such a classy operation. Yeah, has Gregor brought this issue up to you before this whole Alan Lomack CD issue.
00:19:19
Speaker 8: So I met him on November eleventh, two thousand. Yeah, and it came up pretty early in our relationship, so.
00:19:31
Speaker 3: He yeah, like first date conversation, it was.
00:19:35
Speaker 8: Definitely early on. It's very hard for him to let stuff go. And like even like early on in our relationship, we went to Spain together and we bought a bottle of olive oil in some town or something and we left it by accident in the rental car and it still bothers him.
00:19:56
Speaker 3: Do you know, I think I actually know that olive oil story.
00:19:59
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, Yeah. There is something that is in his character that is very much like the Larry David character, where it's like, you know, like obsessing about a very small point. But you know, he's a very he's like a very sensitive person, so it's just part of who he is and part of his wonderful package.
00:20:24
Speaker 3: Does this undertaking have your blessing or do you think it's foolhardy?
00:20:29
Speaker 8: I don't. Sometimes I worry about Gregor's feelings because he is very hurt, very easily, and I don't know if Moby is really that sensitive to his feelings.
00:20:50
Speaker 3: I Gregor flew in from San Francisco. And I was there to greet him at the Bob Hope International Airport in Burbank.
00:20:58
Speaker 2: So this is the dream factory I've heard about it.
00:21:00
Speaker 6: It's beautiful here.
00:21:01
Speaker 3: Even the underground parking lots smell like sentent lotion. We have four hours before our appointment with Moby. We set off in our economy sized carrio or similar to experience everything LA has to offer.
00:21:15
Speaker 9: Are you excited?
00:21:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't sound excited.
00:21:22
Speaker 2: No, I'm full of anxiety. And let me tell you, I feel an increasing sense of dread about the futility of this undertaking.
00:21:30
Speaker 6: You can get those CDs back, my friend.
00:21:32
Speaker 2: Okay, whatever you say in a.
00:21:34
Speaker 9: Plastic bag, which he'll supply.
00:21:38
Speaker 10: You're gonna negotiate this look manage at which time of my client's choosing the one plastic bag recycled acceptable, plus one coupon good for any flavor from basket in Robin's ice cream or any substant that too.
00:21:57
Speaker 3: With just three hours and fifty nine minutes to go, things were off to a rollicking start.
00:22:03
Speaker 9: It's like not moving.
00:22:04
Speaker 2: There's always traffic in Los Angeles.
00:22:06
Speaker 9: Look at the traffic.
00:22:07
Speaker 6: Are we gonna make it for movies?
00:22:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna be stuck in horrible traffic.
00:22:11
Speaker 6: We have until two, No, we have until one.
00:22:14
Speaker 2: Oh, really, we'll never make it.
00:22:19
Speaker 9: Oh look there's the big Hollywood sign. Wow, what a sight. Huh used to say hollywood.
00:22:25
Speaker 2: Land Actually before that it was called hollywood Landville.
00:22:29
Speaker 9: Is that true?
00:22:35
Speaker 2: Do you want Mexican food? Do you ever eat Mexican food?
00:22:37
Speaker 1: I love Mexican food.
00:22:38
Speaker 2: And to make you turn yeah, go go go? This is like a four lane uie, it's six? Really, go go go go. Yes. When you knew to someone before they were famous and you treat them like someone who's not famous, sometimes they don't like that. Sometimes they're used to the difference and the rock star treatment from everyone.
00:22:58
Speaker 6: Can you try to treat them with a little more difference.
00:23:02
Speaker 2: That's what I'm gonna try to. But the mask always slips.
00:23:06
Speaker 3: In so far as me coming here with you, how do you feel about me as an interlocutor?
00:23:13
Speaker 2: I'm actually full of dread mostly because of that.
00:23:15
Speaker 7: But what is that supposed to me?
00:23:17
Speaker 2: Because I recognize that I need an interlocut I did say that, and I do believe it. I think that you're going to be allows the interlocutor.
00:23:22
Speaker 6: What do you think I'm gonna embarrass you in front of your yes famous friends.
00:23:26
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's what you're afraid of.
00:23:28
Speaker 3: Yes, No, But seriously you think I'm gonna blow this.
00:23:35
Speaker 2: I just feel like you don't get the vibe of what it's like when you're in like a guy's house and you're gonna be like, say, nice toilets, what are these made of? Porcelain? Ay, I'm gonna be like Johnny please, and you'll be like, no, I don't know what they're made up.
00:23:49
Speaker 5: This is to me the final irony of this whole thing that you're concerned that I'm gonna embarrass you.
00:23:54
Speaker 2: I don't want you to trip me up in my game, my stride, my cadence.
00:23:57
Speaker 6: And what is it gonna be a part of your game?
00:23:59
Speaker 2: Here to try and relax and be myself, but I'm gonna be made self conscious when you're.
00:24:03
Speaker 1: Like, do you validate talking here?
00:24:05
Speaker 2: And I just need you to validate.
00:24:10
Speaker 9: God, this is so pretty? What a pretty place to live?
00:24:14
Speaker 2: Hey, well you're selling off CDs, you can live in a place like this.
00:24:17
Speaker 3: Worried about our being tardy, I decided to run down the clock doing laps around Moby's very pretty block.
00:24:24
Speaker 2: Little tiny houses.
00:24:25
Speaker 9: They keep going straight. This is really pretty nice view of the mountains.
00:24:29
Speaker 2: This is his house right here where all right here? I want to drive by it, this.
00:24:34
Speaker 9: House right there at the corner.
00:24:35
Speaker 3: We were passing the gates of his home over and over when a half hour before our appointed meeting.
00:24:42
Speaker 2: That's movie right there, is it? Yeah?
00:24:44
Speaker 3: Oh Jesus, Moby emerges through the gates to get his newspaper. Excited about seeing an honest to goodness famous person. I instinctively slowed to a crawl and pulled over beside him.
00:24:55
Speaker 2: Go say hi, no, no, come on, let him go to keep going.
00:24:59
Speaker 9: He just turned around.
00:25:00
Speaker 2: He didn't see.
00:25:01
Speaker 9: Yes, he did.
00:25:01
Speaker 5: He turned around and we made eye contact, and like, I slid right up to him, and he turned around and he seemed scared.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I'm talking.
00:25:09
Speaker 6: What did I do?
00:25:10
Speaker 2: You're creepy, instance.
00:25:13
Speaker 7: Creepy.
00:25:13
Speaker 2: They don't slide up to people when they're going to get their pretty That's true.
00:25:15
Speaker 9: I really I really did slide up to him.
00:25:17
Speaker 2: Yah, you did, like a creep. You're gonna go another pass through when he comes up for his milk.
00:25:28
Speaker 3: We walk off our nerves in a nearby park where Gregor dispenses life wisdom to a passing toddler.
00:25:35
Speaker 2: Enjoy it, kid, best, It's going to be for the rest of your life.
00:25:40
Speaker 9: Who says things like that to a Child's happy?
00:25:42
Speaker 2: In love? His shirt said love. He's holding a little.
00:25:44
Speaker 3: Girls outside Moby's door. We do some last minute strategizing.
00:25:51
Speaker 2: Am I supposed to be the good cop or the bad cop? I can't remember?
00:25:54
Speaker 6: Well, I guess you were supposed to be the bad cop. No, I'm the bad cop. You're the good cop.
00:25:57
Speaker 2: I'll usually play the bad cop.
00:25:58
Speaker 6: So fine, you're the bad cop.
00:25:59
Speaker 2: It's twelve to fifty seven. It's not really one yet.
00:26:02
Speaker 6: Hall Wait, oh, hello, Hi, I'm.
00:26:05
Speaker 2: Sorry, we're early. It's twelve fifty seven. It's three minutes too early.
00:26:09
Speaker 3: Moby's personal assistant, a terrifyingly fit woman in jeans and T shirt, leads us towards Moby's home. By rockstar standards, it's pretty modest.
00:26:20
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, Hi, Sharman Moe and far too long? Should I take shoes off?
00:26:24
Speaker 6: Hi?
00:26:25
Speaker 9: I am Jonathan.
00:26:25
Speaker 3: Were led into a sunken foyer where a couple of assistants are gathering equipment and making themselves scarce. Standing at the top of the stairs, looking not unlike a bald headed gray hoodie Norma Desmond is Moby Gregor and he do not hug or even shake hands. They don't even wave.
00:26:43
Speaker 2: It's been far too long, my friend where he's staying, and.
00:26:48
Speaker 1: Gregor drops his bag and has a looxie.
00:26:50
Speaker 2: Beautiful location, your beautiful assistant.
00:26:53
Speaker 3: Everything he's even brought along a thoughtful gift, something to cater to Moby's strict veganism and clean, healthy lifestyle. Fancy all natural lemonades.
00:27:04
Speaker 2: Something disgusting with turmeric, whoa, something awful with probioticene peppers, something horrifying with lemons.
00:27:13
Speaker 3: To our parched dismay. Moby takes the beverages and places them in the fridge. Gregor and I are never to see those beverages again. As we settle in and I set up our recording gear, Gregor notices a pile of video equipment.
00:27:29
Speaker 2: Why do you have two C three hundred here?
00:27:31
Speaker 3: Remember that slippery mask? Gregor mentioned the one hiding is rough edges. Ten seconds in and it was already a slippin' Why.
00:27:39
Speaker 2: Am I not involved that produce films all the time.
00:27:41
Speaker 3: I can help you to which Moby rather than saying he's worked with David Lynch and David Lea Chappelle and probably all set on that front, instead says, I mean you live in San Francisco.
00:27:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm here all the time, not literally in your living room, in your kitchen, though I could be more Often.
00:27:57
Speaker 3: Gregor can't help treating Moby like a nephew making his first student film. That is, Gregor's treating Moby the way he treats me. And this, of course is concerning.
00:28:07
Speaker 2: First of all, even get that far, how could you?
00:28:14
Speaker 3: At this point, Moby has mostly no idea why we're here. I made an appointment with his assistant, but it was left vague. So Moby takes the direct approach.
00:28:24
Speaker 11: So what are you guys doing?
00:28:27
Speaker 2: Well, this is an excellent question. Well, let's begin at the beginning, around the time contemporaneous with your recent autobiography, the mid nineties two thousands, and.
00:28:37
Speaker 3: Like, after all of his braggadoccio about how he was going to walk in there and demand the CDs back, Gregor's nervous, being uncharacteristically mealy mouthed, unable to explain the basics of our mission.
00:28:49
Speaker 2: And so this conversation became down this kind of alleyway of that facet of like, I was kind of like, what is me?
00:28:57
Speaker 3: Moby had limited time, so at the risk of embarrassing Gregor in front of his famous friend, I decided to step in and explain. So, can I tell my story of you coming to last time I saw Gregor?
00:29:09
Speaker 9: He came to visit me at work.
00:29:10
Speaker 3: And you were kind of in this mood where you were feeling like maybe those things that you were hopeful about achieving were not going to be happening. And I think you were in well Gregor looks on skeptically. I try to explain to Moby Gregor's midlife malaise how everyone was passing him by. Can you relate to the feeling of like, have you ever, at different points in your life felt like like surpassed by your friends or you know what I mean?
00:29:40
Speaker 7: Oh?
00:29:40
Speaker 11: Yeah, Like there's always going to be someone doing so much better than you that if you spend the time to look at it, you're going to feel bad about yourself. Like my nemesis, well, according to him for a while, was eminem. So if he was my nemesis, I was just being beaten publicly and badly because he was always more successful, always selling more records, always more popular, always cooler, And so depends on who I was comparing myself too. Over time, like other people start selling more records, getting better reviews, you start selling fewer tickets. And then as the two thousands progressed, my career waned and other people's escalated, you know, like I would go to visit my record company and they'd have my picture behind the receptionist desk, and then one day I show up and it's Jack White's picture behind the reception system, Like wha what?
00:30:36
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, I think the only way to hear that, honestly is in the split screen between totally head nodding one hundred percent agree and totally like easy for you to say, because you're looking down from the mountain, looking up, You're like, fucking knock that guy off the mountain because all I need is mind billion dollars down I looked.
00:30:54
Speaker 11: But really, the kick in the teeth of fame is that if you don't have it, you beat yourself up that you don't have it, and if you do have it, you're miserable and you kill yourself. Literally, the most depressed I've ever been in my entire life was the height of my professional success. And I remember this one moment so clearly. I was at an MTV Awards in Barcelona, and there's this hotel called the Arts Hotel in Barcelona, and it's so beautiful and at the tippity top of the hotel they have four three bedroom apartments and I was in one. P Diddy was in one, John bon Jovi was in one, and Madonna was in one. And so you'd take like one elevator to get to a certain floor, then another elevator to another floor, and then a security guard would wave you through up to.
00:31:40
Speaker 1: Our hallowed floor.
00:31:42
Speaker 11: And the first night I was there, I invited some people over to like look at the view and drink, and I kept drinking by myself, and I got more and more despondent, and I literally, at the end of the evening, before going to bed, was walking around this beautiful, insane apartment crying, thinking about how I could get out the window to kill myself. And the next day I won an MTV award. So it's like, professionally, things couldn't have been better, you know. The day before I'd played a huge concert, selling lots of records. The day after won an award, played more huge concerts, and I've never been more despondent.
00:32:20
Speaker 2: I appreciate your making up that story just to make me feel good.
00:32:22
Speaker 11: It's completely true, because I remember walking around this hotel and these walls of glass only had these little bitty like foldy open windows at the bottom, and I was looking at that and I was like, Fuck, if that window opened more, I would just jump out and die because I'm done. You think when you get to where you want to go, finally you'll be happy, but then you get to where you want to go and you're just as miserable as you were. In fact, you're even even more miserable because you no longer have anything to aspire to, and you feel this hopelessness because everything like what's left to aspire towards.
00:32:59
Speaker 3: It feels like Moby's trying to explain something to Gregor. Moby grew up poor with a single mother and lived on food stamps.
00:33:06
Speaker 1: When Moby was.
00:33:07
Speaker 3: A kid, his dad died in a car crash, and a few years ago his mom passed away from lung cancer. He has no siblings, so essentially he's alone.
00:33:17
Speaker 11: I look at Gregor and I think of like, I know his family very well, and from my perspective, like, first all, he has a like I don't. Really I have some aunts and uncles and cousins.
00:33:27
Speaker 1: You have some other.
00:33:27
Speaker 2: Siblings, I'm sure.
00:33:31
Speaker 11: And and to me that still makes me feel like, oh, he's figured out things that I don't understand.
00:33:46
Speaker 2: Of course I'm very successful. That I have a beautiful child and blah blah blah, two of them. Actually I won't say which one. I have two children. One is beautiful anyway, you know, the like a man's wealth is measured in family, you know, And but it's not you.
00:34:02
Speaker 6: You turn every time these things come up.
00:34:04
Speaker 1: You always make them into light.
00:34:06
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I'm saying is something you hear at the in the South Park, right. But what I'm saying is that that era when like it still seemed like life had potential to go a bunch of different ways. Now it seemed less. So it's not even squandered potential. It's just like you could have been somebody becomes like you didn't.
00:34:24
Speaker 11: Every year you lose a little bit of potential, you know, Like at this point, like I'm fifty and I'm like, oh, most of my life. I thought at some point I could be a father. I'm like, well probably not, and I have one issue.
00:34:47
Speaker 1: Yeah I really have to peek go ahead.
00:34:53
Speaker 3: Well, movie was conveniently indisposed. I took the opportunity to reiterate our mission getting back the CDs as much.
00:35:01
Speaker 1: As it behoosy, like, just try to keep it tout the.
00:35:04
Speaker 2: CDs, all right, I don't think we only have about ten minutes search.
00:35:08
Speaker 1: That's what I want to get to it.
00:35:09
Speaker 2: Do you want me to wrestle onto the ground and no, you have something, particularly money you want to say.
00:35:14
Speaker 3: Moby emerges from the bathroom, cutting our conversation short, and Gregor steps up to the plate and begins in the middle.
00:35:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, I still listen to Sounds of the South on YouTube. They have the full set. And as far as that actual des set, did you hang on to that or that is the CD the box, that's the actual stuff.
00:35:38
Speaker 11: Yeah, they're somewhere. Most of it's in storage and Queens so like this medium sized storage locker and it's just like packed to the rafters with stuff.
00:35:53
Speaker 3: Finally, it's my moment to be the interlocutor. I think Gregor sort of wanted those CDs back if only to put them on a mantle, to feel like I was a part of something, like I mattered, I existed.
00:36:09
Speaker 2: And I view this more like I handed you the pen and then you wrote, you know, the great book with it. It's not that I had some role in.
00:36:15
Speaker 3: But like the guy who introduced Andy Warhol to the can of Campbell's soup or what I mean.
00:36:20
Speaker 2: This is not like a legal deposition where it's like who said it? I mean it was fucking twenty five years ago.
00:36:24
Speaker 1: As Gregor and I parry.
00:36:25
Speaker 3: It's almost like we forget that Moby's even there when suddenly he pipes up one thing.
00:36:30
Speaker 11: Just to be super clear from the album play, two of the most remarkably iconic songs on the record would never have been written or existed had I not been given those CDs. Like I didn't know who Alan Lomax was, and I that the box set called Sounds of the South, I didn't know it existed, and I certainly like it was an expensive box set. And there's no way I was going to walk into Tower Records and spend sixty five dollars or however much it was going to be on a box set. I knew nothing about from an archivist I'd never heard of, so like, those are one hundred percent the result of me being given those.
00:37:10
Speaker 3: Wait, so we're saying you're not. Gregor's not getting the CDs back.
00:37:15
Speaker 11: Okay, here's the story. Friend of mine, her mother died in a very very sad, tragic way, and she came to me and she started crying, and she said that at the funeral they played the song Natural Blues and everyone in the church was crying and it was one of the most powerful emotional moments of her life that wouldn't have ever existed if you hadn't given me those CDs. So to me, that's more priceless and precious than any sort of like objective, quantifiable metric.
00:37:52
Speaker 1: How does that make you feel?
00:37:54
Speaker 2: I mean it makes me feel like thinking about, you know, getting a pair of bolt cutters and breaking into a steady storage in Queens is not what I'm going to do. That was my plan.
00:38:10
Speaker 3: And so Gregor doesn't get what he came for. But maybe not getting everything you want in the grander scheme isn't so bad.
00:38:26
Speaker 11: One practical issue. So I have two podcast interviews to do today. You guys are the first and a second you're in good company. It's with Rue Paul nice crazy. I mean, if you wanted to, we could always drive there, Like if you guys want to get in the car with me. My girlfriend is coming here. She's gonna go with me because she's an obsessive Rue Paul fan.
00:38:51
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Moby, his girlfriend, Gregor and I pile into Moby's Prias seen from the outside, Gregor seems happy to be a part of Moby's life again. He's even feeling comfortable enough to favor us with his famous John Travolta imitation I.
00:39:07
Speaker 2: Could drink pee go, I could drink tea John Travolta. When she says, he says, watch your cough with me. Sometimes she's like, in Manhattan, we don't drink coffee, we drink tea. And he's like, so what, I could drink tea.
00:39:21
Speaker 3: And then, for whatever reason, Moby takes over my role of interlocutor and begins explaining Gregor's style to his girlfriend.
00:39:29
Speaker 2: And Gregor is funny and.
00:39:33
Speaker 11: At times like would maybe be here. It comes honest in a way that people might be take offence to or at Or.
00:39:45
Speaker 3: As Moby's learning firsthand interlocketing for Gregor isn't so easy.
00:39:58
Speaker 11: Hi, I'm here for RuPaul's podcast.
00:40:02
Speaker 3: At the hotel, we're shown into a conference room where we're greeted by Rupe Paul and his co host Michelle. As I trail behind Moby for the first time in my life, I feel a part of a bona fide Hollywood entourage.
00:40:17
Speaker 11: So we've been doing an interesting podcast because Gregor and I've known each other for twenty seven years at all Yeah.
00:40:25
Speaker 3: We watch as RuPaul interviews Moby, and when Moby says interesting things like my mom was born in San Diego.
00:40:32
Speaker 2: Was born in San Diego.
00:40:35
Speaker 3: RuPaul responds with engaged interest, and when Moby off handedly mentions a song, RuPaul and Michelle sing it, and as they do, I find myself thinking only one thing, now, this is how you run a podcast. Right. When Moby and Gregor say their goodbyes, Moby tells him that he'll be coming to San Francisco soon and he'll be sure to give Gregor a call, and Gregor says he'd like that. But before parting, Gregor can't help giving it just one last nudge.
00:41:10
Speaker 2: I have one more question for you. Can you just tell me the name of the storage facility where the CD is. No, it's for a friend. They need to store something in Queens. No, there was one place. I'm just saying, Hey, it's the same place.
00:41:23
Speaker 3: Gregor's comfortable enough to joke around about something that had once plagued him, and Moby's comfortable enough to uncomfortably laugh along with him. All around it feels pretty nice.
00:41:46
Speaker 6: So how did you feel about how that went?
00:41:48
Speaker 2: I think it was cathartic.
00:41:49
Speaker 3: No, really, seriously, With some time to kill before a flight, Gregor and I decide to hike up to the observatory. Do you feel like he screwed you out of your CDs?
00:41:59
Speaker 9: Yet?
00:41:59
Speaker 7: Again?
00:42:00
Speaker 2: The honest truth is, he did give me a good long song, a dance about how we all learned a lesson. I didn't get the thing that I set out to get, But in seriousness, I honestly feel, in a funny sort of way, I got what I came for.
00:42:13
Speaker 6: Which was what you didn't get your CDs.
00:42:18
Speaker 2: You see, you're a petty person. What you just saw and apparently were deaf you couldn't hear, was a reconciliation with two guys after twenty five years of slight estrangement.
00:42:29
Speaker 6: So you guys did get to be friends.
00:42:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we just buried the hatchets. This CD thing, Yeah, that is a symbol. I mean, who cares about the CD?
00:42:36
Speaker 6: But you one who cared about the CD.
00:42:39
Speaker 2: Look, it's hard to come together and just hug it out. What you just witnessed was a version of hugging it out, two men having a good cry. That's about the closest that I come.
00:42:53
Speaker 6: Well, then, I think that was great. I think this was a success.
00:42:56
Speaker 2: I agree.
00:42:59
Speaker 6: Still would have been nice to get your CDs.
00:43:00
Speaker 2: Back, of course. I don't know if the rental car you got there at any player, but it doesn't. It would have been no better ending to this day than to drive out of the parking lot cranking that CD.
00:43:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the cars don't have nobody has CD players anymore.
00:43:18
Speaker 2: And let me tell you something. If some of the Mobi's song comes on the radio right now, I'd let it play. I'd even sing along.
00:43:25
Speaker 6: I'm going to find it out my phone and play it.
00:43:27
Speaker 2: That's okay, you sure?
00:43:29
Speaker 6: Because I actually downloaded.
00:43:31
Speaker 9: It as best for.
00:43:37
Speaker 3: Three days later, and much to his surprise, Gregor received an email from Mobi. This might sound odd, the email read, but I realized I never said a true, heartfelt thank you for giving me those CDs, So, in all sincerity, thank you. I'm sorry it's taken so long to say thank you. Gregor said he was happier that the thank you came three days later. This way, he knew it wasn't just out of politeness, that it must have been quote boring a hole through his head for days after receiving Mobis thank you, greg immediately wrote back thank you of his own, in the form of a joke, which, if you didn't know Gregor, could also be taken as an insult. But Moby did know Gregor, and so for Gregor, it was back to being a normal friendship now that the furnitures returned to its goodwill home, now that the.
00:45:05
Speaker 9: Last month's rent is scheming.
00:45:09
Speaker 1: The damage did not take this moment to this.
00:45:15
Speaker 6: If we messed him, and we too.
00:45:20
Speaker 7: Felt around from five to.
00:45:25
Speaker 2: Things.
00:45:29
Speaker 1: Well, so what'd you think?
00:45:33
Speaker 2: The one one guy was really good? The funny guy, he was great.
00:45:37
Speaker 1: So let me ask you.
00:45:39
Speaker 3: After the episode aired all those years ago, people have continued to wonder, did Moby ever eventually, you know, go to the storage unit and dig out your old CDs?
00:45:52
Speaker 4: Whatever, number of years passed. Five years later, Moby text me, oh, like, I was emptying out a storage container in Queens and I found the box set.
00:46:04
Speaker 3: So he so he he found he found the CDs, so I said, So.
00:46:10
Speaker 4: I said, let's meet at the Griffith Observatory and you can have me them. He lives right near that, so he said, great, no problem. I'm like, you know whatever, ten o'clock on Tuesday, Great, no problem. The morning of I'm like, okay, so like, I'm just coming into the park now, just I'll be up there. No response, and then I'm like, okay, I'm here and no response, and he doesn't, you know, he doesn't show you're up there, doesn't answer anything. And I said something like, you know, if a teaser, I can just go by your house. I mean, I know you're right here. I can just walk over to it. And no response.
00:46:41
Speaker 2: And then I think whatever the exact math was, but maybe the next day he was like, oh, like, so I was like preparing for an interview, preparing for a precedent.
00:46:52
Speaker 4: I didn't need to see him. He could have left it an envelope in the front porch or like give it to his assistant or whatever.
00:46:57
Speaker 2: It was. You know, in so far as this whole experience was slightly not very out of slightly, it was mostly symbolic. I felt like he was not ready to do that symbolic act.
00:47:10
Speaker 1: He's never given you the CDs back.
00:47:12
Speaker 8: So.
00:47:14
Speaker 4: There was not is not a resolution to that particular drama.
00:47:18
Speaker 3: My goodness, until you never said, hey, why don't you disdrop those CDs in the mail for me?
00:47:24
Speaker 2: No, because I feel like too vastly oversimplify. I won this story. I have a great life and a great you know, family and all these things that are really what mattered to me. So whatever it was, I was seeing a hat and I came to realize it.
00:47:43
Speaker 1: That was exactly what Moby was trying to tell you in the episode.
00:47:47
Speaker 4: I think sometimes you're not ready to hear things. You can't force the flower to open.
00:47:52
Speaker 3: So maybe it's really maybe you owe Moby something. Maybe you have you ever told him that you know you? Did you ever thank him for what he shared with you? And no, do you do you want to do that? I mean, should we call him right now.
00:48:09
Speaker 2: And hear the wheels turning in your greasy.
00:48:11
Speaker 3: Little So you feel like at this point, you know what Moby for whatever reason isn't able to give you back those CDs, so let them have them.
00:48:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's all let go, let go of everything. And I'll tell you one other thing.
00:48:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a radio station in Portland that for some reason is streaming on the radio here and they play a fair bit of Moby and they've played some the other day and I listened to it. I didn't turn it off, which I probably might have at a certain point.
00:48:45
Speaker 1: You can listen to mobi music now.
00:48:47
Speaker 2: I listened to the song and I was like, pretty good song.
00:48:53
Speaker 1: And that was it.
00:48:54
Speaker 2: I mean I had some critical thoughts.
00:48:58
Speaker 3: Of course, he did. Gregor, thank you all right, I'll talk to you later, talk to you later.
00:49:03
Speaker 7: Bye bye.
00:49:16
Speaker 3: Special thanks to everyone who helped put together our original Gregor episode way back when.
00:49:21
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week.
00:49:23
Speaker 3: With another Encore presentation, another heavyweight Biju, as well as another update from one of our favorite guests, so stay tuned.